Marvel’s newest miniseries just dropped this week. Echo follows Maya Lopez as Wilson Fisk’s criminal empire pursues her. After fleeing from New York City to her Midwestern hometown, she must reconnect with her family and roots, all the while uncovering ancient truths about her legacy.
Maya fits in with what’s referred to as Marvel’s “street level heroes,” ones who typically operate as vigilantes and fight the type of crime that a police force typically would (for example, Luke Cage, the Punisher, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Daredevil.) Maya Lopez is a Marvel character not explicitly stated to have superpowers. Still, she fits in with this group by evoking a superpowered ethos in which she must rise above her circumstances and either become heroic or shirk that responsibility in her own right. Echo’s narrative is rich, intergenerational, pastoral storytelling with notes of magical realism. This lends well to the superhero genre, creating something powerful and engaging out of ancient lore.
Director Sydney Freeland described the series as “an exploration of trauma– how we deal with it, how we cope with it, how it affects us, how we affect it, how it affects those around us.” Maya’s determined nature begins to cause ripple effects throughout her hometown and within her family. Their small town begins to burst at the seams as Maya’s baggage spills over and threatens to upend all their lives. Maya finds herself torn between two ideas of family: ties forged by blood and those forged by the circumstances of trauma.
The majority of Echo’s cast is composed of Native and Indigenous actors from all over North America, including Devery Jacobs, Chaske Spencer, Cody Lightning, and veteran actors Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal. Although rewritten from the comics (Maya Lopez’s heritage is originally of the Blackfeet Nation’s), there is great reverence for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and its people throughout Echo, particularly depicted through its flashbacks of a lineage of powerful Choctaw women, and through the powwow depicted in the series’ final episode. The gorgeous costumes, the enthusiasm of the music and dances, the presence of such a scene is in and of itself evocative and significant, as the experiences of Native and Indigenous Peoples are not so often depicted in media, especially on a production to this scale.
Alaqua Cox has proved she’s got action star chops through her depiction of Maya, a scrappy fighter fearless in her pursuit of the truth and (perhaps blindingly) determined to accomplish her mission. The fight scenes are superbly choreographed, and Cox makes them look like light work. Though Echo is her first professional role, one could be forgiven for thinking this is all familiar territory to her. The motivation of the antagonists is occasionally nebulous, as is the concept of an all-out war between the two competing factions. Still, Echo becomes much more than the sum of its parts thanks mainly to Alaqua Cox’s dedicated performance of Maya, imbuing fierce tenacity and resolve into her very first role.