Main cast: Alaqua Cox (Maya Lopez/Echo), Chaske Spencer (Henry Black Crow Lopez), Tantoo Cardinal (Chula), Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Devery Jacobs (Bonnie), Zahn McClarnon (William Lopez), Cody Lightning (Biscuits), Graham Greene (Skully), and Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin)
Director: Sydney Freeland

Finally, Echo is here! The series had been shelved quite a bit, allegedly because the first version was so bad that they had to spend who knows how much more money to redo huge chunks of it. They also trimmed the whole thing down to five episodes and defecated the whole lot in a single batch onto Disney+, no doubt wishing to be done with this thing as soon as possible.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they didn’t try. Sydney Freeland went all out saying that if I don’t love this show, I hate women, amputees, resting bitchfaces, super lame fight scenes, and lazy girlboss scripts… Meanwhile, Disney shills couldn’t stop yelling that Echo is deaf, Echo is a one-legged girlboss, Echo is Native American, and, in case you’ve forgotten, Echo is deaf.

What is the story about? Who cares? Watch this show to save the lives of girlbosses that raindance on one leg from the crippling wigwam of the toxic straight male patriarchy!

Yeah, I’ve seen this kind of marketing many times from Disney already, and without fail, the show that needs such pathetic stunt turns out to be either mediocre at best or, if I’m really lucky, a steaming pile of poo that needs all the faux virtue signaling it can desperately grasp to shield itself from criticism and scorn.

So, Chafa. That’s the name of the first Choctaw, some breathy voice monologues in the opening scene, and she’s naturally a girlboss that saves the world or something. Yay, a Mary Sioux, because we need one of each race, sexuality, species, and whatever to tick all of Disney’s check boxes.

Don’t worry too much about the details, though, because all this feels like the obligatory “exotic Injun hooga-hooga magic” stuff that white people expect shows and stories featuring Native Americans to be full of.

At its core, this episode reintroduces Maya Lopez (deaf, one-legged, Mary Sioux, etc) coming back to her hometown Tamaha after her exciting adventures in Hawkeye. The whole thing is a rather bland mosaic of flashbacks and very predictable, almost by the numbers meet the family, fight the bad guy scenes. The whole thing is a bit under an hour, but it’s a quick and easy watch because for the most part it just plays on in the background as one’s attention is caught by other things.

I hope people aren’t drawn in by the hype about Daredevil and Kingpin showing up here. Poor Charlie Cox, he’s once again pimped out hard to promote a show when he’s barely in this episode for five minutes, and I can only hope he has some juice left when his scrapped-and-to-be-redone-again show finally sees the light of day, whenever that will be.

Speaking of that fight scene, yikes. Okay, here’s the problem. I don’t know if this is some modern-day weird Disney-fied feminism thing, but Alaqua Cox doesn’t have the physical presence to play a convincing fighter character, and the fight scenes in this episode are made of cringe and grimace.

The pace of the fight is slowed down so that Maya can land her lethargic blows in a manner that appear far faster than it actually is. There is no weight behind the blows, and the choreography feels like it’d been done by more of those inexperienced diversity hires that Disney apparently have the monopoly of when it comes to show business these days.

Still, I’m glad that that’s the extent of the insult present in this episode. Most of it is just bog standard “prodigal daughter comes home” stuff I have seen many times before, which is watchable but not the most exciting or memorable TV.

So, all in all, it’s okay and, in the context of present day MCU, that’s something to be relieved about. I won’t advise getting too excited yet, though, because there are still four more episodes to go. God knows what is in those things!