Echo co-director and executive producer Sydney Freeland shares how Marvel crafted its first “Mature Audience Only” show, stating that they didn’t even intend to create an MCU series that will mark plenty of firsts for the studio.
Starring Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, the first MCU deaf and Native American character, the five-episode series is also the first Marvel show to ever receive a TV-MA rating. In an interview with Deadline, Freeland explained how her team creatively crafted the MCU miniseries.
“We did not set out to make a TV-MA show, but we did know it was going to be grounded. It was going to be gritty. It was going to be a little more visceral and street level, and the question was just, how [far] can we go? For myself, I’m down to go as far as [I can]. I want to push the envelope as far as Marvel will let me,” said Freeland.
Fortunately, according to Freeland, the studio allowed them to go as far as they wanted to. She added: “In this case, Marvel let us go quite far with it. But really it all comes down the story. If you look at this character, she’s a high ranking lieutenant in Kingpin’s army, and she’s the boots on the ground. It’s not the people at the top who do the dirty work. It’s the people who have boots on the ground.”
“If Maya is going to come into Kingpin’s fold to the point where she’s being taken in as his niece, almost like an unhealthy father-daughter dynamic, she has to do something that’s going to put her on his radar. All roads lead to that. You have to have that. So with that, then the conversation is becomes ‘Well, okay, so how can we do this? How can we show this?’ She’s got to do some dirty work, you know? She has to show a certain degree of ruthlessness that that Kingpin would identify with and gravitate towards. So all those things just sort of contribute to creating something that was more graphic,” Freeland concluded.
What is Echo about?
Debuting under Marvel’s new banner, Echo — created by Marion Dayre — is a spin-off to MCU’s 2021 miniseries Hawkeye. The story centers on a deaf woman named Maya, also known as Echo, and her journey back home, where she must confront her past and reconnect with her family and Native American roots.
“Pursued by Wilson Fisk’s criminal empire, Maya’s journey brings her home and must confront her own family and legacy,” the logline reads.
In addition to Cox as the titular superhero, Echo also stars Chaske Spencer as Henry, Tantoo Cardinal as Chula, Devery Jacobs as Bonnie, Zahn McClarnon as William Lopez, Cody Lightning as Cousin Biscuits, Graham Greene as Skully, Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, and Charlie Cox as Daredevil, among others.
Echo Season 1 premieres on Disney+ and Hulu on January 9, 2024.
