Main cast: Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye), Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop), Alaqua Cox (Maya Lopez), Vera Farmiga (Eleanor Bishop), Tony Dalton (Jack Duquesne), Fra Fee (Kazi), Aleks Paunovic (Ivan), Piotr Adamczyk (Tomas), and Zahn McClarnon (William Lopez)
Directors: Bert and Bertie
The publicity hype for Hawkeye that I came across earlier included how these people have drafted Bert and Bertie, a British duo that work together as directors and screenwriters of such great works such as… wait, let me check their Wikipedia and IMDB pages. Huh, so aside from some short films, they had done a kiddie movie and this episode is their highest profile work to date.
Okay, so I guess that means these ladies will work for cheap, but that doesn’t sound so good on the press junket, so of course Disney spins this as another one of its moves to promote inclusiveness and diversity. More women, because remember, Disney loves and respect women in all shapes, sizes, and color! So long as they don’t get airs like Black Widow and ask for more money, that is.
Well, in this one, we know more about Maya, and she seems to be shaping up to be someone that appears villainous but it’s okay, eventually she will reveal that she has reasons to be that way. She’s mute and has a prosthetic leg which means another notch on Kevin Feige’s Bedpost of Utmost Respect to POC and Women and LGBT+, and she comes complete with a shaman-like teacher when she was a kid acting all forlorn yet photogenic in the grand tradition of “special needs kids are all hot-looking people with special talents” stereotyping that Hollywood just loves to keep parroting in order to pat themselves in the back for being benevolent superior beings.
Because she is also a strong woman, Maya is automatically awesome at martial arts despite the improbability of all, because, you know, having a vagina is all one needs to be a guaranteed master of everything and anything.
Oh, and she has daddy issues, because apparently that’s the only back story a strong female character is allowed to have these days. I’m sure eventually Kate and her will bond over how they both miss their dead daddies.
Meanwhile, Kate and Clint continue to do their mentor-sassy sidekick thing that I admit is growing on me. The plot itself is pretty dull, to be honest, and it’s quite disappointing, if predictable, that they are appending a character with low-tier powers (as far as the MCU goes) to what is shaping up to be a low-tier, low-investment plot. It’s also a shame that an opportunity to develop Clint’s character further is continuously sidelined by this need to showcase dull, stereotypical “strong women from the Hollywood mill” characters that bring little to the table.
Echoes is in some ways a charming Christmas special, but as a show in the MCU, it is turning out to be like the supposed titular character itself: insignificant in the grand scheme of things, prone to be overlooked, and easily forgotten.
