The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) latest project Echo has a lot of fans intrigued, due to how different the show is compared to earlier ones. This is the first show apart of Marvel’s brand new Spotlight series which focuses on smaller characters and Echo is also the first MCU show to release all their episodes at the same time. The show additionally features the return of notorious crime boss, “Kingpin,” and fan favorite superhero, “Daredevil.” While the reviews for this series have been pretty negative, many viewers are still happy the show was different and switched up the typical ‘Marvel formula’.
The beginning of Echo features a recap of Hawkeye, the show where the main character Maya Lopez was introduced. Many viewers were a little disappointed, most of the episode was just flashbacks, but it was a nice way to get a short recap of what happened. This episode was also cool because it featured an objectively awesome fight between Maya and Daredevil but after that, unfortunately, it was simply uninteresting. For how good Kingpin is in other MCU projects, he is kind of lackluster in this and is not as menacing as he could have been.
Due to the way Daredevil’s return was being advertised, many viewers assumed he would be in the show more than he was. Daredevil is unfortunately only in the show for maybe two minutes for his fight with Maya. Their fight was reported to be around six minutes and when it was much shorter, many fans were left disappointed. Another issue with the series was how rushed it was, and a lot of storylines felt skimmed through. One of the main complaints from viewers was it felt like the show was purely an outlet to set up future projects and not primarily focused on Maya.
Even though the show was disappointing, it was still cool that Marvel is letting these side characters get their own time to shine. It is also cool because Alaqua Cox, the actor who plays Maya, is actually deaf in real life, just like her character. One of the main reasons many people were excited for the show was because it is the first TV-MA project in the MCU, which is essentially the rated ‘R’ of television. Unfortunately, the show just felt like a gimmick and did not even warrant the TV-MA rating. Honestly, the best part of the whole show was at the very end during a small, minute post credit scene.
At the end of the last episode, there is a post credit scene that depicts Kingpin listening to the news as reporters talk about the mayor race of New York City. For a casual Marvel viewer this does not mean much, but this can actually mean a lot for the future of the MCU. There is a storyline in the comic books where Kingpin runs for mayor, and Daredevil and Spiderman team up to get rid of him. In the future there is a new Daredevil project, and a new Spiderman movie, so many viewers are expecting that this post credit scene will set up both of these two projects. So while this post credit scene was nice, and gives the viewers a sneak peek at what is to come in the future, it felt like this show was to purely show that Kingpin is alive and will be in other various projects.
Overall, the show just felt very mediocre and kind of unimportant. While it was not bad, it was almost hard to finish just due to how rushed it felt. It is definitely cool and refreshing that Marvel switched up from their standard formula, but the execution was not there, and there were most definitely better ways to go about it. Marvel advertised the show differently from the actual project so many fans thought they were getting something different than the product they received and were left enraged.
