Viewer Log: Beast Wars ep 20

The blind leading the blind.

Last time on Beast Wars, the Maximals embraced the wild side. The Predacons raid the Maximal base and steal their rectifier coil, the part that shields the base from Energon radiation. The Maximals are forced to stay in Beast Mode and on high alert as the Predacons attack their base constantly for days. This prolonged time in beast mode plus the insomnia eventually causes the Maximals to ‘sleep prowl.’ Basically, while in Beast Mode they dream and act like they are their animal forms. The Predacons call a hunt and try to kill the Maximals in their feral state. Tigertron finds them, though, and is able to coach them through deleting the program that is causing the prowling and to get the Maximals to embrace their Beast Modes. They beat back the Predacons, and Airazor is able to steal the coil back from the deserted Predacon base. All’s well that ends well. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

The episode begin with Rattrap digging around outside the base. He discovers an Energon crystal and picks it up with a grabber. He calls Cheetor over and puts the crystal into a backpack container the cheetah is wearing. Cheetor congradulates him, saying just a few more piece that size will give them enough power to use the Quantum Generators at the base. Rattrap brags that he’s got a nose for Energon, saying he was the best miner in the Vespar system. Rhinox cuts in and points out the whole area is Energon rich, which helps. Dinobot is searching for deposits and whining about it, right up until he finds a huge deposit. Cheetor compliments him and Dinobot says he’s better at everything than Rattrap. We hear the scuttling sound of one of the Predacons just before an arrow fly at them. The arrow hits the deposit and Dinobot yells at Scorponok and Waspinator that they missed. Scorponok says guess again and the arrow starts vibrating. Rhinox Maximizes, runs over, and throws the arrow aside, but Scorponok says they’re too late. The whole deposit starts shaking. The others Maximize just as the Energon explodes. Don’t know why they’d want to do that when they’re vulnerable to Energon, but what are you going to do. The Explosion is huge, big enough that Scorponok declares nothing could have survived that blast and they revert to Beast Mode to report in.

 

A few minutes later Rhinox is the first to get up. His body is burned all over and he complains that it felt like he was hit by a squad of Predacons. He tries to do a diagnostic on himself but his internal systems aren’t responding. He’s pretty sure the blast did that. But, a worse side effect than not having the digital voice tell him what’s broken, is when he discovers his eyes have shorted out. All four of the Maximals are blind, shown by having all their eyes gray. Rhinox shouts at the others when they freak out about it to get their attention. Rhinox says the damage they sustained in the blast blinded them and that the damage will get worse over time. He says they need to go to Beast Mode to slow it down, and hopefully get repairs started. They revert but are still blind. The transformation is visibly painful as well, their bodies sparking and jittering. Dinobot swears to rip out Scorponok and Waspinator’s processors for this. Rhinox says they need to return to base and get to the repair chamber. Dinobot, still freaking out, asks how they can do that when blind, but Rhinox says there are other ways to navigate, and they have no choice. They’ve got 60 cycles (minutes) to get to a recovery chamber or the contamination will put their sparks out.

 

Scorponok and Waspinator got close enough to radio in and get yelled at by Megatron for not finding the bodies to confirm they are dead. Scorponok apologizes, blames Waspinator and they fall back to find proof they destroyed half the Maximals.

 

The Maximals make their way toward the base, walking in a line with each other’s tail grabbed to help guide. Rhinox leads, followed by Dinobot, then Cheetor and Rattrap brings up the rear. Dinobot complains but compliments Rhinox’s plan to follow the scent trail back to the base. Rhinox stops suddenly, causing a traffic jam when he hears a noise. They all freeze up trying to figure out what it is. It turns out to be an anaconda, it drops down and starts constricting Cheetor. Dinobot freaks out and slams into a tree. Rattrap is able to find Cheetor and bites the snake, but get’s launched for his trouble. The snake chases after him, probably assuming the rat is more to his taste than the cheetah. Rattrap starts panicking as the snake gets close, but Rhinox steps on it before it can grab him. He throws it aside with his horn and we hear him slam into an elephant, if the sound effects are accurate. Cheetor is badly damaged from that, so much so that Dinobot says they should leave him as he’ll only slow them down. Rhinox tells him that’s not how Maximals operate. They get Cheetor on his back and they head out.

 

Meanwhile, we learn the others are on the look out for their missing companions. Tigertron hasn’t found them in his sector and reports that to Optimus. Optimus tells him he’s setting Sentinel onto Auto and going to search from the air. He advices Tigertron to radio to Airazor if he finds them.

 

Scorponok and Waspinator have returned to the bomb site. They obviously don’t find anything besides ash. Waspinator says they must have been vaporized, but Scorponok insists there should be something left. He tells the wasp to fly higher and look for Energon trails. He Terrorizes and searches, he spies their trail and Scorponok tells him to fly ahead and find them.

 

The Maximals are making their way to the base. Rhinox smells and hears running water, making him think they’re close to one of the rivers that feeds into the base. He tells Cheetor to just hang on a little longer. Cheetor, sounding incredibly tired and depressed, says that he will.

 

At the Darksyde, Tarantulas has picked up an odd reading. It looks like walking Energon. Megatron realizes that at least one Maximal survived the ambush and is contaminated with a ton of Energon to get that reading. He orders Terrorsaur to fly out and finish them off.

 

The Maximals reach a waterfall near the base. Rattrap is able to find a long bridge and attempts to navigate across it to see if it’s safe. He makes it thanks to his nose. Unfortunately, Waspinator flies by as they attempt to cross. He laughs maniacally when he sees they’re blind. He Terrorizes and fires. Rhinox hears the shot just before it hits. The bridge is destroyed, and they all fall to the waterfall’s basin. Terrorsaur joins him and the two Predacons start searching for wreckage.

 

Thankfully, they survived and washed down stream. Too bad Rhinox isn’t Hippox, he’d be in his element in the river. They do their best to hack up the water and orientate themselves. Dinobot is sure they’re going to die here, as Waspinator isn’t dumb enough to just assume they’re dead twice on the same day. The flying Predacons find them and swerve around for an attack. Rhinox orders them to transform and prepare to fight. Dinobot complains, but Rattrap tells him to just do what he says for once. They try shoot at the Predacons as they fly by but miss, because of course they did. They start freaking out, but Rhinox tells them all to picture a targeting grid in their minds. They do so, Dinobot whines some more, and they’re able to make a mental grin. Rhinox uses his ears to get a general location and orders them to fire towards the grid space he calls out. They’re able to hit and take down Terrorsaur and then Waspinator. Everyone starts shorting out from the contamination and get stuck in stasis lock. Thankfully, Tigertron found them as they were firing and radioed Optimus. He flies in and they’re able to get everyone back to base. The other three thank Rhinox for leading them, Dinobot snidely. Rhinox think this was a good learning experience for what they’re capable of in Beast Mode. He reverts to Rhino mode and goes to smell some flowers.

 

In general, this was an okay episode. The blindness and extreme damage to their bodies lead to a unique situation where they’re all much more vulnerable than they’d otherwise be. It lead to the battle hungry Dinobot being scared witless on multiple occasions, which was odd for him. My complaint is that the ‘lesson’ by the end was for the Maximals to trust their sense in Beast Mode, a lesson they already learned last episode with not fighting their Beast Modes. And Tigertron arriving to talk them through the process felt like less of an ex machina than Rhinox randomly coming up with the targeting grid idea and that working. I’m not too worked up over it, I can believe three intelligent robots are able to work this sort of mental computing on the fly, it just annoys me a little. While technically both episodes 19 and 20 are filler in that they don’t further the plot or delve into a character more, I’d say this feels more like filler in that it’s largely a rehash. But that’s just me. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Review: The Marvels

 The Marvels explode with light.

I’ll start this The Marvels summary with a quick recap on our principal characters in case it’s been a while for you. We have Captain Carol “Marvel” Danvers. She was exposed to energy from the Tesseract and given phenomenal power. She fought for the Kree for a while before remembering who she was and then flew into space to defeat the Kree Empire. Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Carol’s BFF Maria Rambeau. She became an astronaut and agent of SWORD. She was grounded after returning from the Blip. She was sent in to investigate the Westview Hex created by a grieving Wanda Maximoff to give her a life with the late Vision in WandaVision. Traveling through the Hex’s barrier multiple times seems to have given her light based powers similar to her ‘Aunt’ Carol’s. And finally, there’s Kamala Khan, star of Ms. Marvel. This Captain Marvel fangirl received a bangle from her grandma in Pakistan. The bangle unlocked dormant powers in her, giving her the ability to cause hard light constructs. It made her a target for the Clandestine. They’re alien beings from the Noor dimension, banished to Earth due to some crime they committed. They wanted the bangle back to return home, and even killed Kamala’s great-grandma, another Clandestine, to get it. Kamala stops them, as opening a portal between dimensions would have killed people. She then returned to New Jersey to protect the last of the Clandestine, a boy her age named Kamran, from Department of Damage Control goons. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Our story begins with the image of a dying star and a large Cree Ship flying through hyperspace. Side note, still love the hexagon shaped holes in space that FTL travel creates. It’s a neat image. The Kree land on a planet and go to a well. They dredge up a casket from beneath the planet. Dar-Benn, former Accuser (Judge) of the Kree and current Supremor and the villain of our story, uses her Universal Weapon (big hammer) to crack the casket open. She digs out a golden bangle from the debris and snaps it on. She’s filled with a purple energy. She digs through the rubble more but can’t find the other bangle. She says that they were forged as a pair. Her assistant says it must be buried somewhere else. Dar-Benn asks where.

