My name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosey Night and welcome to a bite sized episode of x ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep put your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode, we are catching up on Echo in our previously on as part of the series revisiting all the things we missed while we were on hiatus and what show, What show?
What a show?
We opened in the ancient past where we see beings driven from their homes under the earth somewhere and they become the first of the Choktaw people. It's a story young Maya knows well. In two thousand and seven, we see Maya Lopez's mother, Taaloa, killed in a car crash that also takes one of Maya's legs. She then goes to live with her father, William in New York City.
William is a minor organized crime figure quickly climbing the ranks of the Kingpins organization, and we figure that his organized crime entanglements are probably the reason that Telloa's break lines got cut and then she got into this car
accident in New York. Wilson Fisk, William's boss, takes a shine to young Maya and he starts grooming her to be one of his enforcers, although you also can't it's it's a toxic relationship for sure, but you also can't deny that Wilson has actual care for her, like he cares, yeah.
And he loves her.
But they do some really great stuff that show that it's only to a certain extent right throughout the series.
He will never learn sign language, no matter what.
He will come up with technology that's right, he will have an interpret but he will never take the time to actually so there is a there's a distance between them there, but he does love her as much as Kingpin can love anyone.
I'm very busy, Maya, I can't go to the lessons. The stuff from the Hawkeye series on Disney Plus happens and William is killed, which, as Maya discovers, was what the Kingpin wanted. He wanted this guy out of the way. Maya shoots Fisk in the head, which absolutely kills him.
Kills him. He's no question, definitely not coming back.
She then returns to Oklahoma to plot the downfall of the Resk of Fisks organization. Step one sabotage one of Fisks cargo trains, and Maya succeeds in planting a bomb in one of the crates uh, but only a vision of her ancestors allows her to survive When the mission kind of goes sideways, the bomb explodes in New York City, wrecks a bunch of Kingpin real estate and probably kills some of his guys. Not that the Kingpin would care if he was alive, Rosie.
He wouldn't care, wouldn't care if he was alive, but he's not so.
But Fisk's goons strike back. They take Maya and her uncle, skating rink proprietor Henry Prisoner. Fisk's Russian heavy Zane shows up, but Maya handles him and the rest of the guys until Dunk Dunta. They're eventually called off by Wilson Fisk himself. That's right, guess what they alive? Who would have guessed?
This guy got a cool eye patch.
He's got a cool eye patch, and he's got some delicious wine.
Yes, and this is proof, as we kind of thought from Hawkey.
If you go back to that episode and we think that we were right.
Bell the super Powered comic book version of Wilson Fish. This man was shot straight in the head and he is fine, and he's tearing card doors off in Hawky. Alright, so this is not a man you want to mess with. But as we see, his relationship with Maya is actually much more tender than his relationships with other people. Also, I will say, earlier in the season, in a very impressive episode one action sequence, we do see Maya absolutely just cook Deaed Devil.
Like he doesn't have a chance.
Part of why Fisk is like so obsessed with her because she is the only one who got out of a fight with dead evil on top.
In the present, so Fisk is alive, he's at Maya's house, we get a flashback to two thousand and eight. We see Fisk bonding with his adopted niece Maya. And how do you bond with a young kid? You get her ice cream and then you beat the ice cream vendor potentially to death.
Which is what he does. Uh.
And Maya troublingly chips in kicking the guy, beginning her journey to beloved Mafia enforce her.
In the Fiscal Organization.
In the present, FIS gives Maya contact lenses. What it gives is strong forces contact lenses into her eye, which allow her to see in a kind of augmented reality kind of way. His speech translated into sign language and vice versa. Again, this guy could just take some asl classes, but he's wait way, way too busy.
I thought this was like such a fantastic reminder that like, yeah, he loves Maya, but he doesn't love her that much because we get to see in the earlier episodes and when Maya's at home and at coma, everyone around her signs constantly, even if they're just talking to each other, so they still sign in case Maya wanders.
Over, and because they're so used to it.
So it's this truth of like her real family and how they treat her.
And then Wilson, who does love her, but he is not able to truly.
Take the time to do something that would make her world big and make them be able to communicate. He's already killed one of her translators, and now he's got this fancy augmented reality technology, which honestly would be good.
He should share that with people, you know what I mean.
I'm very busy, So I kidnapped a engineer's family and made him create.
This program for h yeah, and he did it, so good for him. They have dinner.
