1x05 Maya

[5.8/10] So let’s start with the thing I did like. Maya sparing Fisk’s pain, rather than ending him, surprised me. I assumed Echo would do the standard superhero/supervillain throwdown thing, that flattens all the complicated morality and character of a season into one standard bout of fisticuffs. (Hello Daredevil season 1 fans!) I appreciate how “Maya” swerves instead.

It is, at a minimum, cheap to give a character powers that allows them to nigh-magically resolve someone else’s emotional pain. But for one thing, the most interesting thing you could do for Kingpin is take away the thing that he claims “made him”. For another, there is no stronger rebuke of Fisk’s value system than for Maya to choose to help him rather than kill him, breaking the cycle rather than perpetuating it. And finally, it ties into Maya’s mother’s flashback admonition about not hurting a living thing, showing that more than Chula or Kingpin, the legacy that Maya carries on is her mother’s.

In short, it’s plain that the writing team thought out how to make a thematically resonant ending that tied into Maya’s actions. The turn was surprising, but dovetailed neatly with what the show had set up to date, which is a tricky tightrope to pull off.

The problem is that this is about all I liked from the finale. (Give or take another rendition of Samantha Crain’s “When We Remain” and the coolness of the few glimpses we get of the Chocktaw celebration.)

All of the complexity from the last episode has evaporated. Chula is pure good. Kingpin is pure evil. All of the nuance is gone. And despite the fact that there’s thankfully not much of an action-heavy climax here, they spin up a contrived excuse for Biscuits to crush the bad guys with a Monster Truck, and for Henry to take out Fisk’s head goon. I appreciate wanting to involve your secondary characters in the action, but the involvement of both of them feels so shoehorned in.

Speaking of which, holy cow Chula and Bonnie’s powers come out of nowhere and are badly deployed. Maybe I’ve seen too much, but the “I’m infused by the powers of everyone, and I’m sharing them with my comrades!” ending has been done too many times to have force for me. Buffy did it, and most notably, Captain Marvel did it. So while I get the symbolism of Maya standing in front of the spirits of her ancestors, and sharing her powers with her grandmother and best friends, in practice it comes off hackneyed and silly.

Look, this is a fantastical superhero show. I can buy magic existing in the world. But Bonnie and Chula breaking away from their attackers just looks silly visually, which makes it hard to take seriously. And on a practical evel, it’s not clear why the goons don‘t shoot them or club them or whatever else even if they have some kind of mystical strength. I don’t need realism in my superhero shows by any stretch of the imaignation, but this one doesn't pass the smell test.

Likewise, I miss the more understated version of Maya’s connection to her family and to her ancestors. I get that, despite its Better Call Saul writer bona fides, Echo is a show aimed at general audiences, and so not everything is going to be as subtle. By god, Maya’s mom showing up, magically curing her emotional pain, and giving a speech that basically just spells out the themes of the show so bluntly is painful. The hard work of Maya’s emotional journey is all but hand-waved away through a deus ex machina who, to add insult to injury, announces the central ideas of the show rather than conveying them in a more artful fashion.

In other cliches, I’ve seen the “Hero self-actualizes by putting on their costume” thing too many times to count, so that has no force either. I can appreciate the gesture of Chla busting out her old sewing machine and using it to support her granddaughter. (And it’s nice to get one last appearance from Graham Greene.) But again, all the complexity is gone. Chula is now a force for good, and all is ostensibly forgiven.

I don’tg know. This finale is a real missed opportunity. There’s some interesting ideas here and there, mostly with Maya’s choice to spare and even save her tormentor. But everything else here is so facile, hackneyed, or cheap. Echo could never really decide whether it wanted to be a prestige drama or a generic superhero show, and unfortunately, its final statement leans much more into the latter.

On the whole, Echo is fine. The poor ending takes some of the bloom off the rose, and the shortcuts to Maya’s rekindling of her relationship with her family sap how meaningful the reunion can be. But there’s a few good action scenes and quality character moments to boast as well. I can't pretend I’d be in any hurry to rewatch it, but it’s better than at least half of the Netflix Defenders seasons it’s seemingly in continuity with, which is something for a mini-series aiming to play in the same corner of the Marvel sandbox.