Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Echo’ On Disney+ and Hulu, Where The ‘Hawkeye’ Character Escapes New York And Reconnects With Her Indigenous Past

We were first introduced to Maya Lopez, aka Echo, in the 2021 series Hawkeye, so we know how tough she is. We also know how much Alaqua Cox, the actor who plays her, is capable of. We’ve been waiting over two years for an Echo series to come to fruition. Was it worth the wait?

ECHO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Body-painted spirits gather in a circle, and after a ceremony, take human form, becoming the warriors of Choctaw legend.

The Gist: The story of the Choctaw warriors is told in a backyard tent by two young girls, Maya Lopez and her cousin Bonnie. It’s 2007 in Oklahoma. Later that night, Maya, who is hearing-impaired like her mother, signs to her mother that she wants some ice cream. They go out in their truck late at night to get some, but by the time Maya’s mother realizes the brakes aren’t working, their truck is t-boned by an SUV. Maya’s mother is gravely injured; Maya has to get her lower left leg amputated.

In the hospital, Maya’s father William (Zahn McClarnon) doesn’t want to tell his daughter that her mother is gone. In the meantime, his mother-in-law Chula (Tantoo Cardinal), condemns him for being the reason why her daughter is dead; because of he and his brother’s involvement with Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), she wishes they never came into their family’s life. Chula’s partner Skully (Graham Greene), a grandfather figure to Maya, seems to be more forgiving.

When Maya recovers, and receives a prosthetic leg, William moves her to New York City; this way he can work directly for Fisk as part of the Tracksuit Mafia and Maya can get the education and training he thinks she needs, which is of course under the supervision of Fisk himself.

Twenty years later, under Kingpin’s training, Maya (Alaqua Cox) become quite the proficient fighter. But when she sees a hooded figure with a samurai sword kill a number of the Tracksuit Mafia, including William, she goes to Fisk seeking revenge. Her first job is to go with two of his crew to interrupt an arms deal with their fists and guns. She seems to defeat most of the people there, but is chased down by Daredevil (Charlie Cox), who tells her they screwed up what he was working on.

She eventually gets in a battle with the hooded assailant that killed her father, who turns out to be Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). He tells her that she needs to channel her anger and focus who exactly she should be angry with, given that Fisk is the one who ordered him to kill her father. It’s then we see the Hawkeye scene where Maya shoots Fisk in the eye.

Five months later, Maya is on a motorcycle, speeding towards her hometown with a gaping stab wound in her side. She manages to keep the bleeding at bay until she reaches her parents’ old house, still owned by Chula. She sews herself up with dental floss, and runs into her cousin Biscuits (Cody Lightning), but she tells him no one needs to know she’s in town. She then goes to the local skating rink, owned by her uncle Henry Lopez (Chaske Spencer); she not only needs Henry to call in someone to help her with her stab wound, but she wants his help to get back at Fisk’s crew. Henry doesn’t want to bring New York’s crime war home, but almost as likely he doesn’t want to upset the gravy train he gets via working for Fisk’s organization.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Echo has a bit of the same tone as Hawkeye, though it’s certainly darker and more violent, akin to some of the old Netflix Marvel series like Jessica Jones or, yes, Daredevil. It’s the first MCU TV series to get a TV-MA rating because of the violence.

Our Take: After watching the first three episodes of Echo‘s five-episode season, it certainly feels like the show’s creator, Marion Dayre (The Act) structured it like a longish MCU movie as opposed to a TV series. It’s somewhat hard to get a handle on what Maya is doing after the events of Hawkeye by the end of Episode 1 because the first episode pent so much time summarizing and expanding upon what she did while in New York.

We get an idea of just how tough and resourceful Maya is, and much of that is via Cox’s compelling performance. She does a good job communicating the pain that Maya has felt in her life, and moves pretty gracefully for an action star (she is an amputee and hearing-impaired in real life).

What we don’t quite get is just what her powers or special abilities might be. The fact that the origin of the Choctaw warriors is discussed is helpful. And the next two episodes show examples of Maya’s ancestors who called upon the powers of the other women warriors in their family line, like Maya ends up doing. But by the end of the first episode, the picture we get of Maya is someone who is purely out for revenge and to protect herself.

More than anything, though, Maya’s story in these five episodes is going to be more about her reconnecting with her family and her Indigenous roots. She needs to mend the relationship with her cousin Bonnie (Deverey Jacobs), for instance; in the 20 years she’s been gone, Maya never returned the texts and emails of one of the people she was closest to when she was a kid. So, that will occupy her just as much with dealing with the Fisk organization (and Fisk himself, likely), as will her mending fences with her grandmother, who’d rather she just blow through town without causing much of a stir (fat chance, right)?

Even for Marvel, it was a coup to get McClarnon, Cardinal, Greene and Spencer for Echo. Yes, it seems like we’re seeing them a lot lately, but it’s also because we’re seeing more shows that feature Indigenous characters and stories that are relevant to that community. They all also happen to be great actors, and the chance to see them in extended roles — especially Cardinal and Greene playing the now-friends who still talk about their romantic history — is a treat.

Sex and Skin: None, aside the Choctaw spirits in body paint.

Parting Shot: We see the bald head of Fisk, lying in a hospital bed with a bandage over his eye.

Sleeper Star: Devery Jacobs was one of our favorite actors in the excellent Reservation Dogs, and she’s pretty compelling here as Bonnie. We also like the comic relief Cody Lightning brings as the well-meaning but somewhat inept Biscuits.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the people in Maya’s hometown tell her they haven’t seen her in 20 years, we think they’re being literal, meaning the show is taking place in 2027. But we can’t be 100% sure. Also, in the second episode, Biscuits brings Chula’s pickup truck to help Maya with her plan to get back at Fisk’s people. For some unexplained reason, the truck is right-hand drive, as if Chula bought it in England or Australia and had it shipped to the U.S.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you approach Echo like the five-episode movie that it is, you’ll be a lot more satisfied with the pace of the limited series’ storytelling. It’s certainly darker than much of the MCU fare we’ve been seeing, but it’s also one of the MCU series that’s most grounded in reality and family, which is refreshing to see.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.