New Echo Trailer Features Daredevil
Marvel’s next Disney+ series is sprouting horns. Yesterday, the studio released a new trailer for Echo, the upcoming spin-off of Hawkeye. Echo follows underworld assassin Maya Lopez as she returns to her hometown and reconnects with her Native American heritage while the Kingpin and his minions pursue her. Alaqua Cox returns as Maya, with Vincent D’Onofrio also back as the Kingpin; they’re joined by Graham Greene, Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, and Devery Jacobs. And, as the new trailer makes clear, Charlie Cox will appear as Daredevil. The first of Marvel’s Disney+ shows to be rated TV-MA, Echo will begin airing its entire run of episodes on January 9, 2024. You can see the new trailer below:
The first Echo trailer made a point of advertising the TV-MA rating, clearly as a means of enticing increasingly apathetic Marvel fans to tune in, as well as to tie it to the much more popular Netflix Marvel shows, particularly Daredevil. To that end, the Kingpin’s presence and narration were no accident. This time, they made sure to show us Daredevil in action, just in case we didn’t get the point. And to be fair, the trailers have been good; the action looks much closer to what they did on Netflix than the silly Disney+ Marvel fare, which is a point in its favor. We haven’t seen much of the story, but it’s certainly aesthetically pleasing so far. I was surprised to see that Echo will only run for five episodes; a little investigating reveals that it was initially supposed to be eight, but Kevin Feige decided it was “unreleasable,” so it was re-shot, re-cut, and whittled down to a handful of episodes. That’s less assuring than the visuals, and it makes you wonder how carefully these trailers were constructed to make the show look as good as possible. (I know all trailers are like that; I mean, it brings into question how much Marvel had to work with on this one.) So, the marketing is essentially, “Hey, it’s five episodes; spend an afternoon with Daredevil, the Kingpin, some good fights, and a mature rating.” And that’s probably the best pitch Marvel can make right now.
