This is a Dynamike Network podcast.
Hi and welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films
and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in stat-based
battle simulations. I'm Marvelous Joe. And I'm his twin brother, Johnny DC. And in this episode,
we're going to review the latest Marvel Studios television release, Echo Season 1. The season
dropped a few weeks ago, but we're just getting to reviewing it now. And uh, it was okay. It
was alright. I feel like it's not as bad as people are making it out to be, personally.
I kind of enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed it more than you at least, and I'm kind of interested
to hear what you have to say about it. Oh, I'll bring you down. I'll bring you down to my level.
It'll be fine. Sweet. I have reasons. We'll talk about them later. Before that, we're going
to break down the latest comic book movie news to come out this past week, including the news
that Wilson Bethel is confirmed to return as Bullseye in Daredevil Born Again, which is
fantastic news. I can't wait to talk about that. As always, we list our segment times in our
episode description, so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to
a particular topic. Our artificially intelligent dual simulator AJ9K has a quick message for
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them on social media. Check it out at patreon.com slash dynamic duel. Pip pip cheerio. Thanks
AJ 9k. And thanks to everyone who supports the podcast. Guys, be sure to tune into the Max
Destruction podcast, which is part of our Dynamike podcast network that show pits your favorite
action heroes from film and television against each other. This week, hosts Ken and Scotty
are going to review Dread. And on the Sinjo World podcast. Host Zachary Hepburn speculates
on fights between your favorite anime characters. This week we're going to find out who would
win between Dragon Ball's son Gohan vs. Saint Seiya's Phoenix Ikki? I don't know how to pronounce
the name. I don't know if that's right. I'm sure you nailed it. On the Console Combat podcast,
hosts John and Dean find out who would win in fights between your favorite video game characters.
And in yesterday's episode, they continued into round two of their tournament, since they do
a bracket tournament style. Street Fighter's Dark Ryu vs Metal Gear's Liquid Ocelot, and
Resident Evil's Nemesis vs Mortal Kombat's Scorpion. Visit dynamicpodcast.com or click the link
in our show notes to listen to all of the shows in the Dynamike Podcast Network. But with that
out of the way, quick to the No Prize. A No Prize is an award Marvel used to give out to
fans. Our version, the Dynamic Dual No Prize, is a digital award we post on Instagram for
the person that we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week we asked,
what comic storyline from Marvel or DC would you want to see adapted as an animated film
trilogy and why? And this is coming off of the review that we did last episode of Justice
League Crisis on Infinite Earths, part one. And holy crap, we got a lot of great answers
for this question. Can't wait to talk about them. Let's go ahead and run down our honorable
mentions and the no prize winner. Our first honorable mention goes to Jacob Foster, who
said, So yeah, the video game of Injustice.
only covered a portion of the story. As we know, the comic series told everything that happened
prior to the game, and it was a fantastic comic series. I would love to see that series adapted,
along with a subsequent film of the Injustice storyline that happened during the video game,
followed up probably by the Injustice 2 storyline. I think that would be a fantastic trilogy.
Yeah, we know that Injustice has already been adapted into an animated film, but you know,
if you watch the movie or you listen to our review of that film, you know that a wasn't
very good, so it would be nice to kind of get a redo on that and tell the story right as
a trilogy and not cram everything into one film. Yeah, justice needs to be done to the story
of injustice. What about deceased? Yeah, deceased could easily be a trilogy. Honestly, I feel
like it could be an entire series. There's a lot of story there, like season upon season.
And both injustice and deceased, if I remember correctly, are written by the same guy. Oh,
yes, that's correct. Tom Taylor. So great answer, Jacob Foster. Our next honorable mention goes
to... Nate Mantineo who said, Hey guys, Nate here. And I would just like to say that I would
definitely have Annihilation be the three-part movie event in an animated trilogy. I think
it's a great story with a ton of amount of cosmic everything. Anybody who's anybody in the Marvel
Universe is going to be there and you want something big leading up to that. So maybe build up a
movie universe and then have Annihilation. It would just be great. Thanks guys, love the
show. Yeah, this is a fantastic answer. It blew my mind when I heard it, because I didn't even
conceive of this as an animated film trilogy, but I would love to see Annihilation adapted
like that. It's to this day, the greatest cosmic tale that Marvel has ever done, or one of the
greatest, I should say, because it joined together all of Marvel's spacefaring heroes and united
them against a common threat of Annihilus and his Annihilation wave. I think you could break
it down into the prologue. for Annihilation getting into the stories of like Drax and Nova
and Silver Surfer and Super Skrull and basically setting up all the characters in the first
film. In the second one, really get into the war against Nihilus and then have that end
with probably Galactus getting captured and then at the end get into the Heralds of Galactus
and the ultimate defeat of Annihilus. I think that would play out perfectly. There was a
lot of story there. It was fantastic. We get to explore characters like Nova as well. whom
hasn't really got his due, I think, in the MCU. Of course, this would be animated, but I think
it would be incredible. Yeah, Nate's idea of building up a entire animated universe just
to have it possibly lead up to this Annihilation trilogy is an interesting idea. It's kind of
the same thing that DC's doing in the Tomorrowverse, building up this animated cinematic universe
just to tear it down with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yeah, I think Marvel could do it better
than DC, and I would pay good money to see it happen. Dude, Marvel's animated movies suck.
