Major Marvel Firsts: TV-MA Rating, Concurrent Hulu Debut, and Native American and Deaf Lead Are Revealed in the “Echo” Trailer
Sydney Freeland, the director and executive producer of the show, emphasized at a press gathering how Marvel actively promoted diversity in the production: “I experienced complete support and freedom to bring our unique perspectives to the table.”
Director and executive producer Sydney Freeland talked about how Marvel gave priority to representation on the episode at a press conference: “I felt completely empowered and protected.”
There are multiple firsts for the corporation with the Marvel series “Echo,” which launched its first trailer on Friday and will premiere on January 10. This is the first Marvel Studios production to have a simultaneous premiere on Disney+ and Hulu, to have all of its episodes available for binge-watching at once, and to have a TV-MA rating. The fact that it is the first superhero series ever to focus on a deaf and Native American character—Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), who made her debut in the 2021 series “Hawkeye”—is also very significant to director and executive producer Sydney Freeland (“Reservation Dogs”)
Native American and Deaf Lead
During a press conference for the series in October, Freeland stated, “Representation was extremely important to me and to everyone on the crew.” Executive producer Brad Winderbaum, who also serves as Marvel’s head of streaming, television, and animation, was there. Although the show’s creators claimed that there was deaf and Indigenous representation both in front of and behind the camera, additional measures were taken to guarantee a high degree of realism throughout the production process.
Freeland, a Navajo who was up on the tribe’s reservation in New Mexico, claimed to have “grown up reading Marvel comic books” and to have attended powwows, an ancient Native American festival that features singing, drumming, dance, and community-building. “To me, powwows were similar to someone visiting Disneyland in Anaheim.”
Freeland, however, never felt as though those two enduring aspects of her life “overlapped,” a connection she hoped to make during the creation and execution of “Echo.”
First, according to Freeland, she and the creative team, which includes co-executive producer Amy Rardin and head writer Marion Dayre, have reinterpreted the character’s Indigenous identity, making her an Oklahoman Choctaw tribe member. Maya is a Blackfeet tribal member in the comics, but according to Freeland, the accompanying images were a “hodgepodge” of images that resulted in a “muddied” and ultimately unauthentic narrative for the character. (In the meantime, Cox is descended from the Mohican people and a Menominee Nation resident.)
Major Marvel Firsts: TV-MA Rating, Concurrent Hulu Debut, and Native American and Deaf Lead Are Revealed in the “Echo” Trailer
In order to gather their opinion and establish a collaboration, the director also insisted on meeting with the Choctaw Nation.
Regarding her encounter with the tribal people, Freeland remarked, “I had a pitch deck and I pitched them the project.” “We think there’s a great story behind it, but it’s not going to be earnest and a little more violent.”
Tribal chiefs’ response, according to Freeland, was crickets. That’s when Freeland sensed their worry.
The director clarified, “Basically, I said, ‘No, no, we’re not here to tell you what we’re going to do.'” “Our goal is to start a conversation with you in order to gather your thoughts and develop a more accurate representation of the Choctaw people and culture.”
Even though Freeland herself was raised in a different tribe and was surrounded by Native culture, she acknowledged that her team members had to adjust to a new culture when they went to a Choctaw powwow.
She spoke to her production team, saying, “I could describe it until I was blue in the face, but they had to see it.” “Both my first assistant director and my production designer had to view it from his perspective. “How will he fill in the background extras?”
Freeland claimed that although she took many things for granted, such as the appearance of powwows and people’s attire, her team saw the same situations through uninformed eyes.
“When my costume designer first started working with me, she said, ‘Okay, let’s start creating these elaborate costumes.'” Does a store call Powwow? Is there somewhere I can go to get these things? said Freeland. She answered, “No.” Everything is manufactured to order. To “recreate a palette from the ground up,” Freeland insisted on importing real powwow dancers to the Georgia location where they were filming.
In addition to Indigenous actors Zahn McClarnon (“Dark Winds”), Graham Greene (“Dances With Wolves,” “Wind River”), Tantoo Cardinal (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), K. Devery Jacobs (“Reservation Dogs”), Chaske Spencer (“Wild Indian”), and Cody Lightning (“Hey, Viktor!”), the series will explore Lopez’s matrilineal ancestors and will feature a lot of imagery. Australian Aboriginal director Catriona McKenzie (“The Walking Dead”) oversees the series.
The show mostly picks up after the events of “Hawkeye,” but according to Freeland, it will also follow how a “seismic event” in Lopez’s family and the trauma that follows send Echo—a character played by Vincent D’Onofrio—in the direction of Wilson Fisk, also known as Kingpin.
Freeland stated, “Maya is in a very vulnerable, emotional place after this.” She doesn’t know what to do with all of this pent-up anger, rage, and feeling inside of her. Additionally, someone will be present to gently prod her.
While Freeland called the show “an exploration of trauma — how we deal with it, how we cope with it, how it affects us, how we affect it, how it affects those around us,” she also made sure to point out that, in contrast to many other Marvel properties like “Avengers” or “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the consequences are “street-level” rather than cosmic.
“The universe’s fate is not in jeopardy,” she declared. “This is how families end up.”
Winderbaum claims that the way those outcomes pan out places “Echo” on the “grittier side” for the studio, which results in the TV-MA rating.
According to Winderbaum, “It is kind of a new direction for the brand, especially on Disney+.” Disney and Marvel made the decision to launch the series on Hulu at the same time.
Freeland teased a fight scene from the show during the press conference, which dramatized Lopez’s purported birth as a villain. In it, she faces off against a slew of adversaries and runs across Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Kingpin’s chief adversary.
“We firmly believed that these are real people on our show; they bleed, they die, they are killed, and there are actual repercussions,” Freeland stated.
Freeland added that Marvel backed those and other creative decisions, despite the fact that this strategy is quite novel for the MCU.
She remarked, “They protect the shit out of their creatives.” “I felt so empowered and protected.”
How to depict a main character who speaks virtually only in American Sign Language (ASL) was another crucial decision. Once more, according to Freeland, representation was crucial. The performers signed during close-ups, and the crew attended ASL classes.
“Everyone there valued ASL greatly, and it was important to have the deaf perspective represented,” the speaker stated. “We wish to accept ASL.”
Regarding additional Marvel characters that might make an appearance in the series, Freeland remained silent. When it came to Lopez’s true superpowers—that is, what has been imagined in this series as opposed to the comics themselves—she was only marginally more candid.
“In the comic books, she possesses the ability to imitate any movement or object.” It’s quite cheesy,” Freeland remarked. I will say that she is not capable of such. I’ll just sort of end it there.
