On the second part of Marvel and Disney+’s Echo, Maya Lopez roped in her cousin Biscuits into helping her plant a bomb on a Fisk Shipping freight train. Meanwhile, word slowly spread around town about Maya’s return.
1. Alabama, 1200 AD
As with the first episode, we have another prologue showcasing one of Maya’s titular ancestors. This time it’s Lowak (Morningstar Angeline), whom we meet during a stickball match with one of the other tribes of the southeast. It was awesome to see what is presumably the Moundville Archaeological Site be recreated in such an elaborate fashion, especially as (as far as I know) the mound-building Native American cultures have never been portrayed on film before. One thing did take me out though, and that was the shot of a one-eyed, European man watching the match about 4:20 mins in: yes, Marvel love to play about with history, but this isn’t What If…?, so it was a distracting anachronism.
2. CG Train Ride
The main event sees Maya infiltrate the train while it’s in transit, and make her daring escape before it enters the tunnel, and Biscuits is unable to provide a landing zone with the family truck. During the sequence, Maya discovers her ancestral power, giving her the strength to free herself after she gets her prosthetic leg stuck. Now, as cool as it was see such an ambitious sequence on a TV show, I did zone out as a result of the obvious amount of blue or greenscreen effects work in it. I don’t doubt it was the safest way to pull off the scene, but the fun of Maya getting in touch with her inner Lara Croft sadly wore off quickly – perhaps less would’ve been more.
3. Marvel Humor
Despite being a TV-MA show, Echo is still unexpectedly comedic the way many Marvel Studios projects are, bridging the gap between them and their more morose Marvel TV cousins. This is largely in part because of Biscuits and his grandparents, Skully (Graham Greene) and Chula (Tantoo Cardinal): the scene where Skully hawks antiques to the white couple while chanting “buy the damn thing” to the beat of a traditional rhythm absolutely killed me. Similarly, the silent, Umbrella Academy-esque exchange of shock between Biscuits and Chula when she saw he had wrecked her truck is not a moment I could ever imagine unfolding during Jeph Loeb’s time on the shows.
4. It’s a Small World
Dallas Goldtooth and Jana Schmieding (both Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls) are introduced here as Chula’s fellow powwow organizers. I know I said last time regarding Devery Jacobs’s casting as Bonnie and Kahhori on What If…?, that I understand the relatively few number of Native American or First Nations actors is why there is so much overlap in the casts of Echo, Rez Dogs, Rutherford, and Resident Alien, but it was still funny seeing them here. I couldn’t help but see Schmieding and think “It’s Bev!,” her Dogs character too, partly as the MCU has conditioned us to see actors as their characters, but also because Dogs and Echo are both set in Oklahoma.
5. Maya’s Voice
During the final scene, where Henry confronts Maya over the explosion at Fisk Shipping, you can start to hear Alaqua Cox’s faint vocals. I don’t know how Cox feels about her voice, but I know for some deaf people, it’s something they intentionally avoid using: Lauren Ridloff, who played Makkari in Eternals, has explained she stopped verbalizing when she was 13 because of other people’s ignorant attitudes, something that made the character’s brief scream in horror in that movie all the more powerful. Similarly, Cox’s voice makes Maya feel all the more stronger by reminding us of her vulnerabilities, another striking aspect of what is a thoroughly remarkable performance.