Like, you're not wrong, but also, shut your mouth. Great answer, Nate. Our final honorable
mention goes to Travis Herndon, who said, Hey guys, Travis here. So my pick would have to
be the Planet Hulk storyline. I know we had a Planet Hulk movie back in the early 2000s,
so why not have two movies to finish the story off or just revamp it and do a complete retelling
that's faithful to the comics? I think. It's time for us to actually get a faithful retelling
of that amazing story about my whole. I love the Planet Hulk story. I think this is a fantastic
answer. Of course, there already was a Planet Hulk animated movie, which is probably one
of Marvel's better animated films. And I would just, yeah, like Travis said, work around that.
Or maybe you have the prelude to Planet Hulk, where we get a solid Hulk story that ends with
him being sent out into space by the Illuminati. And then we have the Planet Hulk storyline
as the second film and then culminate it with the World War Hulk storyline. You don't get
better than that. That would be cool. That'd be really cool. It'd be way better than the
Hulk we have now in the MCU. Just like silly, smart Hulk. Yeah, we need like a good, solid,
destructive Hulk film. It's been a while, and I don't think there's a better way to do it
than a Planet Hulk trilogy of films. Great answer, Travis. We wanna give a quick shout out to
Bideer Bangura, who gave the answer of Dark Knight's Metal, Colby Hentges, who gave the
answer of House of M, who said Titans Beast World and Travis Bailey, who gave the answer
of Marvel's Wastelanders. But the winner of this week's No Prize is Scott Camacho, who
said, The story series I want DC to adapt into animated would be the Blackest Night series
of the Lantern Course. I think the lanterns are due for an outstanding story to be told
animated and especially live action. And since the movies have been darker lately, I'm thinking
this would be a great time to pull that off, Blackest Night. So this gets the win because
not only is Blackest Night an awesome storyline, but it's already part of a comic trilogy that
began with Green Lantern Rebirth and led into the Sinestro Corps War. only to be concluded
by Blackest Night, which was like a full DC Universe spanning event. It's a fantastic trilogy
and I'm really surprised that they haven't adapted that onto screen yet. Like I thought that would
have been perfect for the Tomorrowverse, those three films. Yeah, I feel like Green Lantern
movies are far and few between. I don't know if there's kind of like a chilling effect on
behalf of the studio due to the reception of the 2011 Green Lantern movie, but... Fortunately,
we did get one Green Lantern film in the Tomorrowverse, which was Blackest Night, which was a pretty
solid movie, I thought. But yeah, I mean, the greatest Green Lantern tale out there so far,
I think, is just ripe for the picking. Absolutely. I would agree that it's the greatest Green
Lantern story. You know, Green Lantern Rebirth set up like the emotional spectrum. Sinestro
Corps just ramped that up and really began introducing the other color spectrums. And then Blackest
Night just had this massive zombie outbreak across the whole universe. fantastic. If they
don't adapt it to animation, they need to adapt it to live action. Like maybe for the television
series that James Gunn is producing. Yeah. I mean, we don't know what story is going to
be adapted for James Gunn's television series, lanterns. It's supposed to be like true detective
esque, which doesn't sound cosmic to me, but who knows? Great answer, Scotty. You win this
week's no prize. If you the listener want a shot at winning your own no prize, stay tuned
to later on in this episode when we'll be asking another question of the week. And now that
that's done, on to the news!
Coming off the recent news that Debra Anwalt and Eldon Henson will be returning as Karen
Page and Foggy Nelson in the upcoming Daredevil Born Again Disney Plus Marvel Studios television
series, we got even better news this week. It was confirmed by Deadline that Wilson Bethel,
who played Benjamin Poindexter aka Bullseye on the Netflix Daredevil series, is going to
be showing up in at least three episodes of the series, which is currently filming. And
if you guys watched the Netflix Daredevil show, you're already super excited by this because
Daredevil season 3 was not only great superhero television, it was just fantastic television
in general and a large part of that was due to the fantastic portrayal of the extremely
dangerous Daredevil villain Bullseye. Dude, like the villains in the Daredevil series are
amongst the best villains that have ever been depicted on screen in my opinion. Bullseye
in particular was unbelievably horrifying, way more scary than I thought he would be. And
he was the character I was most hoping would make a return for this new Daredevil show and
it's super exciting to hear that he is. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago our question of the week
was, what other character from the Daredevil Netflix series do you most hope returns for
Disney Plus's Daredevil Born Again show? And we got a few good answers, but the correct
answer as we stated in the last episode was And then lo and behold, all of a sudden we
get that confirmation. It's just so exciting to see as a fan. I'm really hoping that in
this season we'll get to see him in his, like, traditional iconic bullseye outfit or some
adaptation of that. For sure. Yeah, because we didn't get to see that in Daredevil season
three. I'm really loving all the choices that Dario Skardapain seems to be making. And now
that Marvel has kind of decided to reboot the Daredevil series, it looks like they're giving
fans exactly what they want. It looks like it's going to be basically Netflix's Daredevil season
four, which is everything that the fans could hope for. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if they
like also brought back Electra and we had like the Bullseye versus Electra face off? That'd
be dope. I mean, Electra already died in the Daredevil Netflix series. She died at the end
of season two. So I don't know if they would want to retread that where she's like resurrected
by the hand again, but no, I would like to see Electra returned regardless. I thought Elodie
Young made a fantastic Electra. Everyone in that show was like perfectly cast. So glad
most of the cast is returning. Yeah, it seems like Marvel is making all the right decisions,
you know, the same decisions that made them so endearing to fans in the first place, where
they're truly giving us what we want to see, you know? And why not? Like, studios do not
do that enough. Just freaking listen to the fans. Exactly, exactly. But this news brings
us to our question of the week.
