Echo's Director Discusses Making a Mature Disney+ Series Where Bones Break and People Die

Jan 08 2024

Crime Interview Family History Action Transformation Cast Film Adventure Marvel Echo Kingpin Disney+ Mature content Tv Director View Death Disney Marvel cinematic universe

Marvel Studios' Echo is making history as the first show under the new Marvel Spotlight banner. The series stars Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, the first deaf and Native American lead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Echo is also the first series to be simultaneously launched on Disney+ and Hulu with a TV-MA rating. Maya Lopez, first introduced in the Disney+ series Hawkeye, is the adoptive daughter of New York crime lord, Wilson Fisk, also known as Kingpin. Echo delves into Lopez's journey from being a high-ranking lieutenant in Kingpin's army to returning to her Choctaw family in Oklahoma and dealing with the trauma of her father's death. The series offers a gritty, violent break from the Multiverse. The cast also includes Charlie Cox, Zahn McClarnon, Devery Jacobs, among others. In an interview with Collider's Steve Weintraub, director Sydney Freeland discusses the significance of Disney+'s first TV-MA rating for Maya's story and how they leveraged both the rating and the Spotlight banner to create a grounded, street-level narrative for this new antihero. Freeland also talks about the transformation of Echo from the initial stages to the final edit, the challenges of filming American Sign Language scenes, and more.