 

We cut to Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, ignoring homework to work on a fan comic of her teaming up with Captain Marvel saving New Jersey from alien invaders. Her daydreams are interrupted by her mother saying it doesn’t sound like she’s doing homework. She flops onto her bed, in her costume for some reason, and says that she’s getting on it. Her bangle starts glowing with the same purple light as Dar-Benn’s. (I assume she’s in her costume now to match the post-credit scene from her show where she was wearing it just before the twist) There’s a blinding flash.

 

We cut to earlier that day. Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel is on her ship. She’s using the Skrull memory tech as shown from Secret Invasion to review her memories in an attempt to piece together what she lost. It also gives us flash backs to Captain Marvel if you haven’t seen it in a while. Kidnapped by the Kree after gaining superpowers, forced to work as a soldier for them, rediscovers who she is, bonds with her BFF Maria and her daughter Monica, before flying into space to take the battle to the Kree. That happened 30 something years ago, FYI. She gets up and gets a call from Fury. She jokes about ignoring it but puts him on. Fury, from his SABER command ship, asks if she noticed a surge in the jump-point system. Carol says she didn’t see anything. Fury tells her they traced the surge back to MB-418 and is wondering if she’ll check it out for him. Fury says that Monica will send her more info as they get it. Carol is shocked to hear that name, but Fury reminds her she’s not the child she remembers.

 

Outside SABER’s ship, Monica is helping to make repairs. To fix a particular tricky problem she flies out on her own.

 

Carol reaches MB-418 and radios Fury that she sees something. At the same time, Fury sees Monica floating out. She’s going to towards a jump-point portal that isn’t completely closed. Monica and Carol hear each other but both try to avoid talking to each other. Carol finds a jump-point, it’s open but in a jagged way, like it’s stuck. Fury is unable to tell either of them to stop before they touch some of the energy leaking through. We get a cut shot of Carol and Monica being touched by the energy as Kamala’s bangle glows, a bright flash, and all three women swap places. Monica crashes on MB-418, Kamala floats away from the jump-point near SABER and Carol crashes into Kamala’s closet. I feel like Carol has it the weirdest, just because the room is covered in pics of her. Kamala floats towards and crashes into SABER’s viewing platform and sees Nick Fury and geeks out a little. Fury asks who the hell she is.

 

Carol is obviously a little weirded out to be in a Pakistani family’s house, almost as weirded out as Muneeba, Yusef, and Aamir Khan are to see a random white woman come from their upstairs. Carol compliments their living room, tries to fly away but instead switches with Monica. She’s back on MB-418 and in the middle of a fight. How fun. Carol beats up some guards and asks one what Dar-Benn is doing. The guard calls her Supremor and says she’s already on Tarnax. Carol says to watch and throws him. She flies out to her ship and tells Fury that the Kree are going to attack Tarnax. Fury reminds her that the Kree are going to Tarnax as part of an Armistice with the Skrull. If you didn’t watch Secret Invasion, that’s what the show led up to, the Kree reaching out to the other big concentration of Skrulls.

 

On the SABRE ship, Monica has returned and is debriefed by Fury about her switching with a girl named Kamala Khan. Moncia is confused as there’s nothing in Kamala’s, or hers, to allow for that. While this is going on, Kamala is trying to explain to her parents what happened. While the Khans all know about her powers, they seem reluctant to believe Kamala had nothing to do with that white woman in their house. Kamala is starstruck to hear Carol was in her house and completely forgets she’s in trouble because of it.

 

Carol approaches the Kree ship on Tarnax, cloaks her own ship and flies in to investigate with her Flerk Goose. Goose looks like a ginger tabby cat. On the planet side, the armistice has begun. Supremor Dar-Benn and Skrull King Dro’ge have begun negotiating. Dro’ge says that the treaty she gave him isn’t what they agreed to discuss. Dar-Benn gives us a brief history of what’s happened to the Kree since Captain Marvel. Carol, it seems, succeeded in destroying the Supreme Intelligence. It was the Supercomputer that ruled the Kree empire. The power vacuum that created lead to a massive civil war that polluted their planet, somehow mortally wounded their sun, and left their planet of Hala as a ruin. Dar-Benn promises to put t Skrull in their proper place in the Kree Empire and to help them relocate. She’d hate to have anyone planet side when she strips the atmosphere.

 

On the ship, Carol is spotted, called the “Annihilator” and goes to blast the guard, but swaps out for Kamala when she uses her powers. Kamala is obviously freaked out to be on an alien ship with an orange tabby. Goose eats some of the guards with her tentacles, which freaks her out more. She throws up a shield to protect her and Goose, and they swap with Monica. Monica uses her powers to become intangible and survive and energy blast. Kamala freaks out explaining what happened to her parents and Goose barfs up the guards it ate. Kamala tells her family to run. Carol, meanwhile, is riding a space elevator down to Earth with Fury and explaining the situation. He’s concerned that she just decided to touch glowing mysterious shit, his words, and tells her not to do that again. She causes her hand to glow and that minor use of power causes her to swap with Kamala. The Khans, meanwhile, are fighting Kree with whatever they can grab.

 

A fight on three planes of action begins the space elevator, the Khans house, and the Kree ship. Over the course of the fight, each woman swaps with the other as they use their powers, but not uniformly. Sometimes they’ll get a few bits of power use before swapping. I’m not trying to keep track of it because it’s confusing. Just know the Khans house gets wrecked. Monica is the first one to figure out that power use seems to be the key, telling Fury as he shoots the last Kree and telling her it’s a strong theory. On the Kree Ship, Carol sees a meeting going on. And Kamala helps her family clean up and keep the Kree soldiers contained. She’s obviously in massive trouble. Fury and Monica arrive at their front door.

 

As Fury and some SHIELD agents take out the Kree, Monica show Kamala some of what they’ve got on her high-tech tablet. Oh, and we get the SABER acronym, Strategic Aerospace Biophysics and Exolinguistic Response. Monica does her best to make monitoring Kamala does not seem problematic and says that they both have light based powers, which is why she thinks the switching is happening. Kamala asks what Monica’s codename is, she says she doesn’t have one, and Kamala promises they’ll workshop it. Kamala shows off her powers, causing her and Carol to switch. There’s an awkward moment where Monica and Carol stare at each other and Yussef points out they look nothing alike. Muneeba reminds him families are complicated. Fury tells Monica to fill her in and it’s awkward as hell. Monica explains that their powers plus the jump-points entangled their powers, they swap places when they use their powers at the same time. Carol realizes that’s probably not great and goes to fly off. She swaps with Kamala when she’s about two miles up. Monica is forced to fly to try to save her, which is hard due to the fact when she’s flying she’s intangible. They grab each other and Kamala makes an energy barrier around them. They swap just before crashing.

 

Monica and Kamala are held by Kree soldiers. Dar-Benn decides that the Annihilator’s appearance means they need to accelerate their plans. She snaps on the bangle and tries to blast them, but Carol flies in. They try to fight Dar-Benn, but her bangle lets her absorb Carol’s power, which isn’t great, and they swap places when they use their powers. Dar-Benn leaps out of the ship and Carol and Monica follow, Carol swinging back to grab Kamala.

 

Dar-Benn says that the Skrull have betrayed the Kree for “bringing the Annihilator” and for that she uses the bangle and her Universal Weapon to open an unstable jump-point. Carol tells Emperor Dro’ge they need to evacuate now, and he points out that they’ve nowhere to go. The Marvels help with the evacuation as best they can. They are able to help the Skrull reach their escape pods. They’re forced to leave a lot of them behind as the planet collapses quickly. Carol is blunt when Kamala questions abandoning people, saying that they need to save who they can.

 

On Carol’s ship, she sends a transmission to a friend to help the Skrull. Dro’ge blames her for what happened but is willing to take their help. It’s not like they have anywhere else to go. Her friend turns out to be Valkyrie, who is offering the Skrulls safe harbor in New Asgard. They portal away, leaving the Marvels.

 

… Oh, if it wasn’t clear, Monica has gone by Captain Marvel in the past during a time when Carol was MIA, Dead or otherwise disabled, which is why they called the movie The Marvels. She goes by Spectrum most often.

 

On Hala, the Kree take off their breathing masks and breathe clean air. Dar-Benn describes what happened when Carol flew in 30 years ago and destroyed the Supreme Intelligence. She believed she was setting the Kree free from a tyrant, but she ended up creating a massive power vacuum that led to the civil war that destroyed their planet. Dar-Benn says that she’ll bring them back to glory. Her assistant Ty-Rone tells her that she needs more power if they’re going to reignite their sun. The amount of power she’d need to channel through one band would destroy her. She’s ready to die to do that and says they’ve no time to look for the other bangle.

 

On the ship, Carol is doing some repairs when Monica joins her and helps. They catch up, Monica mentioning that she got her powers going through a witch hex and that after the Blip she and all other astronauts were grounded. It’s why she was there to begin with. She asks Carol why she never came back. Carol says that she didn’t realize what she was getting into, and things sort of snowballed after destroying the Supreme Intelligence. People needed her, and Monica rather tearfully says that they needed her. Later, Kamala comes in and Carol apologizes for speaking so harshly to her during the evacuation. They reintroduce themselves, and Kamala fangirls out for a minute. After, Kamala reveals that she thinks that Dar-Benn is making the weird jump points via the other bangle, showing off hers. Carol says that that’s a Quantum Band, an ancient artifact. Carol explains that the bands were used to make the jump-point network according to Kree Legend. Monica thinks she’s using the Quantum Band plus the Universal weapon to force energy through and make the unstable jump-points. Kamala says that she saw star charts on the ship, but can’t remember details. Carol grabs the Skrull memory bands and tells them this’ll let them watch their memories.