Who is your favorite villain from a Marvel or DC television series, and why? Record your
answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand
corner of the screen, which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail. Your message can be
up to 30 seconds long, and don't forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast.
We'll pick our favorite answer, and award that person a Dynamic Duel No Prize that we'll post
to Instagram. Be sure to answer before- February 3rd. There's a lot of great Marvel DC television
series out there guys a lot for you to choose from I'm really looking forward to these answers
But that does it for all the news for this episode, so let's go ahead and get into the main event,
where we discuss the latest Disney Plus Marvel Studios television series, Echo Season 1.
ECHO Season 1 debuted a few weeks ago on Disney Plus as the latest Marvel Studios television
series, with the series led by head director Sidney Freeland and starring Ilaquah Cox and
Vincent D'Onofrio. It's a spin-off series from 2021's Hawkeye Show, where the character of
ECHO was introduced into the MCU as the daughter of the tracksuit mafia leader who was killed
by Hawkeye's alternate identity of Ronin. At the end of that show, And I guess let me take
this opportunity to say spoiler warning. This is a spoiler review, not only for Echo season
one, but probably also for Hawkeye. At the end of Hawkeye season one, Echo learned that the
Kingpin led Ronin to the Track Suit Mafia's hideout and was directly responsible for her
father's death. Seeking revenge, Echo shot Kingpin in the face, believing him to be dead, which
is where Echo season one picks up. Now, I enjoyed Hawkeye season one. We rated it three and a
half stars on this podcast. And while I was interested in Echo's introduction, I wasn't
sure at the time if she would be able to headline her own series. Now that I've seen the series,
I guess I'm still wondering. That's not to discount Alok Wacawks's performance, and we'll talk
about that later. But I mean, like, let's be honest, Echo was a series that really no one
asked for. The character is not too popular in the books, although I will say she is a
very interesting character, you should definitely learn more about her in our question vs echo
duel episode if you don't know anything about her. But it seems that in this day and age
of Marvel Studios where they're finding themselves in a situation of diminishing returns from
producing too much content that people are caring less about, Echo season 1 seems like an unnecessary
addition to their television catalog. I dunno, I like the idea- of an Echo television series
and that it could be something unique and that's definitely what they shot for with this show.
Unique to the MCU for sure. Yeah absolutely. Yeah and perhaps that's why with this series
Marvel introduced the Marvel spotlight banner which is supposed to represent projects in
the MCU that aren't necessarily connected to the main canon telling more grounded character
driven stories. Basically you don't have to watch Echo season 1 to stay caught up with
the Marvel Studios continuity. And I would say unless you're really invested in the character
of Echo, I don't know if I would bother with this show. Unless of course Echo ends up being
like a member of the New Avengers team or something like that. I doubt that. You never know. I
mean she was a member of the Avengers in the comics, so yeah, you could be right. Maybe
if you're looking for more grounded content, you might be enticed to watch this. But even
then I wouldn't say Echo Season 1 really warranted all the TVMA marketing that went into this
series. Absolutely. I feel like the worst stuff was shown in the trailer. Yeah, it was basically
a montage of all the violence. The trailer for this was incredible and even won my brother's
award for best trailer of last year. The marketing seemed to promise a return to the type of rated-R
storytelling that existed within the Marvel Netflix series, like Daredevil, Jessica Jones,
and The Punisher. I wouldn't say Echo seemed very rated R outside of like one or two shots
of violence, it seemed very PG-13 in my mind. So even if you're a fan of the old Netflix
shows and wanting more mature Marvel fare, I don't think you'll be that satisfied with Echo
Season 1 and it may be just better to wait for the Daredevil Born Again series which will
come out next year and is hopefully a return to form for gritty grounded superhero shows.
So what you're saying is no one's gonna find this show satisfying. I don't think fans of
Echo will find this satisfying. I don't think fans of the Marvel Netflix series will find
this satisfying. I don't know who would find this satisfying. But to get into what I didn't
find disappointing about the show, it did have about two badass action scenes, like one in
episode one that actually included Daredevil, which was awesome. That was cool. And there
was another action scene in episode three that took place in a skating rink. You know, in
a five episode series, you would probably hope for even more action, but those scenes were
the best of what we got and they were great. You'd expect the best action scene to be in
episode five for like the climax, but nope, it was episode one. Yeah. That's a little bit
disappointing. The last action scene in the climax of the show had a tremendously disappointing
resolution. It was almost as disappointing as the resolution to She Hulk, but I wouldn't
go that far. You know, at least we had some punches thrown even if they were from, you
know, a 70 year old grandma. Story wise, there wasn't too much here. Basically, Echo goes
to her hometown in Oklahoma in an attempt to stage a coup over Kingpin's empire, but ends
up rediscovering her roots. It's surprising to me that this show was initially shot as
an eight episode release that was later pared down to five episodes. And honestly, thank
God. But I think that they could have taken that even further and this probably should
have been a Disney Plus film or a Marvel Studios special presentation. I think that runtime
would have served the story a little bit better that they had here and it would have moved
at a quicker clip and been more enjoyable overall. I don't know if I agree with that. I think
Maya's mission to take down Kinkpin and become the new Queenpin of New York City crime required
a lot more story than what they gave us here. This was a very small story. I don't understand
how she was trying to take down Kinkpin from fucking Oklahoma. Like they should have had
her travel to New York City, meet people there, you know, work the criminal underground from
the city. I don't know. It was just weird. That would have been a better concept. Of course,
it would have gone against, you know, the whole returning to your roots story that they were
telling here. Sure. But yeah, I think either this could have been an eight episode series,
like what you were describing or it could have been a film for the existing story that they
had. Yeah, yeah, I agree. One of the other things I enjoyed about the show was the cultural representation.
