‘Echo’ Director Teases Maya & Daredevil’s ‘Transformative’ Action-Packed Fight
Preview
Echo‘s Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) is packing some serious punches when the series launches on January 9. As the first TV-MA-rated Marvel original for Disney+, the series brings Maya’s world to life with the help of some familiar faces like her estranged honorary uncle Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), a.k.a. Wilson Fisk, and his foe, Charlie Cox‘s Daredevil who makes his third appearance in the MCU since diving in wtih Spider-Man: No Way Home.
While fans may have met Maya in 2021’s Hawkeye, they’ll get a clearer picture of her involvement in Fisk’s organization and pick up where she left off after having shot the boss in retaliation for having ordered the deadly hit on her father William (Zahn McClarnon). Along the way, she’ll be kicking some serious butt, captured on camera by director Sydney Freeland who helps set the tone and style of Maya’s fight sequences, including one alongside Mr. Matt “Daredevil” Murdock.
(Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/©Marvel Studios )
“When I first came on the project and in watching Hawkeye and reading the comic books, the thing that was most interesting and fascinating to me about Maya Lopez is the fact that she was a villain,” Freeland muses. “And in the conversations with Marvel, their response was like, ‘Hey, let’s lean into that. Let’s explore that. Let’s see if we can push the envelope. Let’s go down the rabbit hole and just see where it goes.’ And that’s really what we tried to do,” she adds.
As mentioned, above, Echo is rated TV-MA, and based purely on the trailers, the violence is bloody and unforgiving. Freeland credits the “street level” vibe of Maya and the other characters she’s operating alongside in this corner of the MCU. “What’s great about this is that we don’t have these huge cosmic consequences,” Freeland shares. “It’s not the fate of the universe. It’s a much more human story in its scope and scale. But at the same time, that also meant that because she’s involved in the criminal world, we wanted to lean into those aspects of her storyline.”
“That means that in our show, people die, people bleed, people get killed. Bones break…,” Freeland teases. “That’s kind of the point is that we wanted to show that there are real-world consequences at stake here.”
Disney+/Marvel Studios
Regarding the impending fight sequence that may or may not feature Daredevil, Freeland says, “It’s one shot, it’s six minutes long, and story dictates everything.” As Freeland puts it, “Maya Lopez [enters] that scene as a teenage girl, but she [leaves] as a cold-blooded killer. And it was important for me that the audience is able to see that transformation happen in real-time.”
While Freeland wouldn’t provide specific details regarding Daredevil’s appearance (which was confirmed in a recently-released clip), she tells TV Insider, “There are a number of cameos in our series, and fans of the MCU will see characters from other films and shows that they recognize. But at the same time, you don’t have to have done your homework coming into this. People who aren’t familiar with the MCU can still come in and watch this.”
At the end of the day though, Freeland points out, “All roads lead to and from Maya Lopez. So if we were going to introduce characters that fans might be familiar with, they had to be in service of Maya Lopez and they had to be in service of her story. What we didn’t want to do was bring someone in just for the sake of bringing them in, we wanted to have a story motivation behind it.”
Tune in to see the story motivations unfold when Echo debuts on Disney+ and Hulu this January, and stay tuned for more on the Marvel series in the days ahead.
Echo, Premieres Tuesday, January 9, Disney+ and Hulu
