Full spoilers follow for Echo.
Marvel’s Echo follows Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) returning to her family and home in Oklahoma after breaking free from the hold of Kingpin, a.k.a. Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). Maya made her first MCU appearance in Marvel’s Hawkeye series, where she acted as Fisk’ s right-hand woman. After learning, however, that Kingpin killed her father William (Zahn McClarnon), she took revenge and shot the villain in the face, presumably killing him. Returning to her childhood home in the first episode of Echo, Maya comes face-to-face with her ancestors and her repressed trauma from losing both her parents to violence. Unraveling Maya’s long family history shows a fierce bloodline whose legacy and strength comes from surviving on the brink of life or death. Thematically, it seems like the MCU is paving the way for Maya Lopez to become the Phoenix, a character that defies time and space. We spoke to executive producers Brad Winderbaum and Richie Palmer from the show to this theory.
What Are Echo’s Powers?
While we saw Maya’s fighting and street-level combat skills in Hawkeye, Echo focuses on her coming into her own fantastical power. What that power is in the MCU is a little tricky to specify though. In the comics, her powerset is similar to Taskmaster – “photographic reflexes” that allow both characters to mimic any skill that they observe. Hence, Maya’s alias is “Echo.” However, in the new series, “Echo” refers to her matrilineal ancestors reverberating within Maya once she reconnects with that part of herself. Kind of like Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender!
“[Director Sydney Freeland] came in and she had a very clear vision of what the story of Maya Lopez could be,” executive producer Richie Palmer told IGN. “And from there, she also really wanted to honor the fact that she is a character from Marvel Comics that could stand next to all these other fantastical characters. So how do you meet the two in the middle? … Her powers stem from her connection to her ancestors and we took the figurative and made it a little more literal on our show in the fun way that only we can at Marvel. So it was really cool for us to be able to do that.”
Maya’s power manifests as glowy orange spirals that appear on her palms, which signal that her ancestors Chafa (Julia Jones), Lowak (Morningstar Angeline), and Tuklo (Dannie McCallum) are reaching out in times of need to give an extra oomph to her abilities. She’s able to draw on the gifts of her ancestors: strategy, cunning, and ferocity, as well as love (this one, of course, comes from her mother). Her grandmother Chula (Tantoo Cardinal) tells Maya that her mother, Taloa (Katarina Ziervogel), was a healer. And we eventually see that Maya has inherited that gift from her, possibly healing Fisk from the hurt and trauma from his father’s abuse as well as the effects of his killing his father.
During a fight in the fifth episode, Maya shares her powers with Chula and Bonnie (Devery Jacobs) so that they can also fight off Kingpin’s henchmen. This is most likely only possible because they are her blood relatives. Protecting life is a theme of this series, as evidenced by the flashbacks to Maya’s ancestors, but could these abilities also hint at Maya possibly becoming the host of the Phoenix Force?
Life and Death, the Way of the Phoenix
In the comics, Maya becomes the host of the Phoenix Force and also takes on the alias Thunderbird (after the original John Proudstar, who was a member of the X-Men). Thematically, it makes sense for Maya to take on the Phoenix Force in the MCU. The Phoenix Force is a cosmic entity that, among many things, can manipulate life and death. Echo shows the important role of Maya’s matrilineal Choctaw ancestors as life-givers and protectors in times of destruction and creation. The strength they showed in those moments surges through Maya when in distress.
For instance, Chula describes giving birth to Taloa as a “life or death ordeal.” When the ancestors appeared to Chula, she looks up as though in a pond looking up through a watery window at Tuklo while she braids her hair. Water, a common symbol of life, is used throughout the show in flashbacks and in the present. Water rains down on Chula as she gives birth. Chafa drinks from a shimmery blue font before protecting her family as their cave falls down around them. It rains the night of the car accident that took Taloa’s life. Such is the cycle of birth and death, of which the Phoenix is a symbol.