It's not often that a superhero has such strong ties to their cultural identity, but it's always
fascinating to see such as in films like Black Panther or Shang-Chi. And here we got a great
glimpse into the Choctaw Nation. Although I think they could have delved even deeper into
that. You know, I think the exploration that we got of the Choctaw was only surface level.
Yeah, I probably would have thought that this was a great exploration of the Choctaw Nation.
If I hadn't just watched Killers of the Flower Moon like less than a week prior and their
examination of the Osage Indians who also lived in Oklahoma. They even had some of the same
cast members for Echo as they did in Killers of the Flower Moon and Killers of the Flower
Moon was way better. I have to check that out. I always like Scorsese stuff. So what was interesting
here though is that not only did we get the Native American cultural representation, we
also got a great crash course in American Sign Language. I mean, I've never seen a project,
film or television. I never got around to seeing Coda where so much of the dialogue was done
with signing. And I thought that was fantastic and truly fascinating to watch. And the cast
did great, not only with the ASL, but with everything. You know, there aren't too many opportunities,
it seems, for Native American roles. And it's great to see how much talent there is within
their group. from old greats like Graham Greene to some slightly familiar faces like Julia
Jones and enjoyable relative newcomers like Cody Lightning who played Cousin Biscuits.
Yeah, I know how to sign bullshit in sign language now. It's dangerously close to I love you.
Yeah, if you mumble with your signing, you could end up either way in a lot of trouble. Ha ha
ha. But speaking of the actors, let's go ahead and get into the character breakdown. Only
two major roles to talk about and one of them is of course Echo. aka Maya Lopez played by
Alaka Cox. I wanna start off by saying that Alaka Cox is an inspiration as an action hero.
I think that the physical choreography and the stunts she's performed are incredible, not
even accounting for her missing leg and inability to hear. When you do account for those things,
it's even more amazing what she's accomplished. I don't want anything negative I say about
the show to discount how truly... in awe I am of her skill and like I hate being this douche
hurling criticism from an armchair when she's out there literally winning as a one-legged
woman in an ass-kicking contest. On one hand, this version of Echo is so different from the
comic book character who's like this sophisticated elegant socialite. And on the other hand, I
couldn't possibly imagine there is a better person out there to play Maya Lopez than Iloquo
Cox. And I think really Iloquo
It's the show writers who don't really seem to know the Kong book character, painting her
here as this gritty, unlikable, brash, hard ass with an entirely different power set from
the source material. It's like the writers never even read the comics. Yeah, I remember you
mentioning that she is essentially like Taskmaster. And, you know, I was telling my wife that as
we were watching the show together, just explaining how different this character is in the comics,
about how she's just able to see someone move or do martial arts. and then she's able to
echo it or mimic it right off the bat. Right. Yeah, that's why she has her name Echo in the
comic books. She has photographic reflexes like Taskmaster, but she also has heightened visual
acuity like Cassandra Cain from DC Comics. It's fascinating. And we kind of got a glimpse of
those abilities in Hawkeye Season One, where she was able to anticipate her opponents moves.
But here the writers decided to forgo all that and give her powers that tie into her Native
American ancestry. Which is also cool. Like that was interesting and how like she was able
to like call on the talents of her ancestors. But also I didn't get the healing thing. Like
was her mama mutant or some shit? Yeah, it's weird. I think it was all spiritual mystical
based abilities. And there was a time in the comic books when Echo had actual superpowers
when she was the host of the Phoenix Force. And I mentioned that in our question versus
Echo dual episode that I didn't think those powers would stick. and I was right because
she ended up exhausting her Phoenix Force powers while trying to save the multiverse. So I don't
know if her ancestral powers were supposed to kind of tap into that aspect of her abilities
from the comics, or if they were just kind of, you know, running fast and loose with the idea
of the character. Does it bother you that they were? I mean, the character is somewhat obscure
in the comics. I hate it when the writers don't really adhere to the source material, because
then at that point it becomes a character that I don't recognize. Now sometimes they have
good ideas. but every good idea should have some semblance to the source material I think.
