Hello everyone, welcome to the Mattacritic. This is Matthew Hemenway. Before I start this review, please subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell so you never miss a review. In this episode of the Mattacritic, I will be reviewing and analyzing Marvel Studios Echo Season 1 that is currently on Disney+ and Hulu. This is a Disney+ Original and what is amazing is that this series has a Mature rating, and it is done by Disney+ not Hulu. Usually series like Dopesick, and Only Murders in the Building are done by Hulu. They are the Mature series that is done and do not forget that Hulu is owned by Disney. If fans of Marvel believed that the Marvel Cinematic Universe needed a fresh series or movie, this series does that in so many ways. The series is the answer that Marvel needed for so many reasons. It has a diverse character that is deaf, an amputee, and is of indigenous nature who first appeared on the Hawkeye series that I reviewed for this channel. The actress Alaqua Cox is deaf, an amputee, and is of indigenous nature like her character in this show. She plays herself. She finds out by Clint Barton who was Ronin the Assassin that he was hired by Kingpin to kill her father and that Kingpin wanted her father dead. Maya Lopez realizes Kingpin is not who she thought he was. He manipulated her to be his weapon and used her for his dirty work. This is what this review will set out to prove. This character is of Native American origin. She is part of the Choctaw Nation that is in Tamaha, Oklahoma. It is good that Marvel has this series set in a small town like Tamaha, Oklahoma. Most of the characters like Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Kate Bishop, Danny Rand, Bucky Barnes, or Steve Rogers are from New York City. This is a change that Maya Lopez who is Echo is from this small town of Tamaha, Oklahoma. This needed to be done. It is true that Sam Wilson is from Louisiana and is not from New York City and Peter Quill is from Missouri. The people that are involved in this series collaborated with the Choctaw Nation. This is good because they did everything, they could do to make this look authentic. This is important because if you do your homework and you know everything you can about that culture, it only makes the story richer and gives that realistic feel that you are trying to tell. It is impressive that Marvel did this. The other series that did this is in Longmire, 1923, and Joe Pickett that had Indigenous/Native Americans in their stories. Marvel took it to another level, but it does not take away what those series did. 2 of the actors were in the Longmire series. Their names will be revealed later in this review. Emotional, spiritual, and Mental pain are a theme in this series. There are 3 characters in this series that the viewer can point to in this series. They are Maya Lopez, Chula, and Wilson Fisk. They are all connected to each other. The connection will be explained in this review. I will also use my automobile accident that I suffered in 2005 as an example of understanding this pain that these 3 characters are going through in this story. I will give you my rating at the end of this review. I hope this episode will inspire you to read, watch, and learn.
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It is very important for the viewer to watch the Hawkeye series on Disney+ as this will give you the viewer the background that you need to watch this series. This series will start off with Chafa and her people being made of clay. You will see a woodpecker and it is called Bisknik and it helped to warn the tribe against enemies. It will carve out warnings in the tree. This is very authentic to the Choctaw Nation culture. They believed that we started as clay and later escaped a cave and became human beings. This is on a website that I will leave a link in the bottom of this video or blog. You can check this out and learn about their culture. You can learn about stick ball which was in the second episode of this series. That is how they play the game as you can learn about reading and watching a video about stick ball. Each episode will lead to the culmination of Maya becoming Echo and she will go through a hero journey. She believes that she wants power, but it will come at a price. When you trust a devil like Kingpin, you will get false gold. It usually does not turn out how people think it will. She shot Kingpin in the last episode of the Hawkeye series. It will show a recap of that in the first episode of the Echo series.
When they talk about Chafa, Maya Lopez is with her cousin Bonnie in the tent when Maya Lopez is 7 years old, and Bonnie looks to be about the same age at the same time in 2007. This starts that year in that episode Tamaha, Oklahoma. Maya’s father, William Lopez, Taloa, her mother, Skully, her grandfather, and Chula, her grandmother as they were sitting around the fire telling stories. Chula and Skully later leave and as they were going home Chula has a vision that something bad will happen. It later starts to rain, and this causes Bonnie and Maya to go back inside the house. Maya Lopez asks her mother for hot chocolate. Her mother tells her that they are out. They later go to the store, and this is when her mother and her get hit by oncoming traffic and her mother dies. They get T-boned because of the brake cable being cut. Maya Lopez will lose her leg as a piece of glass gets in her leg. Maya Lopez is not only going through physical pain but emotional, spiritual, and mental pain. This will cause Chula to be mad at William Lopez and she blames him for this. She told him that she would never forgive him for Taloa dying. This will break Chula and make her closed off to people. Wiliam Lopez is played by Zahn McClarnon who was in the Longmire series and played the tribal police chief. He was in the Hawkeye series in the 3rd episode of that series. The actor who plays Skully is Graham Greene and was in the Longmire series and he played Malachi who was the villain. Graham Greene was in Wind River, and he acted beside Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen in that movie who both play Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch in the MCU.
