Echo is a beautiful show about family, loyalty, and forgiveness. It mobilizes a stellar cast (lead by Alaqua Cox as the titular Echo), stand-out action, and a partnership with the Choctaw Nation to take a story planted in Hawkeye and cultivate it into rich ground for storytelling and character development. It accomplishes everything the MCU supposedly values, but it seems that Marvel doesn’t realize what they have. They seem to have dropped the show as a binge partly because there is so little of it compared to other series, and this has muddied the conversation about the quality of the story behind questions of marketing and the overall vision for the MCU.
Echo is both one of Marvel’s strongest television efforts and a sign that they are very unsure of how to allocate their resources. As the first release in the new Spotlight series, this show has been thrust to the center of a confusing marketing campaign. It’s truly unclear if Spotlight is here to house adult content, standalone content (this series relies heavily on a past property), or tell street-level stories (this series hints at something much larger). In the end, it’s much more valuable to measure this show on its own merits. So, ignore the discourse, check out Echo, and swing back here for a spoilery discussion of what this show has to offer.
As the series opens, we are ready to catch up with Maya Lopez (aka Echo) as she deals with the aftermath of her (attempted) murder of Kingpin. We are emotionally prepared for some New York flashbacks, and we are wondering what sort of situation she will return to back home, but instead, episode one, “Chafa,” transports us to a colorful and striking depiction of a creation myth in which Chafa (Julia Jones, Rutherford Falls) saves her family from a cosmic cave complete with deep wells of mystical water not-so-subtly reminiscent of the recent What If…? episode, “What If…. Kahhori Reshaped the World?” This connection is particularly striking knowing that the Kahhori episode sprang from a similar collaboration with members of the Mohawk Nation. From the start, we seem to be dealing with something more than “street level” stakes.
As the series progresses, the show further establishes this mythology and anoints Maya as the latest iteration in a lineage of powerful women possessing heroic qualities that manifest as supernatural abilities when the stakes are high. Of course, these abilities can only come to fruition when they spring from a deep sense of love and connection to family and the good of the tribe.
This is a beautiful sentiment, but it would fall flat if Echo didn’t do such a phenomenal job making us care about its characters. It all starts with Zahn McClarnon reprising his Hawkeye role as Maya’s father, William Lopez. Not many actors can project the energy and complexity that seem to come so naturally to McClarnon. We fell in love with him in Hawkeye as a loving, single father who was also a believable mob boss. He recaptures that magic here as a charming husband who is also mixed-up in enough trouble to get his wife killed in the crossfire of his misdeeds. He also projects an impossible mix of responsibility and resentment when Chula (Tantoo Cardinal, Killers of the Flower Moon), his mother-in-law and powerful tribal matriarch, sends him packing after her daughter’s death.
When we first met William back in Disney’s Hawkeye series, he taught Maya that she had to learn to move “between two worlds,” and that this ability would make her stronger. This was a valuable lesson for Maya, but nobody can exercise that power better than McClarnon himself; he is a dynamic presence who makes the most of his screen time and injects the central conflict of this story with more raw feeling and emotion than standard Marvel fare. It’s not surprising that the first episode of Echo takes care to directly transplant as many of his scenes from Hawkeye as possible. This has drawn some fire from critics, but it was the only logical move given the strength of his performance. Unfortunately, the realities of the story don’t give us much more time with William, but Echo delivers with an incredible cast that builds on this foundation and crafts a community in Tamaha, Oklahoma that we care about right away.
Tamaha’s dynamics hinge on Maya’s troubled relationship with her grandmother, Chula. While the folks around her get to have a bit more fun, Cardinal’s portrayal of a matriarch shouldering a mountain of regret and responsibility is essential to crafting believable stakes. Despite her kind smile and unassuming gig as postal worker, we see Chula’s sway and power from the start of the series, and we are just as worried about Maya crossing Chula as we are about the return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s impossible-to-kill Kingpin.
Her performance also makes us appreciate the love and connection that the rest of the Tamaha cast has to offer. We have the most fun with Biscuits (Cody Lightning, Hey, Viktor!), Maya’s cousin who welcomes her home with open arms and absolutely no emotional baggage. His aptly-named dog, Billy Jack, lets us know that under that sweet demeanor, Biscuits loves the idea of being a heroic desperado with Native American roots. Of course, Maya making him an unwitting accomplice to mass murder isn’t quite the same as Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack protecting hippies from racists. As much as yours truly enjoyed watching Biscuits pawn off his “relatively new” Playstation and crush some vans with a monster truck; seeing him grapple with his role in Maya’s power play could have provided some richer ground for storytelling (or perhaps it will in the future).