I agree. Otherwise, just make an original character. Right, like they did with Kihori in Marvel's
What If, who was fantastic. This series portrayed Echo as power hungry but without providing
clear motivations as to why she would want to rule New York's crime empire, or how she would
achieve that besides blowing up a weapons facility. You know, in the show, Maya said that her enemies
were playing right into her plan, but it's unclear what that plan was gonna be. You know, she
obviously thought that she could take on all of New York from the middle of nowhere Oklahoma,
but I never once believed that she'd be able to achieve that as an audience member. Honestly,
I never really believed anything about the character. You haven't really mentioned her acting ability,
but I'll be the one to say it. She's not the best actress. She's a better action star than
she is an actress. Absolutely. I mean, there were times where I thought she actually did
pretty well in her emotional scenes. But yeah, overall, I think she's still growing as an
actress. Yeah, I think her emotions were for the majority of it, a little to one note. It
was always anger all the time. I actually really liked it when she was a bit more expressive.
Yeah, for sure. A little bit one note. She always just came off as prickly and it doesn't make
for the most endearing protagonist. For her arc, you know, instead of rising to power over
the criminal underworld, she instead discovered how much her family meant to her, and that
her mom and her ancestors were always watching over her. She healed from the pain of losing
her family, and instead by the end embraces her relatives, heritage, and her lineage. Now
finding strength in your roots and in those who love you is not a new theme in the world
of superheroes. In fact, it's pretty common, but I will say that at least we get the novelty
of seeing it represented in this way with the Choctaw Nation. Where have we seen this before?
Dude, strength in family is such a common theme in superhero movies. Like, take for instance
recently Blue Beetle. Yeah. I would even say Guardians of the Galaxy has strong familial
themes. Okay, I mean, that's fair. But like, roots is different from family, I would say.
Like, culture is different from family. Like, gathering strength from that, I think, actually
makes Echo unique. That's true. I mean, it's not that unique, given, you know, things like
Shang-Chi and Black Panther. But it's unique for this specific culture, which is nice. That's
fair. Let's go to move on to Kingpin, a.k.a. Wilson Fisk, once again, played by Vincent
D'Onofrio. You know, he was flawless, obviously. It was really good to see a return to form
after the slightly more cartoony take on Kingpin that we saw in the Hawkeye television series.
Dude, I was so happy with Kingpin in the show. I was like, hell yeah, bro. Hell yeah. Yeah,
I remember you complaining a lot about the character in our review of Hawkeye season one. So, yeah,
it's good that he's back to being a gruff, terrifying presence who often comes across as just this
powder keg of a man just waiting to explode and unleash his clearly unhinged palpable rage.
Yeah, like totally unpredictable. You just never know when the guy is going to snap and it's
terrifying when he does. Yeah. For me, Vincent D'Onafrio nearly saves this show. His presence
was so welcome when he did finally show up at the end of episode three, and he elevated things,
I think, when he came aboard. Oh, dude, he is so fantastic in the role. He's Marvel's best
villain, in my opinion. Hands down. He's up there, for sure. In this series, we see Kingpin's
reaction to Echo's betrayal from the Hawkeye Show. You know, there are only so many people
that Kingpin extends any measure of grace or forgiveness to, and those are the... rare people
that he loves. Vanessa, his wife, would be one person. Maya is another. So when he gave her
that second chance as a comic fan, it was almost unbelievable to witness the opportunity he
was extending her. And it was exciting knowing that after Maya's refusal of his generous offer,
that shit was just gonna hit the fan. Like I was on the edge of my seat at the end of episode
four. But. That anticipation just kind of fizzled by the end of the show and you know, Kingpin
seemingly gets neutered of his unbridled rage. Yeah, what the hell was that? He was like,
what did you do to me? What did you do to me? And I was like, what did you do to him? I don't
even know. I'm confused. Answer the question. The show never does. You know, and that's a
disappointment, but we'll have to see where that goes in Daredevil Born Again, where apparently
in that series, based on the after credit scene here. he'll become the mayor of New York. I'm
excited to see that. Yeah, that's a fantastic setup. Definitely got me excited, even more
excited for the Daredevil show. That was a great arc in the comics and I hope they do it justice.
Everyone else on the show, they were fantastic, but they really only had minor roles. So let's
go ahead and get into our episode highlights.
Episode 1 was called Chaffa. At the dawn of time, a woman named Chaffa emerges from a cave
as she and her people become the first of the Choctaw Native American tribe. In present-day
Oklahoma, young Maya and her mother Taloa get into an auto accident when their truck's brake
lines are cut by criminals looking to kill Maya's father, William. Taloa dies and Maya loses
her leg, prompting William to move Maya away with him to New York where he works for the
kingpin who becomes Maya's adoptive uncle. William leads the tracksuit mafia who is wiped out
by Hawkeye, aka Ronan at the time, and Maya's father dies in her arms. After learning Kingpin
tipped off Ronan, she shoots Kingpin in the face and escapes to Oklahoma to her childhood
home where she meets with her cousin Biscuits and her uncle Henry, the latter of whom she
asks for help in taking over Kingpin's empire. In the end, it's revealed Kingpin survived
the shooting. I thought the opening to the series was fantastic. It's actually probably the best
part of the show where we see the Choctaw Nation rise from their cave onto the earth. How fascinating
was that? A great, incredible depiction of mythology. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I thought it was
a great visual for sure. But not just that opening, I thought this whole first episode was actually
pretty solid. Dude, it had the Daredevil fight, which was excellent. Yeah, I saw a clip of
the fight in advance of watching the series, and I thought the choreography actually moved
a little bit over rehearsed and slow. But seeing it in context of that larger one shot framing,
I thought it was incredible. I was so happy seeing that instead of the shitty, you know,
yellow mustard costume that we saw in She-Hulk. Yeah, the stunt actor who played Daredevil,
I mean, Charlie Cox was great in the few lines that he delivered, but I got to commend the
Daredevil stunt guy. The way he moves feels very Daredevil to me. It was like seeing the
character leap right off the page. Yeah, the way he leaped over the fence. Damn, that was
cool. That was sick. It was so cool to have Daredevil and Hawkeye in the same episode.