This will lead to New York and scenes from the school when Maya was 7 years old will surface. The scene with her father will surface as Maya was asking about dragons. This will be the Hawkeye feel that the viewer experienced in this first episode of the Echo series. Maya will be at the Cemetry after her father dies and it is like when Harry Osborne lost his father at the end of the first Spider-Man, the 2002 version of that character that starred Tobey Maguire. The picture will show Peter leaving the gravesite, but it is right after Norman Osborne dies. It will lead the viewer to the point where Maya Lopez realizes the truth about Wilson Fisk, and she later shoots him in the eye.
It will be 5 months later, and Maya Lopez will need help from her uncle Henry Black Crow Lopez. Yes, being named after an animal is not unusual. In the Longmire series, Henry Standing Bear, who is Walt Longmire’s best friend is a common name for Native Americans. In 1923, Teonna Rainwater was another name. Being named after animals or other elements of nature is common in the Native American folk lore and culture. Maya Lopez used dental floss, and this helped her in stitching up the wound from the gun shot that she suffered. This is very similar to Night Nurse in the 1st season of Luke Cage, when she sewed up Misty who is a detective for NYPD with dental floss.
Henry tells Maya on the water tower that he will not bring a war to Tamaha. Maya tells Henry it is time for a queen.
Earlier in the 1st episode, Maya Lopez aka Echo will fight Daredevil and she does better than Kingpin thought she would. As Kingpin points out to Maya Lopez, no one has ever held their own against him, like you did. She and Daredevil were adversaries here, but later they become allies against Kingpin. It is true in the Marvel comics as there is a series called Daredevil and Echo that will help the viewer to understand the dynamics of Daredevil and Echo. I will leave a reference to that series in the description below in the video or the blog post if you are reading this on my blog.
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Each of these episodes will help to culminate in Maya Lopez becoming Echo. The 2nd episode will deal with Lowak and this is where they will be playing stick ball in Alabama in 1200 and this is accurate to history as the Choctaw Nation was in Alabama before they ended up in Oklahoma. Lowak will get frustrated, but she will channel Chafa and she will find the strength to help them win. The game was very authentic. The game is like Lacrosse. If you have not watched Lacrosse, there are plenty of options to do so. It is played at the collegiate level in both Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse. Lacrosse was developed by native Americans and according to Wikipedia; it uses a stick and like was shown in this episode with stick ball. Lacrosse is played with a stick that has a net in the top portion of it and you must catch a ball in it, and you toss the ball to the other player to make a pass. You must toss the stick with the ball in it to the goal and get in the net to score a goal. A good movie to watch is Invisible Sister as this will show Lacrosse being played in that movie. When Cleo must take her sister’s Molly place after Molly is made invisible, Cleo must play Lacrosse, and finds out that she is better than she thought she was. Lowak realizes that she must help her tribe to win this match to keep them from being banned from those lands.
Maya Lopez will use that vision of Lowak and Chafa to help her in getting away from the train. She puts an explosive in the train and later blows up the DX-9 in New York. Henry Black Crow Lopez will encounter Maya Lopez and tell her you are starting a war. Maya Lopez tells him that there is a war. She tells him, "I will say when it starts, and when it stops. This is not chaos, this is power.” As Henry Black Crow Lopez tells her, you sound like Fisk. Maya gains a vision after she gets a text from Bonnie, and she wonders why Maya did not tell her that she was in town. Bonnie will find out from Biscuits that she was in town.
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The third episode of this series will feature Tuklo. She is the daughter of a Light horseman who are part of the tribal police. She can be a great shot and she was very accurate when she threw objects and could hit them. The beginning of this episode reminds the viewer of a silent film, as there is only music, and no dialogue; there are only texts that tell the story they tell in this flashback. Tuklo will tell her father that she wants to be Light horseman. Her father will tell her, that women are life givers, and men are life takers. She tells her father that what good is it to give life, if I cannot protect it. That makes sense. Is a woman more than just giving birth to children? Of course, she is more than that. She is a person and can do more than just give birth to children. Maya Lopez will pull from Tuklo. She later must get out of a situation where she can die but is saved by a phone call. The fight scenes were awesome and showed how good a fighter Maya is. Yes, it can be done. There are people who do flips and crazy stuff. My martial arts training says yes, this can be done.
