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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99155514
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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