Like I know we saw Matt Murdock in Spider-Man, No Way Home, and that was cool. But to see
the character in costume and then we have, you know, Hawkeye in the Ronin costume and stuff
like that, it just feels like the universe is coalescing in a way that's so exciting as a
Marvel fan. You don't know how freaking lucky you are that the Netflix shows are a part of
the MCU now. Man, that's, that's really cool. It was apparent even from this first episode
though that there were some editing issues, like there was a lot of stuff cut out, because
later on in the episode I remember just thinking like, who the fuck is Biscuits? Who the hell
is this guy? Like, they name drop the character in one line early in the episode where they're
like, Biscuits is gonna be mad he didn't get to camp with the girls or something like that,
but it was so throwaway. They presented the character like we were supposed to know who
he was, and maybe, you know, in a different cut of this show we were supposed to. Yeah,
I felt the same way. I didn't even get the name drop earlier on. I was just like, who the fuck
is Biscuits? Okay. Episode 2 was called LOWAK. In 13th century Alabama, a woman named LOWAK
competes in a game of Choctaw Stickball and manifests strength from a vision of Chaffa
to win the game for her team. In the present day, Maya gets Biscuits to follow her as she
boards one of Kingpin's cargo trains. Finding the munitions cart, she plants a homemade bomb
inside. As she attempts to flee, her leg gets stuck in one of the train's couplings, at which
point she experiences a vision of Chafa and Loic before summoning the strength to free
herself. The bomb explodes as the train reaches its destination in New York, destroying one
of Kinkman's weapons facilities. Maya gets her grandmother's ex, Scully, to fashion her a
new leg, and her uncle Henry warns her that her actions are going to get the people close
to her killed. Frustrated, she fires her gun at a swing set in a fit of emotion. You know
what that scene reminded me of when she just started shooting the swing set and then the
episode ended? It reminded me of a scene in Hot Fuzz where Nick Frost asks Simon Pegg,
have you ever like shot your gun in the air and gone, ah, like Keanu Reeves did in Point
Break? And he's like, no, I've never shot my gun in the air and gone, ah. You know. Just
firing your weapon as a display of emotion. I always thought it was incredibly cheesy.
I don't know why she was shooting her swing set. It was just really bizarre, lame way to
end this episode. Now, is it just me or does Choctaw's stick ball seem ridiculously hard?
Like lacrosse, but like impossible. I'm still wondering how Maya's ancestor won. Like she
just got a vision, did a flip. I didn't even see the ball in her net stick thing. And I
don't know. It was like, what just happened? She got a vision. She got the ball. She did
a flip over the scrum and then ran into the goal. I think that's what happened. Okay, that
makes sense. What was interesting is when Maya's powers manifested for the first time. Like
out of all the times in her life that she's endured like life threatening stakes, I wonder
why her echo powers didn't come about then. Maybe it was a proximity thing. I don't know,
maybe. They gave some throwaway line like, oh, the ancestors know when they're needed or something
like that. But it's like, I'm pretty sure that she could have used your help before. Like
maybe when they were about to get hit by a car or something as a kid. Oh, geez. Where were
you then, ancestors? Damn. You know, what's weird is that the stakes at the time when she
got her leg caught in the coupling. That wasn't even life-threatening. She could have disconnected
her leg at the time and just hopped off the train to be picked up by biscuits. The way
she got off the train was the most dangerous way that she could have possibly done it by
leaping off onto the truck, you know? It probably would have been better to just kind of like
tuck and roll as opposed to, you know, trying this insane stunt. No, I'm still wondering
how the frick that happened that like when he slammed on his brakes, she didn't fly forward.
Like when he came to the back and was like, am I am I she just appeared behind the truck?
And I was like, how? When? What? That's a great question. I have no idea. She was just like,
ta da. I was like, all right, bullshit. But OK. I do have to mention one character that
you didn't break down Uncle Henry. I thought he did a fantastic job. I'm not sure of the
actor's name, but he did a great job acting and signing at the same time I noticed. I think
he did better than anyone else in the series. Yeah, Henry was played by Chas Spencer. I think
you're right. It was hard for me to get a grasp on Uncle Henry, honestly, because it was clear
that he cared for Maya, although he really disliked the way she was going about everything. And,
you know, he was really the voice of reason throughout the show, which was interesting
considering he was a career criminal. But absolutely, I agree with everything you just said. His
ability to emote through his signing was kind of a sight to behold. Yeah, I thought the same
thing. Moving on to episode three, which was called Too-Clo. In the late 19th century, a
woman named Tuklo saves her father and other members of the light horsemen native police
force from a band of outlaws by using exceptional marksmanship skills granted by visions of her
ancestors, Chaffa and Loek. In the present day, Maya begins seeing visions as well and is kidnapped
by one of her Uncle Henry's employees named Vicky. He calls in Kingpin's men in an attempt
to collect the bounty on Maya's head and also captures Henry and Maya's cousin Bonnie. When
the Kingpin's men arrive, Maya escapes confinement and attacks them, though they get the upper
hand in the end by holding Bonnie hostage. Before Maya's execution, the Kingpin's men get a call
telling them to leave her alive, and they leave. Returning home, Maya is approached by the Kingpin,
who reveals that he's still alive. Dude, talk about Deus Ex Machina. That was like, I hated
that. It kind of ruins the entire stakes of the fight that you just witnessed, right? I
mean, that was a great action scene, I thought, at least in the beginning. But when she started
to like using the arcade shooter guns as whips and throwing skee balls at everybody, I was
like, hmm, maybe not. But other than that, I thought the action fight was spectacular. I
really like the choreography. I really like the camera work. It was just really well done.