Fisk, who has abandonment issues that are quite severe and strong, will learn more about those later, promises Maya that if she returns New York City with him, he will make her the heir to the criminal empire that he's built from the ground up. In New York City, Maya's visions of the chalk Top people continue. Now her grandmother Tula is experiencing them as well. She tells Maya that she should listen to those visions as they helped her once in the past when she was pregnant with Mina's mom.
Maya decides, I gotta kill Fisk. I gotta get this guy out of my life. Fisk is actually like, okay, sure, you give it a try. Why not, and he tells her about the time that he murdered his father who was beating her mom. But Maya doesn't do it, doesn't kill him, and Fisk is now enraged that Maya has left him has abandoned him, leaving town. In a flashback, we discovered that Maya's mom, Taloa, had healing powers that were strong enough to bring a dead bird back to life.
Maya learns that Gramachula and her cousin Bonnie have disappeared. This is surely Fisk trying to lure her back into town. In Sula's house, Maya has a strong, a powerful vision of her mother telling her that she's the legacy of her people, echoing through time. I love this scene. It was beautiful. Maya then has the big showdown with Fisk at the Choctaw Powow. The ancient Choctaw ancestor give Maya their power and she shares them with Chula and Bonnie. Maya uses the powers to uh to purge Fisk of
the trauma of his father's abuse. Really powerful scene. Actually, Fisc is completely weird, a doubt about it, and.
It's unclear actually.
How this cleansing will affect him, but it's clear that it affected him quite powerfully. He then leaves New York and on the plane leaves for New York and on the plane back decides very clearly to.
Run for office.
Of a clear nod to some really strong plot lines from the Daredevil comic book. Let's talk about this series, which I loved.
It was fantastic. I thought it was great.
I think the lac Recox is such a boon to the MCSU.
I think she's fantastic.
I love to see all these iconic and genous actors, you know, Graham Green, and to be able to see the world of Echo brought to life in such a thoughtful way.
I also thought the way they did the powers was quite cool. I am too. I am I'm a fan of Echo's original.
Powers, where she's essentially like a street level task master, like she can learn any fighting skill. But I thought they did it really well. I loved the scene where she shared it with Chula and Bonnie and the powers of kind community focused. I thought that was really cool. I thought the Dead Evil fight sequence in the first episode is like one of the best MCU fight sequences.
I think overall, the action in this series is as good as it gets in the MU.
Yeah, And I do think that's like one of the funniest things is they kind of they put this as one of those Marvel This is a bit darker it's gonna be on Disney, Plus you probably have to be in the adult section like It's own Night. But I have to say I think that was more.
Just because it was more action focused.
Apart from the first episode, I didn't find it to be so much more violent or bloody than anything else in the MCU.
But I do think that sometimes it's to do with.
Intimacy, because in the MCU we get to see constantly thousands of people are dying, Wonders throwing a brick, Wonders throwing a car into a building in Legoss, and thousands of people are dying the you know, the Chatari are coming to New York and thousands of people are dying.
Well they I think the official to be fair, I agree with you. I agree with you that it was very apparent to me that thousands of people died in the Chattari attack. That said, I think the official death toll, what is it like, It's like.
It's like sixty seven.
It's so crazy low because also that's that's you can't have the Avengers killed too many people.
But as we know, it's superhero fat.
Yeah, the death toll is likely quite high. But I think what people react to is there is a there's a distance and an abstraction to like a large amount of death in like a war scene or a battle, or you know, half the people being clicked off the earth. But I think that when people see hand to hand fighting when they see somebody get shot.
When it's a smaller, more intimate thing, it can.
Feel a lot more visceral, and I think that is the case with Echo.
I thought it worked really well.
I mean, I thought the first episode was one of the best pilots we've got from the TV show. And I also wish that it had been a longer series. I would have reached like an eight episode series. I think you could kind of feel some of the editing that had likely gone into this, especially because.
This is a rumor Siren.
This is not confirmed, but the rumor has it that the original version of Echo was dar Devil was her contact in New York, and Sherdock was her contact in New York, and then that changed with the creative changes on Dead Evil Born Again, and they kind of had to edit that out. So I then I will That leads me to a question for you, which is, do you think Echo will be in Dad Evilborne Again?
I hope so.
I hope so as well. And it's quite clear to me that you know what's interesting about Born Again is in the comics, Wilson Fisk does run for mayor. This is in the week of the of the Secret Empire.
Event and.
