One of the big things with the new Marvel Studios series Echo is that it was designed to be enjoyed without having watched other shows and movies from Marvel Studios. There are connections, of course, but the first episode of the show in particular has some very interesting MCU teases while also doing something other Marvel shows haven’t done consistently, which is spoon-feed the audience.
Echo debuts January 9 on both Disney+ and Hulu with all five episodes dropping at the same time. In preparation, io9 spoke to one of the show’s executive producers, Richie Palmer, about its place in not just the larger MCU, but also in a new world where being an MCU obsessive may not be as crucial as before. In the video below, we specifically talk about the fact that two characters from previous Marvel shows—Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio)—appear, and how Echo weaves in the events from Hawkeye, which is where Echo herself, Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) debuted.
When we last saw Maya Lopez, she had shot her “uncle” Kingpin in the face. So, obviously, this new show was going to deal with that. Slightly more surprising is that, having now debuted on She-Hulk, Daredevil also appears here briefly. What’s most interesting about both characters though is that Echo’s dialogue makes it clear they have a past we have yet to see. Or have we?
“I don’t want to step on [Daredevil: Born Again’s] toes, but it was all thought out to make sure that fans of the Netflix series could still enjoy this series,” Palmer told io9. “We’re all fans of the Netflix series and all of the series that came about from that time, too. And we wanted to honor it and make sure that, you know, fans felt like that was a part of this story, but not in any way that you needed to know that stuff. So we just wanted to make sure that it honored what came before it, but hopefully pushed it forward also and continues to push forward on the new Daredevil show.”
In addition to that tease, Echo’s first episode has flashbacks to the previous show, Hawkeye, filling in gaps for viewers who may or may not have seen that show. It’s not something Marvel usually does, so we were curious about it.
“We always want to make sure that you can, especially on the television side of things, tune into our shows without having too much prior knowledge of our shows and movies,” Palmer said “With Echo, the first episode starts literally with the dawn of time. From there we get Maya’s whole backstory and everything you need to know about her. We kind of get it out in a chronological way upfront, including some of the stuff that happened on Hawkeye. We tease it, we touch on it in a way that you just know what you need to know upfront and we get it out of the way so we can just enjoy the ride with Echo the rest of the time.”
Sounds like Marvel found a way to both have its Cinematic Universe, and set it aside too. We’ll have more from Palmer in the days leading up to Echo, which debuts January 9 on both Disney+ and Hulu.
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