I liked the booby traps she set up. I don't get like some of the devices that she was able
to make, like that gun that she made. Oh, yeah, that was stupid. I was like, what? How? How
did you make that fast? She was channeling the abilities of a fellow Native American superhero,
Forge. Oh, nice. Yeah, you didn't know that. He's one of her ancestors is part of her abilities.
No, yeah, that was weird. I don't understand how you can make a bearing shooting device
out of a roller skate. Just doesn't seem possible. Yeah. This is the episode where she got the
special shin guard by Scully. I thought Scully was going to include something special, like
a secret gadget or something within the shin guard. But that never really amounted to anything
within the rest of the series. They certainly made it seem important, but it ended up not
meaning much outside of its cultural representation. I was thinking the same thing. Like they had
the perfect opportunity to make Scully Maya's Q as it were, like, you know, her gadget guy.
I'm really surprised they didn't follow through with that. Yeah, that would have been cool.
That's what I was expecting. He was even like, oh, I need time to work on this. Well, what
for?
I have no idea. You need to put some like, I don't know, tear gas spray cartridges in there.
Something cool. Yeah, a knife or something. At the very least, a knife. She already has
one in her shoe. Put one in her shin guard. There you go. Episode four was called Taloa.
In 2008, Kingpin brutally beats an ice cream vendor for mocking Maya for being deaf, an
act that she witnesses and participates in by kicking him. In 2021. Kingpin offers a final
lesson to Maya for working for him, that they can only trust each other and has his American
sign language interpreter killed. In the present, Kingpin uses augmented reality tech to communicate
with Maya and tell her that if she returns to him in New York, he will give her his criminal
empire. He gives her a day to decide before leaving, and Maya is taken to visit her grandmother
Chula. There, Chula reveals that their ancestors, which can be traced back to Chafa, help their
family when they need it the most. echoing through the generations. Maya leaves in anger, however,
due to feeling abandoned as a child. Chula then begins working on a special garment for Maya.
Maya visits Kingpin with the intent to kill him, which he encourages just as he killed
his father. He asks Maya again to come back to New York, but she ends up fleeing Tamaha
and raging him. I thought this was another great flashback intro. The intros were actually some
of my favorite parts of this season. Every episode began with a flashback. Yeah, yeah, that was
cool. It kind of gave some insight as to why Kingpin took a liking to Maya in that she kind
of displayed a little bit of his same anger and brutality towards that ice cream guy. Yeah,
the whole sign language interpretation technology, I thought, was kind of interesting in concept,
but totally unnecessary given that Maya can read lips. Can't she? Like, I wasn't sure if
she could throughout this entire series. Well, she's supposed to be able to, like that's her
whole freaking power in the comic books. You know, she has incredible visual acuity. So
really all Kingpin would need was some kind of tech that could interpret ASL. She wouldn't
really need the contact lens. Yeah, he could put the contact in his own damn eye. Yeah,
just replace his eyeball. Exactly. Although I think it was maybe insinuating that the contact
lens was also a tracker. I don't know. What I do want to know though is why didn't she
kill Kingpin at the end of this episode when he gave her the opportunity? Is it because
she had a change of heart on wanting him dead or something? But like if so, why? Because
he was kind of family and you know some part of her didn't want to betray his trust, I guess?
But she was gonna betray his trust by fleeing, you know? If she didn't want to betray his
trust, take him up on his offer and rule the criminal underworld out of sight as the Queenpin.
