The Echo Chamber

I finished the last three episodes of Echo last night. The show went from so-so to stinking awful pretty fast. And it's all the same problems. In particular, I felt the presence of committee writing. It really felt like a car going down a road with five or six people all trying to take the wheel.

Vincent D'Onofrio will always be great as Wilson Fisk, which is probably why it's good idea not to lobotomise him, which is probably what one of the hands trying to take the wheel realised when Maya invaded his mind with her healing spell in the final episode. He screams, "What did you do to me?" Of course, she did nothing but archly scold him. Whoever's idea it was to have her heal his brain will just have to eat crow, but of course the first part of the idea was left in because you have to fill up the runtime somehow.

She had all the power of her ancestors at the end, much as Rey had all the power of her Jedi predecessors at the end of Rise of Skywalker. It felt just about as empty, too. I wonder which of the Disney brass is so in love with this idea.

The schizophrenia in the dialogue was really frustrating. When Maya and Fisk meet again, he tells her he understands her shooting him, it's what he taught her. And then, moments later, he's yelling at her because she dared to shoot him. Sure, people can be contradictory and hypocrites, but this didn't remotely feel natural, despite D'Onofrio's fine performance.

I thought Alaqua Cox was good too, though I understand she was too understated for some people. I thought she was subtle and it makes sense, given her history, that she would be emotionally withdrawn. But there's very little sense in the development path she's led on. When she calls Fisk a monster, he correctly points out she had no qualms about killing people for him in the past. So where was the moment when she decided to change her ways? Did she decide to? If she wants to take out Fisk for revenge, okay, but the fact that she would try to take a moral high ground smacks of writers who didn't know what they were doing.

They could've given her an arc in which the killer became a healer. But they didn't, they just dumped it on her in the end. I'm really not even clear on her moral position in the end, or the nature of her superpowers, for that matter, and I don't think the writers were either.

Echo is available on Disney+.

A Young Woman on a Quest for . . . ?

Disney released the new Marvel series, Echo, in its entirety last night. I don't binge, I just don't have the time, but I watched the first two episodes. It's not really a bad show. Alaqua Cox's performance is really good, nice and subtle. The fact that she's actually deaf lends a lot of authenticity to her performance.

The show was created by Marion Dayre, who won a Peabody Award for her work on Better Call Saul. Yet every episode of Echo has at least four credited writers, The last two episodes do not include Dayre among the writers. Sounds like Dayre wrote something Feige or Disney wasn't happy with and so they brought in a gang to tamper with it and Dayre left unhappy and signed a non-disparagement agreement. That would be my guess.

The action scenes are pretty good, especially the big fight with Daredevil (Charlie Cox). More than his appearance on She-Hulk, it really felt like we were back in the old Marvel Netflix world. And, of course, Vincent D'Onofrio is great as Wilson Fisk.

Maya's motives still seem a little hazy. There are a lot of little moments where I wonder, "Why did she do that?" like when she tore her pant leg during the train sequence. I'm also not clear on why she had to come to her hometown in order to wage war on Fisk's organisation.

I'm also not clear on the exact nature of the superpower she seems to have inherited. I kind of liked the sequence set in 1200 Alabama, though very little is known about the Native American civilisation at that time so we're seeing a lot of inferences when it comes to costumes and customs. I liked the big burly bad guy, he seemed like he could really tear things up, but altogether I wish the sequence had been weirder.

Echo is available on Disney+.