 

They put on the headbands and review memories. They quickly find the star chart, but things go off as the women’s memories get entangled. We see that Carol visited Maria during the Blip and learned that her friend’s cancer is back. Maria asks her to look after Goose and her house, just until Monica gets back. They pull the bands off, and Monica tells her to never do that again. Kamala, realizing that Monica’s mom died during the Blip, makes them both hug Monica. Monica explains jump-points, stable points in space time that allow FTL travel without breaking space-time. But the more points you make, the less stable space-time becomes, so if Dar-Benn keeps popping unstable holes in the universe bad things happen. They try to figure out why Dar-Benn is doing this, and more importantly where their next target is. Since the Kree Empire used to encompass about 25% of the Milky Way, that’s a big area. Kamala points out that using a jump-point is weird when bombs are an option. They realize that Dar-Benn used the jump-points to steal resources to restore Hala. She mentions they’re also suffering a drought and when Kamala says the next planet probably has water, she realizes it’ll be Aladna. It’s about 99.6% water. Carol says she hasn’t been to the planet, but says it in a weird way, making it clear to the other two she’s been their before.

 

When Kamala reaches out to her parents via the ship’s communications array, Muneeba tells her she is NOT going on a space adventure. They’re riding the space elevator back up SABER base with Fury and Goose. Her parents insisted on going with to get Kamala. They had another surge in the network while this was all going on and because of that they really can’t risk the jump to get Kamala back or the power-based swapping. Carol and Monica promise to keep Kamala safe in the meantime. Muneeba promises she’ll kill Carol if anything happens to her. Goose barfs up more things and they all note the Flerk looks ill.

 

On the ship, Kamala pesters Monica with hero names, but she’s not really for any of them, even her actual one of Spectrum. The women begin practicing with their power swapping. It’s a really good montage as they work on coordination while swapping. They also learn that it’s activating the powers that causes the swap, if they keep the power going after the switch it stays on.

 

On SABER Base, Yussef is helping a crewman consider saving for retirement. I didn’t know he was an accountant until this point. There’s a power surge and the crewman go to look. There’s a large fleshy ‘thing’ in the internal systems.

 

The Marvel’s jump to Aladna. They land on the planet side and Carol tells the other two to be cool, she’s kind of famous here, and not question what is about to happen. She says this while wearing a very weird headdress, so doubtful. As it turns out, the people of Aladna communicate exclusively through singing. I’m very disappointed because it feels like they’re going to do a Bollywood dance number, but they never go all the way. They’re led to the palace and Carol’s legal husband Prince Yan. Carol is princes of this society but she insists this is all diplomatic. They’re announced to the court as the Marvels, and Carol ends up dancing with Prince Yan. Carol somehow changes into a Captain Marvel themed dress and dances with him for a bit. As they dance, Monica asks how many chapters of the Captain Marvel fan fic is this inspiring and Kamala says so many. The number ends by Carol saying they need to talk. It’s revealed that Yan can speak, he’s bilingual, and Carol asks for some fight clothes.

 

Back at SABER, they’re examining the alien pod they found. They don’t know what it is, but maybe it’s a bioweapon. The ship detects 29 new objects. Oh no.

 

The ladies come out in their fight suits. There’s a good bit where Monica complains about these tassel things which is 100% part of her canon costume, ripping them off and saying it’s too much. Yan tells them to stay close but out of sight while they handle this. They’re going to try to keep switching to a minimum and the older members of the Marvels will go for the bangle. Dar-Benn’s ships arrive and she meets with Yan. She orders Yan to kneel, he says no, and Monica dives in to intercept her energy blast. They knock Dar-Benn away from the main fight an jump her, but she knocks Monica and Carol away with the Universal Weapon. Kamala is left alone and a little perplexed but Yan tells her to use her scarf, which works like a whip, neat.

 

Dar-Benn returns to her ship and prepares to open the jump-gate but Monicas jumps her. They knock each other around before Carol asks to be tagged in. She blocks a hammer strike and tells Dar-Benn no to, but she says it’s already too late. Kamala uses her powers in a fight and ends up switching with Carol, revealing to Dar-Benn that she has the other bangle. Monica tells her to run to the ship, Kamala does but swaps out with Carol part way through her run. Dar-Benn grabs Carol and forces her to touch the bangle, draining power from her and then blasting her away before opening the jump-gate.

 

The concussion of that attack causes a shockwave through the network, disabling the Space Elevator at SABER. And worse, half their evacuation pods also went down.

 

Monica crashes to the ground in time to see the jump-gate open and drain the water from the ocean. Monica and Kamala return to the ship and now knowing swapping isn’t an issue, Carol starts wrecking shop. Monica takes off with the ship, ordering Carol to join them, but she’s got a few Kree ships to break first. She flies in and takes over, Monica say she’ll get the jump-point ready but Carol insists she can dodge them. Carol refuses to let another planet die because of her, but Kamala activates the jump-point teleporting them away at the last second.

 

The women disembark and hash things out. Kamala apologizes for taking them away, saying she’s sure that Carol could have handled things if they weren’t entangled. Carol tells her to not be like her, and explains to the others how this started. Namely that she didn’t realize removing the Supreme Intelligence from the Kree wasn’t an auto fix. She blames herself for causing the Hala doomsday. Monica realizes that Carol never came back because she didn’t want Monica to see her as ‘the Annihilator.’ Monica says that’s not how family works, that she wants her in her life. They all make up just in time for an unstable jump-point to open. Carol says they need to find Dar-Benn. Monica says she could be anywhere, but Carol has realized she’s targeting places important to Carol, and there’s only one left.

 

SABER’s ship starts shaking with another break in the jump-point network. Fury joins some of his crew and learns that they only have 15 escape pods to evacuate 350 people. Which only feat about ten people max. Fury tells them to fill as many as they can and then come up with a plan B. The Space Elevator starts burning. Fury gets a fire extinguisher and finds Goose with a bunch of the eggs. Turns out, she’s the one laying them. This is part of the Flerken breeding cycle. Fury grabs one of the hatched kittens, and just barely misses losing his other eye to Flerken claws. The baby gobbles up a desk and is told there’s only one escape pod left… and Fury has an idea.

 

The Marvels arrive at SABER and see the place overrun with cats. Kamala hugs her family. We learn what Fury’s plan is, to use the Flerk to swallow all the crew and then stuff the cats in the escape pod. Carol points out they’re literally herding cats. Then the funniest scene in the movie happens, the crew all running from the Flerkens while an automated message tells them to let the Flerkens eat them, all played to “Moonlight” from Cats. I laughed so hard at this scene in the theater. They stuff the escape pod with Flerk kittens. Monica, meanwhile, figured out where Dur-Benn is. The Kahns and the last of the Flerkens are taking the ship down. Monica tells them Dar-Benn is at our sun.

 

At the sun, Dur-Ben opens the unstable jump-point and starts siphoning off the sun. Damn.

 

Kamala tells her family she needs to help the other Marvels. They wish her luck, Aamir having the best one, saying she needs to come back because he can’t go back to being an only child, not with these two again. Fury offers to take the Bangle to keep it from Dar-Benn, but Kamala knows they need both to seal the gate. Can they save the day? See the movie to find out.

 

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Post credit scene. Monica, lost in a whole new dimension wakes up to finding her mother, Maria, sleeping wrapped in a blanket watching over her. She’s overjoyed to see her, but it’s revealed this isn’t the Maria she knows, as Hank McCoy aka Beast walks in and explains how Binary here found her. Binary, Maria Rambeau with Marvel-like powers asks who she is.

 

The good. I think Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani have great chemistry. These two play off each other well, partially because I think Iman is as much a Brie Larson fangirl as Kamala is a Captain Marvel fangirl. Teyonah is great as Monica in this, we get that she’s justifiably angry at Carol for being gone so long but still also wants her back in her life. It leads to good drama. Samuel L. Jackson’s Fury is great, and it was fun to see Monah Kapur, Zenobia Shroff, and Saagar Shaikh back as the Kahns again. Their bits were some of the funniest in the whole MCU. I liked the villain’s plan, overall. Using technology that she doesn’t understand to try to fix her dying planet, solid plan with endless ways it can backfire. The effects are great, and I liked seeing the dangling plot thread from Ms. Marvel the show wrapped up with the other bangle being found. Really wondering how the Noor got their hands on one, but maybe Ms. Marvel season 2 will cover it. I give it credit for also being on the shorter side. They could have tried to milk this one, but the hour and a half runtime I think is perfect for the story they wanted to tell here. Also, teasing the Champions or Young Avengers by having Kamala redoing Fury recruiting Iron Man at the end of Iron Man with Hailey Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop? Brilliant.

 

The bad. I think while Dar-Benn’s plan was good, and Zawe Ashton is giving her best, the character herself is pretty bland. Generic angry zealot that’s willing to kill billions to save millions. MCU has done it before and in better ways. I was, again, disappointed that we didn’t get a Bollywood style dance number on Aladna. The set up was there, but they just didn’t go for it.  

 

So yeah, I had fun with this. I think that this one didn’t do so hot as compared to other Marvel films is unfortunate. There’s nothing glaringly bad about the movie. The thing that hurt it is, lets face it, misogyny. This movie has three women leads and the villain is also a woman. There is a loud demographic that’ll hate it and scream about it. I think a bigger factor was the lack of promotion. The whole build up to this movie was during the height of the actors and writers strikes. Really hard to sell people in a movie when everyone tied into the movie can’t talk about it due to union solidarity. Its not amazing, by any stretch, it’s fairly average on the scale of the 30+ MCU projects. The low box office is disappointing as it’ll just convince some suits higher up to not take more chances with women lead Marvel projects. Or so I fear. Hopefully that’s not how it’ll pan out, but we’ll see. So yeah, I had fun with this one, and I hope others did too. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero

Viewer Log: Echo ep 5

 We are all connected.