Just a bizarre series of choices that she made here. Yeah, I mean, but I think it was just
kind of hinting at her heroic streak in a way that she realized that she didn't have it in
her to kill him. I guess, I don't know, because she's definitely killed before. She's a complicated
character. Yeah, at that point, it kind of became clear that she doesn't really know what she
wants. And the whole journey that she goes through in the series is basically figuring that out
for herself. Right, yeah. Episode five was called Maya. In a flashback to Maya's childhood, She
witnesses her mother use her healing powers to mend a woodpecker that she had injured with
a slingshot. In the present, Biscuits reaches out to Maya to tell her that Chula and Bonnie
are missing, prompting Maya to return to Tamaha. At her grandmother's house, she sees a vision
of her mom, Taloa, who tells Maya that she's the descendant of a long line of special women
dating back to Chafa, and that she's never alone before healing Maya's heart of her pain. Maya
dons the outfit her grandmother created before going to the Choctaw Powwow Festival and participates
in it to avoid Kingpin's men while looking for her family. A woodpecker guides Maya to a barn
where she finds Kingpin with Chula and Bonnie held captive. Summoning the power of her ancestors,
Maya shares her powers with her family and they join together to fight Kingpin's men. She takes
Kingpin back to a memory of his childhood and heals his pain. Enraged, He asks her what she
did to him, then flees as the police arrive. The next day, Maya visits her family before
leaving Tamaha. In a post-credit scene, Kingpin watches with interest a news report on the
New York mayoral election. So I have a question. Yeah? Did Maya forget about her mom's superpower,
like as she grew up? I feel like if I saw my mom perform a miracle like killing an injured
bird, I would remember that shit. You know? I almost feel like maybe that wasn't the first
time she saw her mom do that. Maybe that's why she brought it to her mom. Because like, the
little girl didn't seem surprised at all when her mom displayed the power. She was like,
Oh my gosh, what's happening? No. I also want to know why didn't her mom, if she could visit
her as a ghost, heal her pain from her traumatic childhood sooner if she had that ability. Well,
maybe because she was finally getting full access to her ancestors and maybe like her mom was
the last one that she was able to gain access to. Maybe that's the reason. There's a lot
of assumptions that are going on here. Also, I didn't know quite how to describe how Bonnie
and Chula got their abilities, whether or not that was Maya sharing it with them or if they
also have the ability to tap into the power of their ancestors. That was unclear. Well,
they have the same ancestors. So I figured that was the reason why. So basically you have a
whole line of Choctaw women who are superheroes. Every woman is a superhero, Joseph. Every woman.
Right, I forgot about that, sorry. The end fight was horrible. Like I almost did a spit take
when I saw Chula punching bad guys. And again, I just really don't like the ambiguity regarding
what happened to Kingpin. Like if he's cured of his pain regarding his traumatic childhood.
Does that mean that he's now without evil ambition? If so, does that not contradict the look on
his face when he's considering running for mayor? Is he in fact going to be a good mayor? What's
gonna happen there? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I guess we won't know the answer
to that until Daredevil born again. But I do think that her healing camp was the most anti-climactic
shit I've ever seen in my life. For sure, yeah. If Kingpin ends up still being like a a piece
of shit dude in Daredevil Born Again. I'm going to wonder what the hell happened here. Yeah,
I guess Echo's powers are useless. Yeah, like I'm unclear as to what exactly she heals, because
like her mom healed the physical body of the hummingbird. And I guess Echo physically healed
Kingpin's eye. When you do it over the heart, was it also psychological or spiritual or I
don't know? I think it's emotional. I think it's emotional healing. When I get that feeling.
I need a emotional healing. There you go. Emotional healing. Yeah, we'll say the ending was quite
as bad as the cop out that She-Hulk did, where, you know, she broke the fourth wall and completely
circumvented the entire conflict that whole series was building toward. But this is still
a pretty bad ending. So I guess the best thing you can say about the show is that it's somewhat
better than She-Hulk. Yeah. And that brings us to, you know, my final rating. You know,
we rated She-Hulk two stars. This was better than that. I actually enjoyed Secret Invasion
season 1 more than Echo, so I'm going in between there. While Echo season 1 is a fascinating
insight into several underrepresented groups, the story is threadbare and the hero is just
too one-dimensional for much enjoyment. So I'm rating it 2.5 stars, a rotten rating on Rotten
Tomatoes. Because at the end of the day, I don't think I would recommend the show, I think you'll
be disappointed by it no matter what type of Marvel fan you are. Yeah I- I guess I would
agree. I think I liked it a little bit more than you did, not by much though. Like I might
be willing to give this three stars maybe, but right around that ballpark. I think you hit
the nail on the head early on in the review when you said that you're not sure who will
be satisfied by a series like this. I think ultimately the only reason to watch it is if
you know, Echo ever joins the Avengers and you want to find out how she got her cool new costume.
The costume was cool. I'll say that. But that does it for this review. Let us know what you
guys thought about Echo Season 1 by writing to us at dyna or by visiting us on Instagram,
which you can find a link to on our show notes or by visiting our website, dynamicduel.com.
And on our site, you could also find a link to our Patreon page, where you could join our
dynamic duo tier and chat with us and fellow listeners, our fantastic four tier, which gets
you bonus content each month, our X-Force tier that makes you an executive producer of this
podcast. or our newest tier that lets you join our Dynamike Podcast Network. Please guys,
don't forget to rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser, or on our website. In our
next episode, we're going to start a series of multiversal duels as a tie-in to our review
of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and in lead-up to Madam Web that's coming near the end of
February, we will be pitting Ultraman against Hyperion. Yeah, Ultraman being the Earth three
version of Superman, who's basically an evil version of Superman versus Hyperion, who is
the leader of the Squadron Supreme, which is basically like an authoritarian version of
the Justice League in Marvel. So two evil, multiversal Superman, who's gonna win? We're gonna find
out next week. But that does it for this episode, we want to give a big thanks to our executive
producers Ken Johnson, John Storowski, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Belcombe, Mickey Mathengian,
Brandon Estergard, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yeaton, Nick Obanto, Austin Wazilowski, AJ Duckerley,
Scott Camacho, Adam Spies, Andrew Schunk, and Dean Molesky for helping make this podcast
possible. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away, true believers. Why did the
Echo get detention? It kept talking back.