By Julian
Alright, I’m back with another Echo recap/review. This time, I’ve binge-watched the last four episodes. I have some thoughts about this show that I liked and did not like. But let’s talk about how enjoyable the series was. It will begin to make sense once I get done with the summary of the plot.
Episodes two to five find Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) on a mission to disrupt Fisk’s empire. She knows her attempts to destroy Fisk’s operations will cause his goons to storm into her hometown Tamaha, Oklahoma. Wouldn’t you know it, Fisk’s goons led by Zane (Andrew Howard) held her uncle, Henry (Chaske Spence), and Cousin Bonnie (Devery Jacobs) hostage at her uncle’s local skating rink. After saving her family, she is met by a one-eyed Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) who promises her an empire if she agrees to return to New York. Amid the criminal storyline, she tries to reconnect with her family. She has strange visions of her Native American ancestors as her grandmother, Chula (Tantoo Cardinal) tells her of her lineage. Rejecting Fisk’s offer, he orders a hit on the local Choctaw Powwow and threatens to kill her family members. But with a new suit and advice from her long-dead mother Taloa (Julia Jones), Maya successfully rescues her family. She then heals Kingpin of his traumatic memories of his abusive father beating his mother. Maya reunites with her family while Fisk observes the NYC mayoral race on television, with a sudden eureka moment that is probably bad news for the heroes of New York.
Overall, the series is pretty good. Does it warrant the TV-MA rating?… it’s kind of mid and tame. It still feels like a Disney+ show, but a bit more adult-oriented than the previous MCU outings. The fight scenes and kills are bloodier than we’ve seen, but it’s not as gory or grotesque as the commercials hinted. I did like Alaqua Cox as a great deaf native American actress who plays a native American superhero character. Many of her supporting cast members were good despite retreading the same ‘estranged family members have to be reunited again’ plot. Biscuit (Cody Lightning) does keep the show light. He does comes off as slightly cartoonish. D’Onofrio’s Kingpin was also great and carries a commanding presence thanks to the viewer’s history of the crime lord in Netflix’s Daredevil and recently in 2021 Disney + show Hawkeye. The flashbacks to Maya’s Native American lineage and the people are a tasteful representation of the Choctaw Nation. Yeah…everything was about as normal as an MCU Disney+ show as it is a TV-MA Hulu series. It does feel like a test run for Disney to start bridging the Netflix-Marvel stuff over to the MCU proper. Maybe in preparation for Daredevil: Born Again series coming soon. I would have to do the cliff note catch-up on the Netflix series and all the shows on the streaming service. And that seems to be that for the MCU (not counting Sony’s Madame Web or whatever else they have down the pipeline) until Deadpool 3 comes out in theaters this summer.
Rating: A healthy 3.5/5 score