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The 4th episode of this series will deal with Maya’s grandmother Chula giving birth to her mother Taloa who is considered a healer. Chula will explain to Maya that the ancestors will communicate with you when they are needed most. Maya always believes that her grandmother Chula did not want her around. Because of what happened to Taloa when she died of the result of being T-boned. This broke Chula’s heart. As Maya tells Chula, you chose yourself. Maya needed her grandmother, and her grandmother Chula chose herself after Taloa was killed. William Lopez later goes to New York and later gets killed by Ronin the Assassin who was used by Kingpin to kill Maya’s father. Kingpin will offer Maya Lopez everything. He promises her an empire. Henry Black Crow Lopez tells Maya Lopez that Kingpin is the reason I am 45 and alone. He tells her you cannot trust him. It is no different than when Satan offers Jesus Christ everything, but Jesus Christ sees the lies of Satan and does not accept his terms. Maya Lopez will reject Kingpin and Kingpin is mad. Kingpin showed Maya Lopez the hammer which is a reference to the first season of Daredevil when he killed his father with it. His father did beat his mother, and he killed him to stop him. Kingpin thought he was getting free of the pain inflicted by his father. Instead, the pain turned Kingpin into a monster.
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The fifth episode will be called Maya, and this episode will culminate to her becoming Echo. Culmination is the meaning of when a story gets to the climax. Maya Lopez realizes that she must go back home to Tamaha, Oklahoma. She will get to her childhood home, and she finds her mother standing there. Her mother knows that she has been hurting and her mother Taloa tells Maya that it is time for your pain to go away. Maya Lopez tells her mother Taloa that she can’t, she does not know how to get my pain to go away. Her mother tells her that she will help her. She tells her your ancestors will help you. Remember your gifts of love, sacrifice, strategy, and courage. It was made into this suit which was designed by her grandmother Chula. The battle between Kingpin and Maya Lopez will be epic. It will have the audience hear from her perspective and it will help give that feel if the viewer were deaf. This is good. Maya Lopez will touch Kingpin and force him to go back to the pain of when he was a child. Maya Lopez tells him to let go of his anger, but he does not want to. Pain has become his life and uses the pain as an excuse to be the monster that he has become. How does this fight end? Drop your answer in the comment section below. Pow Wow was awesome, and it was cool to see it in this series. Henry Black Crow Lopez will come up big as he will shoot Zane and keep him from hurting innocent people as well as Biscuits. Biscuits helped Maya in the 2nd episode during the train attack as Maya was planting that explosive on that train. Biscuits will use his monster truck to crush the vans to be sure they were not going to cause any trouble at the Pow Wow. Does Maya reconcile with her family? Drop your answer in the comment section below.
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I will give you, my rating. I give Marvel Studios Echo Season 1, a Disney+ original, a 10 out of 10. It was fun, and it was very well done. It is important to show that problems like what was shown in this small town happen and you do not have to be in a big city for that to happen. The series does an excellent job of explaining how emotional, spiritual, and mental pain can affect people. Each person in this world has some difficulties in his or her life. I can relate to Maya in this series since I was T-boned like her and something like what happen to her can stay with you for a long time. She believes it was her fault that her mother was killed. Kingpin uses the pain of her father’s murder to become his weapon. As Clint Barton tells Maya, “When you are filled with rage. You can be used.” He tells her your boss wanted your father dead. Kingpin believes that when he killed his father with the hammer, he was free. That is the irony, he was not, it is an illusion at best. He finds out that it is still there, and when Maya Lopez caused him to face it, he wanted to run from it. He is a coward when it comes to that. It is hard to face one’s pain, but it takes courage. I hope that I personally have gotten better, but I am not sure. I take it each day at a time. Life will never be easy, but if we realize as Maya’s mother was telling Maya, you are not alone. This means we are not alone; we have friends and family that love us. It is never good when we try to do things ourselves, especially handling things like bad events that happen to us. Marvel did a great job of doing their homework and getting collaboration from the Choctaw Nation. It made this series more believable, and it is a great way to teach people the history of these wonderful people.