Last time on Echo, Fisk returned. The Kingpin of crime went out to Oklahoma to try to get Maya to join him again. He gave her a contact lens that translated his speech to ASL in real time as a peace offering/way to talk without an interpreter. Maya initially seemed tempted to go along with what he was saying, as he was offering her everything she wanted. Maya has a vision of her ancestors while talking to Henry about it and is rushed over to Chula to talk this out. It turns out that Maya is tapping into an ancestral power, that the ancestors of her line can and do reach out to the family in their greatest need and bestow power onto them. Chula also tries to apologize for cutting Maya out of her life like that, but Maya doesn’t think that’s good enough. Maya confronts Fisk, accusing him of trying to manipulate her. She realized that even the contact lens is part of the manipulation, as it’s a sign that despite how much he claims to care about her, he didn’t bother to learn ASL to talk to her himself. He tries to reason with her, showing her the hammer he used to murder his abusive father as a means of tying them together but Maya refuses to be drawn in like that again. She leaves the casino and then town on her motorcycle, causing Fisk to have one of his intense temper tantrums. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 5: Maya

 

The episode begins with a shot over looking Maya’s house and the lake beside it. A young Maya hits a woodpecker with a slingshot before running it to her mother. She lies about how it got hurt, saying it fell. Taloa doesn’t believe her and she admits to hitting it. Her mother tells her that the woodpecker used to be called a Biskinik. The Choctaw somehow communicated to the bird what they wanted and the bird would tap out messages on the trees to warn of enemies. Maya asks if she can fix it, and Taloa does, crossing her hands over the bird and touching it, using the light from her hands to heal it. We then cut to the car accident, Maya looking at her mother’s corpse as the rain falls.

 

In the present, Chula goes to se Skully. She says she’s here for business and is wondering if she can get back a sewing machine she sold him a few years back. He walks off, she thinks he’s blowing her off, but he comes back out with her machine. He says he never put it up for sale. Instead, he cleaned it,  oiled in and otherwise prepped it for to get it back some day. He says it’s free, she just needs to promise to visit him more often.

 

Chula heads into the Post Office, bumps into a kid and drops some letters. She goes to pick it up and is helped out by… Wilson Fisk. Damn it. He makes small talk with her, saying he’s in for the Powwow and is impressed by the turn out. He notes her necklace which has I Love You in ASL on it. Fisk gets her to start talking about Maya and smiles evilly.

 

Maya, meanwhile, pulls into a parking lot. Its for one of those gas stations but with a full restraint attached to it. She goes towards it, but removes and throws out her contact lens.

 

At the Powwow, Zane pulls up in a Winnebago and is rude to Biscuits before driving into the Vender parking area. Biscuits, frustrated, mentions to his dog, Billy Jack, that Chula should have arrived by now.

 

Maya has breakfast at the diner and seems conflicted. Her phone goes off, it’s Biscuits saying Chula and Bonnie should have been at the Powwow an hour ago and is wondering is she’s seen them.  She sees a woodpecker in the tree and realizes somethings up. She hops onto her cycle and races back into town. She goes into Chula’s house with gun drawn. She opens a door and finds… Taloa standing there? How odd. Taloa signs that Maya’s been really hurting lately, hasn’t she? She reaches out and her hand start glowing. She sees a vision of her ancestors and then ends up in the car along side her mother again. Taloa signs that she’s not truly alone, that their ancestors echo through her to the present day. Is it a subtle origin for her hero name? No, but it works. Taloa in the present says that it’s now time for her to let the pain go. Maya signs it’s not easy, but Taloa signs that the family is with her, all the way back to Chafa. Maya signs that all she does is bring danger and that she should leave. Taloa encourages her to stay and fight, for them, and remember her gifts. Strategy, Cunning, Ferocity and Love, all that she gained from her forebears. She steps aside and reveals the suit Chula has been working on. She says that every stitch connects her to them, and that she loves Maya before disappearing. Maya cries as she looks it over.

 

The Powwow has begun in earnest. We get shots of the various stands, the tribe int their ceremonial gear, and the start of the big dance event. Zane, meanwhile, exits the Winnebago and trucks with goons pull in as well. They’re advised to look out for Maya Lopez and consider her armed and dangerous. The parade/dance begins, and it’s revealed that Maya is in the center of the procession in her new suit. We cut to her POV and it’s eerie to see all the movement without sound other than Maya’s heartbeat. She looks around for anything unusual. Her heartbeat ends up syncing to the drum as they go. Zane looks for her from his RV with binoculars and pulls some kind of case onto the roof. Maya sees the woodpecker again and slips from the dance.

 

Henry pulls up and calls Biscuits, asking if he’s seen Maya. Biscuits says no, but a weird guy came in and brought a bunch of na hollos in. I don’t know if this means thugs or white people. Googling… ah, it’s white people. Henry tells Biscuits that it’s going to get dangerous and that he should get a weapon if he has one. Biscuits says he’s got something even better. Henry pulls a gun and heads in, as Biscuits says not today na hollos.

 

Maya enters a barn and looks around. She finds Fisk waiting for her. He has his goons bring in Chula and Bonnie and then take Maya’s gun. Forcing Bonnie to Translate, Fisk says he offered her everything and she betrayed him. Maya signs who betrayed who. Outside, Henry spots Zane on the Winnebago. Fisk yells that Maya brought this on herself. Maya tells him to let the hostages go, that they’re her people, she’s they’re legacy, not his. This of course tips Fisk off that killing them would hurt her most, just like he had her father killed. Outside, Zane pulls out a RPG. Inside, Maya gets punched across the jaw. She has a flash of her ancestors and stands, flanked by them. Her fists start glowing and she signs to Bonnie to trust her. All of their fists start glowing and the three women start beating the piss out of the guard. And outside, Biscuits rolls up in a damn monster truck and drives over the na hollos trucks, trapping them inside. Henry gets his sights on Zane and shoots him before he can fire the RPG, making the crowd think this is just part of the fireworks display.

 

Fisk tries to charge Maya, but she rushes forward and rams her hands against his chest, disabling him. When he’s on his knees, she puts her hands to his head and starts using her powers. We see a flash of adult Wilson sitting in his childhood bedroom, listening to his father beating his mother. Maya comes in and tells her to let go of his pain. She asks him to give her his pain. They break out of the trance and Fisk screams at her asking what she did. He is rushed to his truck and drives off as the police arrive to sort out what’s happening.

 

We jump back to young Maya. She asks her mom if she’ll ever see the woodpecker again and she says of course. Maya lets it fly away. In the present, Maya is sitting on her roof at night and remembering her family. The next day she gets on her motorcycle and drives off. We see her family having lunch at Chula’s, Bonnie looking sad as if she’s sure Maya isn’t going to come by. But Then she steps around the house. Chula kisses her on the nose and seems to give Maya her blessing.

 

The post credit scene shows Fisk on his private jet. He says he wants to meet with the “other heads” and stabilize the situation before things get out of control. He unmutes his TV and seems immensely interested when the new show mentions that there’s no front runner in the New York Mayoral race. Oh no.

 

Overall, I think I like Echo. The action scenes were nice, her powers tying back to Native American legend and themes of family and letting go of grief are all good. But I think it’s a little rushed. Like we went from Maya returning to town, starting her big coup attempt to Kingpin return in like a week. The shorter episode length plus one episode cut from normal just makes everything feel like it’s rushing by at breakneck speed. It feels like we covered a lot, and yet not very much. I feel like there’s an emotional discussion and reconnection with Bonnie that happened somewhere between episodes four and five that is on the cutting room floor somewhere. The series does a lot to set up that Bonnie is Maya’s person, the one she cares about most and the one she’s most desperate to protect… and yet it feels like these two do not know each other at all. I think having one more episode or a few more minutes to have them actually talk and hash things out like Maya did with Chula would have helped a lot. As it is it feels like an unresolved plot line. Also, not a huge fan of no explanation why Fisk is still alive. I assumed we weren’t going to get it, but even a line about how Maya shot him at an angle so the bullet didn’t piece his skull would have been helpful for me. That’s another thing that makes this feel… like a prologue. It almost seems like the whole story was to get Fisk somehow purified in some way of his negative memories so he can go onto try to be Mayor of New York while fighting Daredevil in Born Again. If that’s the case, I hope Maya shows up in there as well. I think Matt could use some magic absolution touch as well. Biscuits was delightful and under utilized too. Skully and Chula feel like the only characters outside of Maya that were really explored. Not sure if that’s good or bad, but something I noticed. I do like the look of Maya’s new costume, I hope to see her in it again. So that’s all I have to say about that. Have a good night everyone. 

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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero

Viewer Log: Echo ep 4

 Kingpin's back. No they will not explain how he survived a shot to the face.

Last time on Echo, Maya had to deal with the consequences of her actions. She and her Uncle Henry were kidnapped by his employee, Vickie, and his crew. He plans to sell Maya to Zane, head of the Kingpin Armory that Maya bombed in episode 2. Maya’s cousin Bonnie came to the roller rink looking for information on her, having heard that Maya was back in town. Henry tries to use ASL to warn her to get help, but she’s grabbed too. Maya frees herself using a knife in her prosthetic foot, almost escapes but is left trapped in the weightroom. Maya throws together a metal nut firing potato gun to take out her guard and escape just as Zane’s people arrive. Vickie is killed for being whiny, just before Maya shuts down the lights and blasts Rob Zombie. Maya beats the shit out of the goons, but is forced to surrender when Zane uses Bonnie as a shield. Before she can be executed, though, Zane gets a call telling him to back off. After, Henry tells Maya that the only person who could have done that is the Kingpin. Skully gets Maya her new leg and insists that she talk to her Grandma before going. Maya, conflicted, goes for a drive… only to find Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk waiting outside her house on her return. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 4: Taloa

 

We open on New York in 2008. Maya is leaving her school and stopping for ice cream. She tries to ask for some, but the vendor doesn’t understand ASL and grows frustrated weirdly fast by her. Fisk watches from his car until the guy sends Maya off. Fisk tells her to wait in the car. He grabs the vendor and beats the crap out of him. I’m not sure if he kills the guy, but Fisk cuts it close if not. Not going to lie, I did kind of miss raging psycho Kingpin from Daredevil. His white suit spattered with blood, Fisk calls for a new jacket, as he doesn’t want Maya to see him like this, only to turn to find her standing at the mouth of the alley. He asks her to not be afraid. Maya runs to the downed ice cream vendor and kicks him twice for good measure before they walk off.