Merging that Fisk running for office with Daredevil Born Again. The broad outline of whatever remains of that plot that they decide to adapt is very interesting to me, and I think that there is quite obviously room for Echo to be part of that, since you know, Daredevil doesn't have a lot of natural allies right now in the city.
Yeah, and it's also really interesting because, like in when when Wilson Fisk runs for mayor, his deputy mayor is Matt mud for a time, because Matt is like so obsessed with catching him doing something illegal, so that would obviously be incredibly interesting.
I think there's probably a version the version that we now know has been reshot.
They just wrapped filming on the nudad Evil Born Again kind of version that they've just finished. I think there was probably a version of that show where Echo was very heavily.
Going to be in it.
I think this version it will be more of a cameo, which makes me feel sad, but I also understand because now we have Foggy and Karen, who apparently weren't going to be in the original version, and I love them. We also have the return of the actor who originally played Wilson Fisk's wife who had been recast, but now
she's coming back and she was so brilliant. So I understand that they want to keep it more along the lines of the Netflix show, but I think that I would love to see, you know, Frank Castle and Echo. I think those two that would be so interesting. And we know that Punisher is going to be in the series. Also, I'm just happy to see more of Dinofrio Kingpin because he's wonderful.
We have that we lucky we live in his time.
He's fantastic, He's wonderful and that gravelly voice, it's so good.
We're gonna take a quick break and moll be right back. We're back.
I can't wait to see how this dovetails with Daredevil and Daredevil's true introduction into the MCU. We've got him in cameos, but I will be fascinated to see how that works. And also like what the effects of Maya's
cleansing are on Fisk, because yeah, does he really think? Yeah, does he really feel like, Hey, I'm good now and I'm here to to because you know, part of that storyline, uh, as you mentioned, is that Fisk runs from Ayor Matt joins his organization because he wants to catch Wilson doing something kingpin like.
And so I do wonder.
If it's if we're gonna be waiting for the kingpin criminal side to emerge, and if it ever will it must, But like, what does what effect does this cleansing have on him? I think that's an open question. That's really fascinating.
That would be really interesting because in that case, who's our antagonist for boy? Yeah, and I think we know Bulls I might be returning, which is fantastic because that was a great version of the character. But I'm very interested because it does put a whole new spin. If Fisk isn't your major antagonist, then you open up a world of intrigue and interest of where we could go.
I just thought Echo was so great. I'm glad it exists.
I'm glad of Laquo got her starring role, and I hope see her in a tom More stuf.
Like that. Read this.
Every episode we like to close the show with a variety of fast moving segments. Today it's like that read this where we recommend comics to read if you like the show or movie that we are talking about so obviously.
This week it's comics to read.
If you liked Echo, I will begin sure because the original I will start with just the obvious. The original Echo appearances Maya Lopez in Dead Devil volume two, issues nine to fifteen, which is the Joe Casada David Mack Dead Devil where you kind of get to meet her and it's a Marvel Knight's era, darker story where Dadevil finds himself kind of fighting for his life after as we this may sound familiar to fans of Hawkeye after Kingpin tells Maya that Dead Devil killed her dad.
So I would say that's a great place to start.
Just like six issues, you really get to know her, and it's it's a really great I mean, David Max like a legend.
I'm going to pick.
Daredevil issues two fifty four to two sixty three, which you can read if you have the Marvel and Limited app or you're the comic reader of your choice. This chronicles Matt Murdoch aka Daredevil's pseudo sexual battle with the criminal Typhoid Mary.
Written by This is the best Dad Evil stuff the all time.
Written by the Legend and ASSENTI with art by the legend John Ramita Jr.
And it's it's just great stuff.
Typhoid Mary in my opinion, mysterious criminal shows up in town and is she a mutant?
What does she want?
Does she hate Daredevil?
Does she love him?
It's uh. It a lot of twists and turns, and it was a super formative plot arc when I was a kid first reading comments this is like this was like the third or fourth comic I ever bought. Was the beginning of the stereosatory line.
It's ali.
Yeah, this is one of the few comics where I've made That's one of the few runs where I still have the whole arc because I just think it's so important and it is like some of the best JR jr r. It's super loose, he's really finding himself. Him and Annie are like a They're a match made in heaven. That's That's definitely one of the best Dead Ever runs you can read. So ten out of ten agree with that one.
Go read it now, see you next time, See you next time.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Excepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is A Booze of Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Laude, Kenny Goodman and Heidi our discord moderator