We also get an incredibly engaging turn from Chaske Spencer (The English) as Henry Black Crow Lopez, Maya’s criminal uncle who is indebted to Kingpin, but would much rather spin the hits of the ’80s and ’90s at Black Crow’s Skatelife retro skating rink. He doesn’t want to deal with any trouble or any politics. As the wall of his business states: “Make America Skate Again!” Henry is bursting with love and protective instincts. When Maya’s explosion disrupts the balance of his criminal enterprise, we even respect his willingness to take full responsibility when the “shit” rolls downhill.
We also get yet another incredible role from national treasure Graham Greene as Maya’s grandfather, Skully. Greene has been charming audiences for decades with his ability to balance a sense of culture and wisdom with the fast-talking wit needed to survive in a cynical Western world. In one of the best sequences of the season, Greene sells an artifact to a couple of white tourists crafting a naive and appropriated “Southwestern” aesthetic for their home. He even uses a false chant in which he literally says, “buy the damn thing.” We learn he has become estranged from Chula in the 20 years since Maya’s departure, but we respect his ability to keep the peace and continue to love the folks from all corners of his family – whether that is through building a new prosthetic leg for Maya, seeing the good in William Lopez, or putting the moves on Chula after all these years (we forgive him some of his unwanted advances when he produces the thoughtful gift of Chula’s refurbished sewing machine at the end of the season).
Perhaps the only misstep in building a world to fight for in Tamaha is the criminal underuse of Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs) as Maya’s beloved cousin, nay, “sister,” Bonnie. Their plotline is bursting with possibility and the promise of healing – but goes unaddressed in Maya’s final arc. They share a smile at the obligatory Marvel television family cookout in the season finale, but we are left wanting more. There are a few other poor decisions, like the somewhat clumsy and confusing attempted attack on the powwow that is more or less hand-waved away – or the extensive time spent with roller rink turncoat Vicki and his wannabe “Militia Mommy” co-conspirators.
Still, the series gets more right than wrong. One of the strongest elements of the series is the way it equates the strength of its relationships with the strength of communication. Maya’s isolation and inability to afford access to a school for the deaf in New York feel all the more striking in comparison to Tamaha, where every family member remains fluent in ASL even 20 years after Maya’s departure and the death of her mother. At one point, Henry even uses ASL as a silent warning to Bonnie when trouble erupts at the skating rink. Then, during the brief moment of Maya and Bonnie’s first reunion, the tension of the moment is accentuated by the fact that their hands are bound – limiting communication. Of course, the ultimate payoff is the contrast between this familiarity and the coldness of Kingpin’s ASL tech (not to mention his brutal murder of an ASL translator with Maya in the next room. Yikes). In any case, we know where Maya is most wanted and most needed.
Overall, the Kingpin plotline is a little stale, but gives us what we want from one of the most popular Marvel villains. D’Onofrio gets to hit his gruffest tones while offering expensive bottles of wine and platitudes about family. We see the desperation for connection and family that is always so muffled and distorted underneath his raw violence. Ultimately, we believe that there is a reason he can’t quit Maya, and it’s fitting that a character like this would interpret a bullet to the face as the highest expression of love and appreciation that another human being could offer. It’s disappointing to see Kingpin simply rushed off into a car after a blast of emotional healing magic from Maya and her ancestors, in which she acknowledges their familial connections, but it’s a much richer place to leave the character than simply waking up in a new series after suffering yet another seemingly deadly fate.
At the end of the day, this series is a Marvel standout. Even if you put aside the character elements of the series, we get some of the best action Marvel has offered in years. The fights are brutal, stylistic, and well-choreographed. Charlie Cox even shows up as Daredevil for an incredibly fun gun-fu sequence at a mob meeting gone awry. Echo’s grace and speed are evident at every turn, and generate some show-stopping visuals at the roller rink/arcade that range from crashing through a wall to crushing a pinball machine and using the revolvers from a shoot ‘em up game as makeshift whips.
Meanwhile, the art design and cinematography throughout Tamaha are striking and memorable. Heck, the skating rink alone rivals the best nostalgia-porn that shows like Stranger Things have to offer. Each of the ancestral scenes are beautiful and rich with detail; the flashbacks to Chafa in the cave are etched into our minds. We even have some fun with silent film structure during the Tuklo Lighthorsemen sequence. In the final episode, Echo’s new suit is an absolutely showstopping piece of art.
Whatever Marvel’s intent, they’ve launched the Spotlight label with a beautiful show that feels like it wasn’t given all of the necessary resources to fully realize its artistic vision. If recent reports that Daredevil: Born Again is bringing back Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll turn out to be true, perhaps they serve as a sign that Marvel is realizing that newer isn’t always better and that it’s worth fostering strong existing relationships. Fortunately, Echo brought us something special and Maya is positioned to jump into any world Marvel likes. They could dive deep into the mythology behind her powers or bring her back down to street level affairs with Tamaha under less of an immediate threat. Now, it’s up to fans to watch this show in droves and let the decision makers at Marvel know they’ve built something important that deserves more time and space to shine.
Please consider doing your part to bring us back to Tamaha in the near future.