 

We jump forward to probably 2018 or so, with Maya having dinner at Fisk’s apartment. He toasts to her final lesson. He tells her that they’ll still be having Sunday dinners together, but it’s time for her to strike out on her own. He tells her that her final lesson is to learn that they’re the only person they can trust. He dismisses the Sign Language interpreter, who is taken into a side hallway and executed. Wilson, you’re going to run out of minions if you keep executing people willy nilly.

 

After the opening credits we return to Maya facing off against Fisk outside her house. Goons arrive and grab her before she can resist. They force her eye open for Fisk to stick something into it. What is it? An Augmented Reality contact lens. The lens is able to detect what Fisk is saying and translate it into ASL via holograms. He has one too, to translate her ASL to verbal sound for him. He asks to talk. He says that he thought it was important they could talk with no go-between. She thought he was dead, but he’s not elaborating on that, and says that he thought that they could have one of their Sunday dinners and talk.

 

They go inside. Fisk says that he’s not angry with her, ya know for shooting him in the face. He thinks that she might be happy to see him. She insists she wishes he was dead, but Fisk says her face said otherwise. He says he was hurt that she was so ready to believe the worst in him. He claims to still care about her and that he can’t stand for her to get hurt. Maya signs that she’ll open the wine. She pours the bottle out while he looks at the old family photo. They sit down, she gives him a Dr. Pepper and tells him she poured the wine down the drain when asked. He pulls out cookies from her favorite restaurant as a peace offering and she doesn’t back away. He says he has a proposition for her. He says he’ll give her everything she wants, if she just comes back to New York with him. He tells her he’ll be at the Choctaw Casino until Sunday and tells her to think about it.

 

Maya goes to Henry’s rink and tells him of Kingpin’s offer, saying he promised to make her Queenpin. Henry asks her if she’s that stupid. She gets defensive, but Henry tells her it’s because he knows she COULD do it that scares him. Henry tells her that he’s 45 and alone because Kingpin killed everyone close to him. He says that after William died he tried to get out, but Fisk threatened to kill him. So, he came back home and kept doing Fisk’s dirty work to keep himself safe. He doesn’t want her to become him. Maya points out that he left her alone in New York, to which he admits was a shitty move.

 

We shift over to the Choctaw Nation Powwow, the festival that Chula was helping to set up a few episodes back. Chula arrives at the Powwow and stops to help someone set up her booth. Chula suddenly has a vision, as does Maya at the Rink. They see a pregnant woman prepare to give birth in the woods, along with the other images we’ve seen so far, Chafa and her people in the cave, Lowak winning her lacrosse game, an Tuklo with her guns.

 

Henry rushes a catatonic Maya to Chula’s house. She comes out of it as he parks, Henry telling her to talk with her grandma to figure out what is going on. Maya gets out and walks over to Chula. Chula doesn’t say or sign anything, just gestures Maya to follow her inside. Chula offers her a drink, but Maya asks that they stop pretending everything is normal. Chula agrees, sits down, and asks what Henry thought was so important. Maya explains about her visions, and how they seem to be getting more intense. She describes her visions, and Chula claims that those are the same visions that she had while she was in labor with Taloa. She explains that there was a complication with her pregnancy and that the doctors said that it was in ‘gods hands’ as to what would happen to them. She says that her family took her from the hospital to a midwife in the forest. Chula gave birth and saw visions of the cave while she did. She said that the ancestors have an ability to know when they’re truly needed. They came to her and tried to help her. She was able to give birth and says that Taloa came into this world to heal others. She claims that there’s an unbreakable connection between mother and daughter and when Taloa died something in her broke. Maya says that Chula disowned her, but Chula says that she didn’t disown her but her father. Obviously, that isn’t a good enough answer to Maya, who says that all she heard growing up is how Chula broke up their family. Chula says she was angry. She claims that the ancestors are reaching out to them when they need them most. Maya says that Chula chose herself when she needed her most and storms off. Once alone, Chula goes down into her garage and looks at a vest she’d been working on at some point and started crying.

 

While this is going on, Biscuits is shown to a junkyard by his friend and sets out to find parts to fix Chula’s car. Maya is driving through town, and Henry is making repairs to his rink. Chula starts working on the vest again. Maya heads to the Casino, her gun drawn. She finds Kingpin waiting for her. He seems nonplussed by the gun in his face. Fisk claims that he always loved her like a daughter, and that there was a time when they relied on each other. When he asks her if she remembers, she signs that her memories are a lie, a lie that turned a monster into a hero. He claims she always knew what she was a part of. Maya, not an idiot, says that now she sees that he was using her the whole time. Even a gift like her contact lens is a sign of that. Why? It’s proof he didn’t care enough to actually learn ASL for her. He shouts that he was there for her but then tries to compose himself. He says that he failed her like his father failed him. He shows her the hammer he used to murder his father, saying that it reminded him of where he came from and what he had to do to get here. He says that he killed his father to be free, to move forward in his life. He gives her the hammer and tells her to free herself and him. Damn. Maya puts the hammer down. Fisk claims that they’ve come full circle and asks her to come home in the morning.

 

Maya returns to her house and looks out over the lake. She remembers Fisk, and all the things she’s done in her life for him and against him, her family, and friends, all that jazz. We see her race away from Tamaha. Fisk on his jet gets a call from one of his goons, saying they tailed her, but she’s gone. Once alone he has a tantrum. Classic Fisk.

 

This was an interesting penultimate episode. Seeing Fisk and Maya interact has always been interesting, but post shooting him there’s a tension to their chats now. I don’t think the show has necessarily done a good job as to explaining why Fisk wants Maya back. On the one hand, this might suggest that he genuinely cares about her and that he has no ulterior motive to wanting this surrogate daughter back. On the other, there is no incarnation of Wilson Grant Fisk that I can believe doesn’t have ulterior motives. So that makes this feel like weak storytelling. I did like the plot point about the contact lens that interprets sign language, in both how that seems like a great gift, but also Maya being smart enough to realize that it highlights a key disfunction in their relationship. Namely, that despite how much Fisk claims to care about her, he’s never bothered learning how to communicate with her, something that literally every other person in her life was willing to do. It’s a poison relationship, plain and simple. The flashback scene with the ice cream man and Fisk beating the guy to a pulp for the ultimately minor offense of being mean to a deaf girl. Is it bad? Yes. Did he deserve to be beaten to a pulp for it? I’m going to say no. It does a good job of showing why Maya was so devoted to Fisk for so long and for her ability to ignore the red flags about him and her father’s death. It’s hard recognizing your heroes as monsters. I liked the explanation that Chula gave for their power here, and how it’s a connection to their ancestors that manifest in a time of need. And how that explanation is absolutely not good enough for Maya to forgive her for not being there for her. The scene with her working on that vest suggests she’s going to be finishing up Maya’s Echo costume for her, which should help a bit more. And that’s all I have to say about that. See you next time. 

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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero

Viewer Log: Echo ep 3

 Fight on a roller rink.

Last time on Echo, Maya began her plan. She wants to disrupt and take over Fisk’s criminal empire now that he’s supposedly dead. And to help her out she’s got Biscuits, her good natured but bumbling cousin. She uses him to get materials and then they take Chula’s truck to a bridge over train tracks. Maya leaps onto it and makes Biscuits chase after her as her getaway driver. She gets into the train car she wants, one owned by Fisk, and leaves something. As she tries to escape, her prosthetic leg gets caught in the connector between train cars. It’s mangled badly, but she’s able to tap into some kind of inner strength, shown by visions of her ancestors, to free herself. She’s able to leap on to the Truck, but also busts it up too. While she goes to Skully to get a new leg,

 

Ep 3: Tuklo

 

The episode begins with another flashback to, assumedly, Maya’s ancestors. This being her 1800s era Great-Grandma/Aunt Tuklo. Through little dialogue cards like in early films, we learn that in that time the Native nations had a lot of criminals infesting their lands and they decided to form their own policing force to capture them, the Light Horsemen. We’re shown Tuklo practicing her marksmenship under her Light Horseman father. She’s a great shot but when she says she wants to join them, he tells her no girls allowed, as women are ‘life givers’ and men are ‘life takers.’ She rides off in frustration. She braids her hair like the Choctaw warriors do and say that she’ll be a Light Horsemen regardless of what others say. A group of Light Horsemen including her dad find a camp of criminals and prepare to take them in. IT’s a trap, unfortunately, and a shootout begins. Tuklo has a vision of Chafa in her cave in a swirling pattern in the river and knows her father is in danger. She arrives just in time and helps them take the criminals out.

 

In the present. Chula stopped by Skully’s shop before hours. He buzzes her in and tries to flirt but she’s not interested right now. When she says that she knows Maya is back he drops the flirting and brings her back into his office. She shows him the bill that Biscuits got to fix her truck, says that Maya has too much of her father in her and as such has brought trouble to town. Skully tells her that she doesn’t know that, that she barely knows Maya now. Chula says that he couldn’t know her much better if he also hasn’t seen her in 20 years, and deduces that Maya has been to see him from the guilty look. When asked, he says he can’t tell her about Maya’s business. Skully points out that grandmother and granddaughter are exactly alike, which is true, but Chula denies it and says she has nothing to say to Maya. Skully says that maybe she shouldn’t talk and instead listen for once, to which she storms off.