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Please check out my playlist reviews of the Hawkeye series coming up right now. It is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeQDKx5GlYDur-oUFyDEIIn_vcuY2hu. Please check out my review of Secret Invasion Season 1 coming up right now. It is https://youtu.be/7KtkqYdCGFs. Thank you.
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Music: A Day to Remember from Microsoft's Clipchamp Video Editor
Reference: Marvel Studios Echo (2024) and image: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/echo/4unBxmuv2B8B
Reference: Marvel’s Daredevil (2015 to 2018) and image: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/daredevil/5jKSWL7ZMg50
Reference: Marvel’s Luke Cage (2016 to 2018) and image: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/luke-cage/1L458elR85KN
Reference: Marvel Studios Hawkeye (2021) and image: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/hawkeye/11Zy8m9Dkj5l
Reference: Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building: https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-ef31c7e1-cd0f-4e07-848d-1cbfedb50ddf
Reference: Hulu’s Dopesick series (2021): https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-227de06a-d3d4-42e0-9df1-bb5495e1738d
Reference: Spider-Man (2002): https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/details/4q3uPuyBeCkw
Reference: Longmire on Netflix: www.netflix.com
Reference: 1923 on Paramount+ and image: www.paramountplus.com and www.appletv.com
Reference: Joe Pickett series on Paramount+ and image: www.paramountplus.com and www.appletv.com
Reference: Wind River (2018) and image: https://www.amazon.com/Wind-River-Jeremy-Renner/dp/B0B3CVTJ9J/ref=sr_1_3?crid=37PZHATK5BTT5&keywords=wind+river&qid=1706213033&sprefix=wind+ri%2Caps%2C337&sr=8-3
Reference: Marvel Studios Echo (2024) images from Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=marvel+echo+show&source=lmns&tbm=vid&bih=919&biw=1920&prmd=ivnshmbtz&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS850US859&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiS_MC1zP6DAxWdp4kEHRLmCWYQ0pQJKAN6BAgBEAg
Reference: Invisible Sister (2015) image from Google: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=601771759&sxsrf=ACQVn0-UHb6R8uvwsZqrPhJeJKN0rZw1JQ:1706289478231&q=invisible+sister&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=ivshnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjwme_Rx_uDAxVrPkQIHRvNDZMQ0pQJegQIExAB&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1
Reference: Spider-Man (2002) image from Google: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=601771820&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS850US859&sxsrf=ACQVn0-3ZPqkY-lwZTpF1XybFVZkaorCfA:1706300496564&q=Spiderman+2002&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLQz9U3MKssNlLiBLEMjYoNU7TkspOt9NMyc3LBRHxyRmJRYnJJapFVbn5ZZmrxIla-4ILMlNSi3MQ8BSMDA6MdrIwAFhiun0sAAAA&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=isvhnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq9-jX8PuDAxVrH0QIHVA4BxoQ0pQJegQIGxAB&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1
Reference: Wind River Image from Google: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=601771820&sxsrf=ACQVn08qnEz4UVFkMRvalNSWJH38yBWhIQ:1706301847802&q=wind+river&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=ishvnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiY8ZHc9fuDAxWvPEQIHYefD5MQ0pQJegQIEhAB&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1
Reference: Longmire Image from Google: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=5c9d48f4bac99232&rlz=1CAVARX_enUS1048US1048&sxsrf=ACQVn0_KTVtffoS_vWiF_BtWWcFAD1pEcQ:1706394486473&q=longmire&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=ivnhsmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK0Nnpzv6DAxWDm2oFHc8nBrIQ0pQJegQIIhAB&biw=1366&bih=599&dpr=1
Reference: Choctaw Nation collaboration on Marvel Studios Echo on Disney+ and Hulu: https://www.choctawnation.com/news/news-releases/choctaw-nation-launches-informational-website-for-marvels-echo-series/
Reference: Choctaw Nation: https://www.choctawnation.com/
Reference: Lacrosse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse
Reference: Invisible Sister (2015): https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/details/4XLkQ95dRew5
Reference: Daredevil and Echo: https://www.amazon.com/Daredevil-Echo-Taboo-ebook/dp/B0CGVYRTXR/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HD3W087IDYYA&keywords=daredevil+and+echo&qid=1706066442&sprefix=daredevil+and+echo%2Caps%2C759&sr=8-1
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