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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99356910
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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