 

Meanwhile, Vickie is on the phone with Zane, the foreman of Fisk’s armory that just barely avoided a fiery death last episode. He’s going to Maya’s house to confirm she’s there in order to get paid his bounty for the information. Zane tells him that they’re still a few hours out and that he needs to have Maya ready when they arrive.

 

Maya, waking by the lake near her house, has a vision of Chafa and Tuklo warning her about something just as two goons jump her and knock her out with a chloroform rag. Kind of a crappy Spider Sense she’s got there, if the vision distracts you from the danger. She wakes up dangling over the skating floor of her uncle’s rink. She wriggles the foot of her prosthetic free, the shift in weight being enough to make her drop. Vickie and two of his associates argue over what to do, but we can’t understand them right now as Maya is freaking out too much to read their lips, but Vickie shouts something to get them to shut up and they grab her and handcuff her to a workout bench in bac. We see that Henry has also been captured and tied up on the floor. One of the goons is left to look after Maya as Vickie goes out front to meet Zane.

 

Bonnie, clearly looking for more people that might know where Maya is, stops by the rink. It’s locked, which weirds her out and she goes around back to the rear entrance. That is unlocked, though, so she can get in. Vickie lets Henry loose to try to get rid of her. Henry gives her a bullshit story about being audited by the IRS and that he’s swimming in paperwork so he can’t talk. With the hand he has out of sight of Vickie he quickly signs and SOS to Bonnie. She leaves and Henry tries to convince Vickie no one else is coming and that was an accident. Bonnie goes to radio dispatch but is caught and brought into the weightroom with Maya. Quick, Kahhori, use your superspeed to escape! Bonnie is clearly upset to see her. Bonnie drags her detached prosthetic foot to herself and pulls out a hidden blade. She cuts herself and then Bonnie free. Maya uses a mirror to confirm the guards are distracted and tries to find a way out. Bonnie isn’t done talking though and demands to know why Maya cut her off. Maya signs that they drifted apart, but Bonnie isn’t accepting that. She says that she never got a text or email back from Maya after William died and she’s beyond hurt Maya doesn’t seem to care.

 

Outside, Henry tries to convince Vickie to let him go. He says he’ll smooth things over with Maya and then Vickie can have time to run away and not get hurt. Vickie isn’t concerned, saying Maya brought it on herself, and reveals that he called ‘someone.’ He says that Henry left the bounty up for grabs, so he’s grabbing it. His goons calls Vickie and they got to check it out. Bonnie and Maya try to act like they’re still caught, but Maya grabs Vickie’s phone when he drops it to try to get info. There’s a scuffle, with Bonnie offering to ‘tell’ Maya what to do. They quickly sign to each other, Maya saying she’s going to punch her. She does and then starts kicking the other’s asses in the confusion. They grab bonnie and fall back. Thank god they need her alive. Vickie gets the text that Zane arrived. Vickie and one goon goi to meet him, dragging Bonnie along with them. Maya grabs a few tools.

 

Vickie meet with Zane. Zane tells him that his information better be good or he’s going to kill him. Vickie tries to get the money but Zane isn’t letting him try to negotiate. They fan out to look for her. Maya, meanwhile, builds something out of a skate and other parts. She makes a sot of potato gun, but it fires bolts. She blows out the light and draws the goon in. Maya shoots her with a few more bolts, knocking her out. Zane finds Herny and asks how he got tied up in this. He asks where Maya is, but Vickie says he won’t tell him until he gets the money. They get a text from Maya that she took their friend out. The other goon goes to check on Maya. Vickie demands he get his money, Zane, tired of this, kills him. The other goon ran for the parking lot. Zane asks where Maya is, and then the lights go off and Dragula by Rob Zombie starts playing. Maya is very theatrical. They try to shut it down from the DJ station, it doesn’t work, so they go for the breaker. Maya ambushes them and starts taking them out left and right. It’s brilliant of her to use the loud music to hide her own movements from them. She slams a guy through a wall and onto the skate floor. She starts shooting goons, using skills that mirror Tuklo’s sharpshooting. They grab Henry to use as a human shield but Maya doesn’t stop fighting. She drops the second to last goon but then sees Zane holding Bonnie.

 

Maya and Henry are taken to the middle of the skate floor. Zane is about to excute t hem but then gets a call. He’s clearly told to back off, as he orders his men back. They leave the trio alone and confused. Maya tries to get Bonnie to leave but she wants to wait for the cops. Maya signs no cops and that she needs her to go. She promises that she’ll handle this and when it’s done, she’ll get in touch. Bonnie gets in the truck and drives off.

 

In Henry’s office, he asks what happened. Henry is furious and asks if she meant being kidnapped by the guy who cleans his skates or almost dying. Maya asks who could have called him off, and Henry says there’s only one guy. Maya says she shot Kingpin in the face. Henry says that if Maya’s offer still stands, he’s willing to help her in this.

 

Later, Maya is cleaning one of the guns she stole from the goons when Skully stops by. He brings out her new part for her prosthetic, a shin. She’s a little disappointed in the foot, as Skully included some extra details like Choctaw designs. He says that she’s in New York and represents their people. She puts on the new leg. Skully says that he doesn’t butt into family stuff, especially since he and Chula broke up, but asks why she hasn’t seen her. Maya says Chula doesn’t want to see her. Skully says her heart broke when Maya left, and as proof points to the fact Chula left the house like a museum. Maya still doesn’t think she’ll see her. Skully tells her that he guesses everyone has things that they wish were different.

 

Maya gets on her motorcycle and starts riding. We see Chula and Biscuits in a church as she does. The shots imply that she’s leaving town, but we all know she’s going to Chula’s. She stops outside the house and prepares to go inside, but when she turns around, there’s Fisk, a patch over his eye. The credits roll. Damn.

 

This was a good fight heavy episode. Doing it mostly in Henry’s roller rink was a good call to give Maya a small area that she knew well enough to control. I wasn’t exactly shocked that she had a knife hidden in her fake foot, but I did nod when she busted that out. Maya is a practical woman, of course she’d store weapons in something she’s forced to lug around. I liked that Bonnie insisted on talking with Maya once they were free. The baggage between the two of them is obvious, as Bonnie feels abandoned by her cousin and Maya is obviously trying to keep her at arm’s length for her safety. It’s an old song and dance but it’s played well. I liked how the members of Maya’s family use the niche skill of ASL to pass messages. Henry using one handed signing to warn Bonnie, and Bonnie and Maya using it to throw together a plan in a few seconds were great. It’s funny how laughably bad Vickie’s plan was here. “I’m just going to pester some actual gangsters until they give me my money.” Like, bro, at least take a picture of a captured Maya so they knew you actually had her at some point. They might not have shot you in the spin if you did. That fight scene was brutal. Like I said, using a very loud, booming sound to disorientate the gang and to hide her own movements was brilliant. One of those ‘turn a weakness into a strength’ moments, like whenever Daredevil blows out lights to fight enemies in the dark. Another well worn but executed well plot point, the ‘relative adamantly states they’re nothing like a younger/older relation that is acting just like them.” Chula can’t see it, but, yeah, Maya is her to a T. She’s just pushing the family away to protect them instead of pulling them in close. With two episodes left, I do hope they can communicate and get to a better place together. That’s all I have to say about that. Good night everyone. 

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Viewer Log: Echo ep 2

 Maya's da bomb.

Last time on Echo, we got a brief history of Maya Lopez. Only daughter of William and Taloa Lopez, she and her father moved to New York after her mother was killed in a car crash. William worked for Wilson Fisk and did his best to train Maya to survive in a cruel world. He’s ultimately killed by Ronin while Clint was in rage mode. She’s recruited by Fisk to work for him to vent her anger after the incident. She proved herself by fighting off Daredevil once. She learned from Clint that Fisk wanted her father dead and she ultimately got revenge by shooting him in the eye. Six months later she’d been shot in a fight and traveled back to Oklahoma for some off the books medical care. She avoids her cousin Bonnie but is discovered by her other cousin Biscuits at her old house. She goes to her Uncle Henry and gets patched up. After, she tries to get Henry to work with her on a plan to topple Fisk’s empire, but he refuses to bring a gang war to Oklahoma. And just before the credits roll, we get confirmation that Fisk survived the shot but is in intensive care. Neat. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 2: Lowak

 

The episode opens with a group of Choctaw natives rowing down a river in 1200 AD Alabama. They’ve have thriving community, a large, steeped pyramid and a la cross court. I get just enough context that the red team is winning so the blue team pulls in their ace player. One of the red players, a woman named Lowak, is pissed at this, but her teammate reminds her to keep her head in the game as the losers of this match will be banished. Seems like a bad way to perform a competitive sport, not going to lie. Blue teams tie it all up, it comes down to one last play. When all the players start fighting over the ball, Lowak has a vision of Chafa’s origin from the last episode before she gets the ball and leaps over the other players and gets the winning point.

 

At her house, Maya is woken up from a dead sleep by a flashing light. The deaf and hearing impaired often use flashing lights to give them alters to things that the rest of us would just listen for. The light in question is labeled door, and a moment later she gets a text from Biscuits telling her he brought some supplies for her. She meets him by the door, but instead of taking the supplies he brought, she looks over his truck. She asks him if he ever takes the truck off roading, but he quickly signs back that he’d never do that as his grandma would killing him. She asks if he could do some for her in town, when he asks if what she needs is illegal, she just hands him the money and walks off. I only note now that the food is in a postal crate. It’s against the law for them to have that… but not going to lie, they would make very good crates for carrying stuff.

