With Echo, Marvel bets on Indigenous superheroes and standalone projects as its cinematic universe struggles
An Indigenous super‐ hero gets her own Marvel spinoff next week — the first of the company's bets on projects that don't re‐ quire prior knowledge of its popular cinematic uni‐ verse.
The Disney+ series Echo stars Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, a.k.a. Echo, the Indige‐ nous-Latin American leader of the Tracksuit Mafia, a criminal gang run by the villainous Wil‐ son Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, who is Maya's surrogate father.
The series finds Lopez, who is deaf, wears a pros‐ thetic leg and can precisely mimic physical reflexes, con‐ fronting Fisk, played by Vin‐ cent D'Onofrio, and taking up her anti-hero mantle after she learns the full extent of his in‐ volvement in her real father's murder years before.
"I think it's long overdue that we have an Indigenous superhero [or] anti-hero," said Devery Jacobs, a Mohawk ac‐ tor from Kahnawà:ke, Que., who plays one of the series leads, Bonnie. Jacobs al‐ so starred in the FX series
Reservation Dogs and in the upcoming Canadian cheer‐ leading drama Backspot.
"For Echo to be released and for us to be able to cham‐ pion a really badass character who happens to be Choctaw [Nation], who happens to be Indigenous, it's just — it's awesome," she said in an in‐ terview with CBC News.
WATCH | A trailer for up‐ coming Marvel series Echo:
Marvel moving away from continuity ap‐ proach
Though Echo was first intro‐ duced in Marvel's 2021 Hawk‐ eye series, the spinoff arrives under Marvel's new Spotlight banner, making it the first of several standalone TV shows and films where viewers won't need previous knowl‐ edge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to follow the show.
Brad Winderbaum, the company's head of streaming, said in an interview that the banner "gives us a platform to bring more grounded, char‐ acter-driven stories to the screen … our audience does‐ n't need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what's happening in Maya's story."
For years, the company's worldbuilding strategy has re‐ quired that interested viewers keep up on multiple instal‐ ments and crossovers in or‐ der to follow the franchise's overarching narrative — an approach that critics have said makes the MCU feel bloated.
CBC News's Jackson Weaver wrote in a review of Marvel's recent film The Mar‐ vels that the movie distanced itself from the continuity ap‐ proach for the better, noting that "what was once the MCU's greatest strength has turned into an awkward and especially heavy albatross."
LISTEN | Why audiences are no longer marveling about superhero movies:
Echo, which is directed by Navajo filmmaker Sydney Freeland and Aboriginal Aus‐ tralian filmmaker Catriona McKenzie, also features famili‐ ar faces like Alberta-born Cree and Métis actress Tantoo Car‐ dinal, known for her perfor‐ mances in films like Dances With Wolves and Killers of The Flower Moon.
Dances With Wolves Oscar nominee Graham Greene of the Six Nations Reserve in On‐ tario plays a supporting role, while Chaske Spencer, Greene's co-star from The Twilight Saga, also stars in the Marvel series.
Speaking to CBC News, Spencer said there's a lot of untapped Indigenous talent still out there.
"When I was coming up there wasn't that many op‐ portunities and now there's so many young Native actors up and coming. It's a really good thing to see," said Spencer, who is Lakota Sioux.
"Plus, it just makes more opportunities for them to play different characters and different roles, and also show us — as Indigenous people — in a different light," he said.
"[In] the past 30 years, Hol‐ lywood's been still trying to keep you in that box. But it's opened up a lot in the past 15 years or so."
The series, which was origi‐ nally set to air on Jan. 10, now premieres Jan. 9 in Cana‐ da on Disney+.