Interestingly, the water imagery also ties into the original Native MCU character Kahhori, who is Mohawk (and also voiced by Devery Jacobs) and was just introduced in Season 2 of What If…? In that story, the Tesseract turned the Forbidden Lake into a mysterious void where people from surrounding tribes disappeared, leading to distrust, strife, and bloodshed between these tribes. What was really going on was the lake had become a portal to the Sky World, where those who entered were given incredible gifts. The Spanish Conquistadors who invaded and destroyed Kahhori’s village find the lake and presume it to be the Fountain of Youth, another symbol of renewed and extended life. Using the new powers they received in the Sky World, Kahhori and the other previously missing Natives return to save and protect her tribe.
Between how Ms. Marvel’s origins were adapted and led her to be a mutant in the MCU, the recent inclusion and anticipated introduction of the X-Men, Maya’s own comic history as the host of the Phoenix Force, and hints from What If…? Season 2, there’s a good case to be made that Maya could become that character in the future.
In the comics, Kamala Khan is an Inhuman whose abilities were activated by a Terrigen Mist that allowed her limbs to stretch and “embiggen.” In the Disney+ Ms. Marvel series, Kamala’s (Iman Vellani) powers revolve around the ability to manipulate hard light, which was made possible because of her great-grandmother Aisha’s (Mehwish Hayat) Djinn/Clandestine background. This makes her a mutant, as her friend Bruno Carrelli (Matt Lintz) tells her at the end of the season. Cue the X-Men theme softly in the background!
With the MCU shifting to welcome mutants, it’s possible to start planting the seeds for the Phoenix to make a return that isn’t Dark Phoenix or Jean Grey-related. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness brought Patrick Stewart back as Professor Xavier and the post-credits scene of The Marvels shows Beast (Kelsey Grammer) and Binary (Lashana Lynch) in the sub-basement of the X Mansion. Even the new X-Men ‘97 animated series will likely hint at Jean Grey’s post-Dark Phoenix life if Madelyne Pryor’s Goblin Queen is involved, as expected. (Okay, the animated show will probably exist in its own universe, but still! It’s never been a better time to be cast as a mutant.)
“Are you asking me if Maya Lopez is the Phoenix?” executive producer Brad Winderbaum responded when I brought up the theory. “Echo as a standalone series [works] in more grounded territory. ... So everything supernatural in the show is very weighted in metaphor. Yes, it's Marvel. Yes, it's power-based. But the way it resonates with her personal growth is really the cool part.”
Palmer was more forthcoming about Maya’s possible comics history and says Marvel will want to “continue to honor” the way Maya is portrayed in the comics. “It can actually go anywhere,” he said, acknowledging Maya’s recent comics. “She's even gotten the powers of the Phoenix and crazy stuff like that. So I think we'll just keep watching those comics and seeing how that story unfolds, and try to do justice by the fans of those books.”
Marvel Spotlight
When asked if or when we’ll see Maya again in MCU, Winderbaum hedged: “This is a very Marvel answer, but the answer is always ‘maybe.’ You never know when these characters are going to pop up. Even though it's a Spotlight and it's standalone … she's still living in the same world, still breathing the same air as these larger-than-life heroes. So the future is, in a beautiful way, still uncertain.”
Seeing how Echo ends, Fisk – in running for mayor of New York City – is only going to be expanding the power that he was once going to hand down to Maya. While Maya chooses to stay with her family, there’s nothing that says that she can’t possibly return to New York to stop him. Maybe also to possibly team up with Daredevil?
Winderbaum speaks to the larger future of the Marvel streaming projects, saying that “moving forward, many of our stories will feel more standalone. They won't all be Spotlights, but their tethers to other projects will be less significant to the plot. They will be character-focused and may have Easter eggs, may have cameos, but really will be about that story working as a piece in and of itself.”
Could this signal that future Disney+ offerings will be more Spotlights to keep the larger Phase-relevant stories to the feature films? Time will tell.