 

We cut over to Skully at his pawn shop trying to fleece some white people into buying a pot because they think it has cultural significance to the Choctaw. They seem somewhat into his little vase, but say their new house is more southwestern-y and ask if he has Navajo rugs. You ask… a Choctaw man… if he has art… from another tribe? Freaking white people. Skully, also annoyed by this starts telling them to go to hell, but Biscuits cuts in, saying anything they buy from another local shop would be stuff shipped in from Madripoor. If they buy from his grandpa they’re getting authentic stuff. If Madripoor sounds familiar, Falcon and Bucky ended going there during their show, it’s a fictional city analogue with Singapore. Skully signs for him to go away, but Biscuits sales pitch gets them to buy the pot and some other nicknacks. Biscuits starts grabbing gear for Maya, getting an incredibly small camera and some other wiring from his grandpa before heading out.

 

We cut over to Chula who is helping a few other people planning for some kind of upcoming festival. Things are pleasant enough, we hear that Chula used to have a booth to sell her wares at this thing but hasn’t had one in a few years, but then the bomb drops. One of them mentions that Chula is probably busy with Maya back in town, and that they saw her at the skating rink with Henry. Chula looks.. pissed.

 

At the house, Biscuits pulls up and Maya signs they’re going for a ride. He’s initially hesitant, saying that he has dinner at 7 and that he really shouldn’t be driving the truck without letting his grandma know but Maya isn’t taking no for an answer. She hops in and they go.

 

At the rink, we catch Vicki trying to get Henry to trust him more and give him more important jobs in their… enterprise, when Chula arrives. She says they need to talk. They get a booth and Chula asks what Maya wants in town. He says she doesn’t want to know, but it’s not anything he could help her with. She says that she hopes Maya isn’t into anything too underhanded here, as Biscuits is impressionable, but Henry tells her that he thinks Maya is just passing through. She says that she hopes Bonnie doesn’t find out. She goes to leave and tells Henry to do his best to convince Maya to stick to her plan and just pass through town without trouble.

 

Maya and Biscuits arrive at a bridge, Biscuits asks what they’re doing here, and she signs she needs one more thing. She sets up a harness and rope and takes Biscuits phone to check sync it with hers. She signs that the nearly full moon should help him see her, before leaping off the bridge and landing on a train. He rushes back to the truck to follow the train. Maya climbs across the top of the cars, looking around and spotting some goons guarding a particular car. She rushes to them, leaping over the first guard to get to the other side of the car. She flips down and under car, using her gear to drill into the bottom of the car and stick her mini camera into it. She spots something and then starts cutting. Biscuits is racing to keep up, ignoring a call from his grandma as he’s on a mission. A decision I’m sure he’s going to regret later. Maya cuts into the car and starts looking around. She opens the case and cuts something out of it. Meanwhile, Biscuits shifts to off roading to keep up with the train. Maya runs and tries to escape but misses a jump and gets her prosthetic stuck in the connections between cars. She has a vision of Lowak and then Chafa before her hands start glowing and she’s able to push the cars apart to get her leg free. Just in time to see that her tracker is now offline. Maya climbs to the caboose of the train and tries to slow it down with a bit of metal. Biscuits catches up to her but they’re nearing a tunnel. Maya leaps from the back of the train and onto the truck, just clipping the top of the windshield with her foot. Biscuits is obviously freaking out, telling Maya that whatever she stole better be worth it. She signs she didn’t steal anything and looks rather smug about it.

 

The car arrives at New York at a station run by a guy named Zane. He tells his men to check out the new shipment as he heads out. He’s just out of the door as the case is opened. This pulls a latch on a trigger Maya left in it, causing chemicals to mix and then a massive bomb to go off. The whole factory area they’re in goes up. Damn Maya. Three phones start going off at Henry’s place, he answers and looks upset. He arrives at Fisk Shipping that he apparently runs. His assistants tell him they got the call same as him about 20 minutes ago, everything about the shipment went through as it should, and they’ve got nothing to explain why the car D-9X blew. Henry clearly perks up at this name but tells his people to ignore that and just keep their heads down and mouths shut. He texts Maya that they need to talk now.

 

Maya arrives at Skully’s shop and shows him her mangled right prosthetic. She asks him to if he can fix it and doesn’t go into detail about how it was broken. She asks him to fix it up a specific way using a phone pick and he gets to work. He signs to her that he missed her, and that 20-years is too long. He goes to get to work and tells her if someone comes in to holler for him. He gets to work fixing the foot as Maya texts back to Henry that they hit her, so she hits back. Henry text that she can’t fight Fisk alone, and she says they don’t have an armory now. Skully gives her a prosthetic, saying that this one is temporary while he works on the real replacement. Maya starts limping away, but sees a statue of Chafa. He explains who the statue is of and that Maya’s grandmother could trace their family back to Chafa herself. He says that Chafa and their ancestors look out for family in times of need. He says that her grandma knows all that stuff, and she should ask her.

 

We see Chula on her mail route. Okay, that explains the truck with the driver’s side on the right and the mail crate. Also, she’s a rural carrier since she doesn’t have a LLV, so I don’t know why she’d have a postal shirt on, rural carriers aren’t required to wear a uniform.  Her neighbor asks if she got a new car. Chula says Biscuits has her truck… just in time to see Biscuits drive by, the glass cracked, the bumper dragging and Biscuits looking apologetic. Whoops. Biscuits pulls into an auto shop. He uses the local CB radio to try to sell his PlayStation 4 to get money to pay for the truck repairs. He mentions that he needs it for the truck, and who should hear him over the CB but Bonnie. She radios him and he lies about hat happened to it. He mentions Maya in his quick lie, and quickly hangs up on her.

 

 

Maya sits on her roof and eats breakfast as Henry drives up. Fun fact for you, in Sign Language, the bigger the gesture’s one makes while signing indicates volume. My dad told me once he saw a deaf couple arguing at a wedding. He had no idea what they were signing, but from how BIG they were gesturing he could tell they were doing the equivalent of yelling at each other. That’s what Henry was signing at Maya, asking if she realizes what she did. She leaps down and signs that she gave him a chance to be on her side, he said no, so she’s moving forward. He signs that she started a war, chaos in their town. Maya signs that she controls when things start and end, so it’s not chaos. Henry accuses her of acting like Fisk. Henry says he needs to clean up her mess and tells her to lay low while he does. He gets back in his truck. She signs one last chastisement, saying that this’ll get people she cares about hurt. Maya asks who could that possibly be. She gets a text from Bonnie demanding to know if she’s in town and why she didn’t tell her. Maya has flashes of more ancestors as she pulls out a gun and shoots at her old swing set.

 

This was a good follow up to last episode. We got more interactions between Maya and the rest of her estranged family. Looks like Biscuits, Bonnie and Skully missed her, whereas Chula has more or less written her off after all these years. I’m not saying she didn’t also miss her, but I definitely got the vibe Chula wants her out of town ASAP before she starts messing with the rest of the family’s lives. Fun fact, adult Bonnie is played by Devery Jacobs. She’s the same woman that voice Kahhori in What If…? season 2. We didn’t get much of her, but after finding out that Maya’s in town and the repeated hints that she’s still Maya’s most important person that she’ll be bigger in the plot going forward. Cody Lightning as Biscuits was fun too. He’s got this great “trusting to the point of being stupid” vibe to him. Case in point, going with Maya on an unspecified errand to be her get away driver. Dude should have questioned things the entire time. I laughed quite a bit in Graham Greene’s Skully scene with the white people. Dude very clearly is so tired of playing to Native American Stereotypes to sell his stuff to WASPy tourists. Tantoo Cardinal is great as Chula as well. She’s a tired old mama bear, but not so tired as to be down and out, if you know what I mean. As I said, she seems to have emotionally cut herself off from Maya, so it’ll be interesting to see if and how that fence is mended. And Maya’s plan… I can’t help but think that setting a bomb to blow up in Fisk’s face is a… drastic message to throw at someone. Granted, setting it up so it wouldn’t go off until opened was smart. The Kingpin’s men are the sort to not want to touch anything until it gets to its proper destination, if only to avoid looking like they’re skimming off the top. And while destroying his armory is flashy, I can’t help but think Wilson or whoever is running the business while he recovers is going to hit back harder. OH, and Maya’s powers seem neat. They seem pretty nebulous right now, but it looks like she gets a boost of strength when in danger. Can’t wait to see how this develops. Good night, everyone.

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Viewer Log: Echo ep 1

 A brief history of Echo. No, not the nymph, the scary deaf biker lady.

Let’s talk about Echo. Brief recap, we first met Maya Lopez while she lead a street gang, the Tracksuit Mafia, working for Kingpin in Hawkeye. She has a long history with Wilson Fist, as the crime lord was her godfather and later guardian after her father’s mysterious death. Classic Hawkeye Clint Barton and Future Hawkeye Kate Bishop crossed paths with the Tracksuits while trying to recover Clint’s Ronan costume and a Rolex of some importance, stuff he’d lost track of post-Endgame battle. They battled with the Tracksuits and Maya on several occasions, ultimately leading to a showdown at a Christmas party. Over the course of the show it is revealed to Maya that her father had in fact been murdered by Fisk, so she ends up tracking him down and attacking him while the Hawkeyes battled the Tracksuits and a vengeful Yelena Romanoff. The last we see of her is her taking a shot at Kingpin. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 1: Chafa

 

I’m going to try to remain consistent and say that Maya is ‘signing’ rather than ‘saying’ anything, as the character is deaf and communicates exclusively through sign language. I beg your forgiveness if I miss one and say that she ‘says’ something.

