Hot on the heels of a stunning Loki season 2 episode, Marvel has finally released the first trailer for its next series, Echo—and the next chapter in Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox)’s story looks like it’ll pack a punch.
Echo is a Hawkeye spinoff that takes place after that series’ cliffhanger, in which Maya finds out that Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) had her father killed. Despite being Kingpin’s longtime protégée, Maya shoots him, seemingly killing him.
However, as we see in the new trailer, Kingpin is back.
The trailer begins with Maya as a young girl, trying to buy some ice cream from a vendor. The vendor, though, mocks her for being Deaf and shoos her away.
Little does the vendor—or Maya—know that Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, is watching from nearby. Fisk gets out of the car, beats the ice cream vendor to a pulp, and then takes Maya in his hand. Thus begins their years-long relationship, in which Fisk grooms Maya to become one of the leaders of his criminal empire.
The trailer promises a much bloodier, more mature tone than the movies and streaming shows we’ve seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. We see multiple shots of people being killed, some of them in startlingly gory ways. It looks like the tone of Echo will be much closer to Netflix’s Daredevil than Hawkeye.
But we also see some intriguing bits of Maya’s history and character. Directed and executive produced by Sydney Freeland (Reservation Dogs), the series will reportedly explore Maya’s life outside of her relationship with Kingpin, including her membership in the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma.
Judging from the trailer, though, the heart of the series may lie in Maya’s conflicted character, and her relationship with Kingpin. In a voiceover throughout the trailer, Kingpin tells her that he sees “everything” that she is, saying, “You have so much pain and rage in you that you can’t contain it.” He ends the trailer—with a bandage over his eye, showing how he survived Maya’s gunshot—by telling her that he and she are the same. That’s a chilling thought, considering the warped sense of justice that Fisk has displayed over and over again in Daredevil, Hawkeye, and the scene with the ableist ice cream man in the Echo trailer.
All five episodes of Echo will premiere on January 10, 2024. In a first for Marvel Studios, the series will drop simultaneously on Disney+ and Hulu.
(featured image: Disney+)
