Marvel Studios ‘Echo’ Series Review - Alaqua Cox is Good But the Show Feels Pointless

Alaqua Cox, as Maya Lopez, comes with a babyish innocence. Her worried face looks like that of a child who has just found out that his parents have refused to give him his favorite toy. This is by no means a complaint. This quality only makes Cox more appealing, and more watchable. When she, for instance, falls down from a moving train, your first instinct is to take her in your arms and ask her whether she is okay. On the other hand, Lopez's fighting face exudes so much assurance that you calmly watch the action scene, knowing that no harm will come to this woman.

Echo also has Vincent D'Onofrio as Kingpin, and the actor mostly wears a sad, grieving face. This crime lord, after all, was apparently killed by Maya during the events of Hawkeye. The bullet went inside Kingpin's left eye, yet he survived. In other words, what we have here is an Avatar: The Way of Water-like problem: The absence of imagination. The question again arises, "Couldn't the writers have thought of any other villain? Why can't they just let someone die in peace?" Kingpin is resurrected in the show for emotional heft. You see, Echo wants to be a family drama in which Maya deals with her blood family and adoptive uncle. The intentions are crystal clear, but the series is so shallow that the drama never intensifies. Echo is simply a reverberating noise whose words are meaningless. Even Di'Onofrio's gloomy expressions become one-note and wearisome.

In one of the episodes, the series travels back in time to 1200 A. D. to show the Choctaw people playing a hockey-like game. This excursion does not involve intimacy or exploration. Rather, it sets up a point that helps solve a complication later. The same can be said about those visuals where a woman wakes up in a cave and the one where a woman walks with a steely gaze. Echo uses these images to create a dream sequence/hallucination/vision that strengthens the main character. When Maya's prosthetic leg is stuck on a train, she sees the mentioned images, after which her new powers are displayed through the glowing of her hands. What can you do with these magical abilities? You can heal an injured bird or send someone on a bad memory trip. Maya, without any formal training, achieves the latter task, and the logic is simply this: She is helped by the "echoes" of her ancestors. Okay. This is the kind of hokum writers cook up when they want to rush from one moment to another.

There are moments when the sound is muted so that we can see things through Maya's perspective. It's one of the many laughable stylistic choices here. By draining - and restoring - the noise, the series merely looks "cool." It never puts us into Maya's point of view. One episode opens with a square, black-and-white frame, though what it depicts is so hollow (a tokenistic, cliché-ridden gesture towards girl power) that this choice reeks of showiness.

Echo only comes alive during the action sequences. They are well-choreographed and well-executed. Cox's body moves fluidly as she jumps from one bad guy to another. But once the fight is over, the series becomes feeble. On top of that, the "drama" feels draggy, not poignant (I liked the flirty conversations between Chula [Tantoo Cardinal] and Skully [Graham Greene], but they are few and far between). What you merely get is characters making weepy faces. Echo seems too desperate. It cries for your validation. The only validation it gets is that Cox is a good actor.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times