 

We open with a group of people rising out of some kind of underwater lake. They drink water from a central spring, and it causes the first woman’s skin to glow, drawing a bird to her. Their ceremony is interrupted by a distant rumble and a quake beginning. Their underground sanctum begins to crumble, the lot of them being buried. There’s a flash of light and the people are outside in the open air. The unusual bronze of their skin flakes off, revealing Native features, the woman that drank from the spring kept a spiral pattern mark on her palms. This is revealed to be the mythological origin of the Choctaw Nation, the titular Chafa being their first leader. This is all revealed to be a story being told after bedtime between Maya Lopez and her cousin Bonnie. Maya signs that Bonnie is her sister, Bonnie says they’re cousins, but Maya insists they’re closer than that. We quickly cut to outside the tent where they’re playing in to see Maya’s parents and her grandma, Chula, and her boyfriend Skully. Later, as they leave, Chula mentions that “Biscuits” will be upset he missed the campout, but Skully thinks he’ll get over it. Chula sees a cardinal land on a post as they go and it’s clear that’s an ominous sign.

 

Back in the house, William Lopez asks his wife Taloa if they’ll stay in the tent all night despite the rain. She signs back that she thinks it’ll be five minutes or less before they come back. And they run in a second later. Maya asks for Hot Chocolate, Taloa says they’re out, but she’ll run to the store to get some, with Maya tagging along to get the right kind. Cutting back to Chula and Skully, she’s clearly agitated about something. Skully asks if the ‘ancestors are whispering’ in her ear, she doesn’t respond. Over with the Lopez’s, Taloa realizes that her breaks aren’t working right before they get hit by a truck at the intersection she couldn’t stop for. Taloa is killed and Maya is obviously traumatized and lost her right leg from the knee up.

 

We jump to Maya at the hospital. Skully and Chula join William. He tells them that he hasn’t told Maya yet what happened to her mom. He says he found out who cut their breaks and they’ve been handled. Chula asks if he thinks that makes it better, to which he angrily says it makes him feel better. Chula angrily says that she begged Taloa to not marry William, saying those ‘Lopez boys are no good.’ Skully tries to get her to leave, but she says it’s time for William to go. He says that Henry got him a job, in New York and when he asks if that’s far enough, Chula says no. Skully says that she’s hurting and William says they all are. He goes in to see Maya. She gives him a picture for Bonnie and signs she misses everyone. He says that they miss her too. Maya signs she blames herself for her mom getting hurt and asks if she’s okay. William says and signs no to her blaming herself, and then obviously has to explain what happened. Later, he gets her into his car as Bonnie and Chula watch them go. Maya signs to them to ask if Bonnie can come too, but obviously she can’t.

 

We jump to William and Maya in New York. She has trouble in school, William does her best to encourage her, and gets her into Marital Arts to protect herself. At one point she sees her father making a handoff to someone else in a tracksuit before being greeted by her Kingpin Godfather. She goes to spar and then we flash forward to an adult Maya kicking MMA opponent’s ass. After that she rides her motorcycle to her dad’s auto shop in time to see Clint in his Ronin gear killing everyone. She finds her dad after he’d been stabbed and sits with him until he dies. He leaves a bloody handprint across her face. (This is a callback to her comic counterpart, a part of her costume is a paint handprint on her face). She sees her father buried, gets a text from Bonnie telling her she doesn’t have to do this alone, but she seems to ignore that. We jump to Maya trying to steal a motorcycle as the cops arrive to try to stop her. She revs one of them, sending the motorcycle racing forward and hitting a car. She’s nearly arrested but is pulled out by Wilson Fisk’s intervention. Via an interpreter they talk, Fisk telling Maya that she’s not alone and that he lost his father too. He offers to help her release her rage in a more constructive way, via a job. He tells her to take her pain and make it into something useful.

 

Later, Maya arrives at a bar and meets with her… handlers, I guess, Davy and Edgar. They go into a meeting. The two dudes get frisked no problem, but the security guard gets handsy with Maya, who grabs him and pins against a wall to punish him. They go in, the two men telling Maya that they’re going in to kill some guys that are trying to muscle in on Fisk’s territory. With help from a plant, they break in and start killing and fighting with the interlopers. There’s a really well done bit where we’re shown how different the fighting seems without sound. Maya get’s tackled, wrestles with a guy for a bit before snapping his neck. After that she goes back into the main room and starts beating guys left and right. She seems to favor kicking with her right leg, which is kind of terrifying when you remember it’s a metal prosthetic. Davy congradulates her as they take out the last of them, just in time for Daredevil to arrive and start beating them up. She faces off against Murdock and the two fight. She puts up a good fight against Daredevil, but he seems to be the better fighter. Edgar runs in to help her out, she escapes and goes for a shotgun. Daredevil chases after her and they tussle some more. Eventually she gets hold of a gun, but Daredevil vanishes in the confusion.

 

At his penthouse, Kingpin congradulates her, saying none of his men have done half as well against Daredevil before.  He asks if she found the job useful, she signs it was, and he welcome her into his ‘family.’ We then get a highlight reel of her training, scenes from Hawkeye, her fight with Ronin the lot. Fisk tells her that he’s devoting his resources to finding her father’s killer. She signs that he’s her’s when they find him and Fisk agrees. Ronin unmasks himself to her and reveals that Fisk wanted her father dead. We jump to Wilson making a run for it when Maya tracks him down. He tries to say they’re family but she pulls a gun on him. She shoots him and we hear a thud.

 

Five months later, Maya drives out to a truck stop. She hides between a pair of semi-trailers and reveals she’d been shot recently and she’s bleeding. She redoes her bandage before continuing. She drives through the day and night until she hits the Oklahoma Native Reservation. Blood loss and exhaustion almost has her hit the back of truck but she swerves at the last second. She arrives at Bonnie’s childhood home and dismounts. She grabs the old hide-a-key and opens the door. Inside she does some emergency medical treatment, stitching her wound close. She falls asleep on the couch and has a weird vision of various people, including Chafa. She wakes up and looks at an old photo of herself and her family. She hears someone outside and goes to investigate. Turns out it’s Biscuits, the childhood friend and cousin we didn’t get to see before. He seems overjoyed to see her, hugging her and signing that she looks the same even after 20 years. He asks how long she’s in town, and she says it won’t be long. He goes to show her around the property. She signs that she wants to keep this quite for now and he agrees.

 

She rides into town and finds Bonnie. She watches her cousin from a distance playing basketball with her coworkers, a bunch of EMTs, before riding off without saying anything. She arrives at a roller rink. She indicates she wants to see the DJ to the shoe rental guy, he says no, but the DJ sees her and calls her over. This is Henry “Black Crow” Lopez, her father’s brother. They head to a backroom to talk. The shoe rental guy, Vickie, texts someone that he might have information on the “King Killer.” In the back-office Maya confirms she’s been shot to Henry and he calls in a specialist. Gretchen, the local mortician, arrives to stitch Maya up. Maya’s a little freaked out by this but Henry tells her that Gretchen is who he calls when… somethings need to disappear and she’s on the level.

 

After the impromptu stitching, Maya goes with Henry to the local water tower. He takes her up to the top where he has a telescope set up. He shows her Bonnie in it and then tells her that if she leaves without telling Bonnie it’ll break her heart. Maya pretends like that doesn’t bother her but it clearly does. Maya looks at the telescope and signs for him to look. She’d focused on the Fisk Shipping building in town. She signs that she just needs one train car to send Fisk’s people a message. Henry tells her no, he won’t bring war to their town. He wants to know why she’s doing it. She signs that the Kingpin had his run, it’s time for a Queen. Henry storms off, saying he didn’t see her and they never had this conversation.

 

We cut to a hospital and an IV drip. It’s revealed that Kingpin is alive, though he may have lost an eye. He’s breathing heavily as the machines beep around him.

 

As far as pilot episodes go, this one was okay. I’d say it was a little exposition heavy, but that is probably necessary. Hawkeye came out just over 2 years ago, that’s a lot of time to forget about a character, even one as popular as Maya was. Plus, they needed to expand her backstory a little bit, give her some things to tug at our heartstrings about above and beyond her dead dad. Dead mother plus estrangement from family that clearly meant a lot to her will do that. Obviously, the fact she’s avoiding her family as much as possible, Bonnie especially, is going to be a big plot point going forward. The intro story about how the Choctaw People came to be was a little odd, but given how Chafa is both the title of the episode and appeared in Maya’s dream, I imagine she’s going to be important to the plot going forward as well. Aquala Cox is still phenomenal as Echo. She’s incredibly good at conveying emotions just with her face alone, which was probably a skill she had to learn since she’s been deaf since birth. She’s also an amputee, so that wasn’t some crazy camera work to make her look like she has a metal right leg, that’s just her leg. While her scene with Charlie Cox’s Daredevil was short, it was a very good scene to showcase Maya’s martial arts skill once again. Matt Murdock is one of the best hand-to-hand combatants in Marvel, so being able to keep up with him until he either decided fighting wasn’t worth it or he was actually scared of you is impressive. And surviving the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is a fast way to get into Fisk’s good graces. It was good to see Vincent D’Onofrio back as Kingpin. We didn’t get much of him here, but he clearly hasn’t lost his touch with making Fisk as intimidating as possible. He’s a powerful and powerfully built man. I was wonder how they were going to handle Maya clearly shooting him in the Hawkeye finale, but it seems like they’ll be taking it in two directions. Maya is going to think she killed the Kingpin and try to move in on his turf, and probably the local muscle will also be in on this. Meanwhile Fisk is going to recover, maybe get a prosthetic eye, and prepare to defend his turf from her and gear up to fight Daredevil again for Born Again. That’s a tall order for a five episode mini-series, but we’ll see how it goes. Good night, everyone. 

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