Ruthless superhero returns to her roots
From a purely Marvel entertainment perspective, “Echo” is an OK crime series with a glum vibe and almost no superheroics, or at least not in the first three of its five episodes Disney made available to critics.
In other ways, though, this further adventure of Maya Lopez/echo — the formidable bad gal Alaqua Cox introduced in the 2021 “Hawkeye” series — is an appealing creation.
It’s Marvel’s first production to focus on and star Native Americans. Additionally, Cox is the first amputee to play one of the studio’s protagonists, and the second deaf actor to do so (Lauren Ridloff beat Cox to screens by a few weeks in 2021’s “The Eternals”).
Simultaneously dropping on the more adult Hulu streaming service, “Echo” is Marvel’s first Disney+ TV-MA show and has enough language and grotesque violence to earn the mature rating.
It also kicks off the studio’s new Spotlight imprint, which is supposedly going to produce grittier, more character-based and self-contained stories than the interconnection drunk Marvel Cinematic Universe otherwise offers.
Not so sure about that last bit, though. “Echo” borrows incidents and characters from “Hawkeye”
and Marvel Netflix series “Daredevil,” and the main villain here is once again Vincent D’onofrio’s New York crime boss Kingpin/wilson Fisk.
But the newer aspects of “Echo” register in rich, specific ways. Directed by Indigenous filmmakers Sydney Freeland (Navajo) and Catriona Mckenzie (Australian Gunaikurnai), each episode begins with a cleverly conceived vignette involving Maya’s Choctaw forebears. There are persuasive portraits of contemporary life in Tomaha, Okla., the hometown she flees to after shooting mentor Fisk in the face.
Choctaw Nation advisers and Native American staff writers made sure the series foregrounds Indigenous characters with an easy naturalism and designs that feel authentic.
Stunt coordinator Marc Scizak and American Sign Language consultant Douglas Ridloff are the not-so-secret creative weapons of “Echo.” The former taught Cox bonecrunching mixed martial arts moves and how to work her prosthetic leg in to fights; as a result, Maya’s many action scenes aren’t just the same old choreography.
Although Echo’s comic book superpower, the ability to perfectly re-create any physical action she observes in others, is not overtly evident in the early episodes, she’s quick to figure out how to take down any opponent she can see coming at her.
Ridloff ’s training of the supporting actors lends its own visual poetry. Maya’s estranged family — regretful, criminally involved Uncle Henry (Chaske Spencer, “The English,” “Twilight Saga”); resentful childhood playmate Bonnie (Devery Jacobs of “Reservation Dogs”); good-natured cousin Biscuits (Cody Lightning, “Smoke Signals”), whom Maya ropes into her dangerous plot against Fisk’s cartel; Maya’s unforgiving grandmother Chula (veteran Canadian actor Tantoo Cardinal of “Killers of the Flower Moon”); and sweet, inventive Skully, Grandma’s sometime lover (Graham Greene, Cardinal’s co-star in “Dances With Wolves”) — communicate with her via ASL, but each in their own distinct manner. It’s rare to praise a program for the beauty and expressiveness of actors’ hand work, but this is one of the show’s most enchanting elements.
The cast also includes Dannie Mccallum, a graduate of Edinburg High School in South Texas.
Cox, of course, delivers Maya’s dialogue deftly with ASL, accompanied by a near-perpetual, calculating scowl.
By Episode 3, however, warmer, funnier characteristics peek past the character’s black leather emotional armor. Whether getting in touch with her culture or the people who still somehow love her will make Maya more than a ruthless vengeance machine seems a tall order for just two more episodes to fill. But my money is on Echo’s real superpower turning out to be her humanity.