The director and star on how Echo shakes up Marvel’s superhero formula

Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez in Marvel Studios' Echo, exclusively on Disney+. Photo / Marvel Studios 2023

When you picture a superhero, what do you see? Rippling muscles, spandex outfit, dazzling white teeth and, maybe, a cape billowing behind them. If we hit the stereotypes this imagined superhero will usually be white and male - despite Marvel’s best efforts at diversifying their Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that, despite its name, now also encompasses many television shows.

Their new series Echo continues that trend while also redefining what a superhero can be and what a superhero show can look like.

After the flashy, galactic hi-jinks of the latest Marvel film The Marvels, Echo returns to earth, grounding the MCU with a gritty street-level realism rather than the fanciful interplanetary and hard-to-track multiverse adventures of the studio’s recent efforts.

The show is a spin-off from the popular Hawkeye series and doesn’t feature an all-mighty villain threatening the entire world. Instead, Echo zooms down to street level as the titular hero takes on a powerful crime boss who is attempting to move into her neighbourhood.

It also differs from most Marvel fare by being decidedly more adult-orientated. This action crime-thriller has a much darker tone and more explicitly bone-crunching fight sequences than what you might expect from the generally kid-friendly studio.

But its biggest shake-up of the superhero formula is in its hero Echo and its star Alaqua Cox. Cox is Native American, from the Menominee tribe, and is deaf. She’s also an amputee with a prosthetic leg. None of this prevents her from kicking all manner of gangland butt in the show. So deadly is she in her action sequences that if you didn’t know she was an amputee you’d never guess.

Alaqua Cox (right) as Maya Lopez in Marvel Studios' Echo, releasing on Hulu and Disney+. Photo / Marvel Studios 2023

“The cultures I’m representing are all very underrepresented,” Cox tells the Herald via a sign language interpreter on Zoom. “It’s great to bring awareness. Having the show portray these characters as authentic by having authentic, Native American and deaf people is so important. It’ll help educate the audience about our community and hopefully will motivate them to learn a little bit more after watching.”

It’s a view shared by the series lead director Sydney Freeland, a transgender Native American woman of Navajo descent, who says that traditionally Hollywood tended to present a very limited view of what an actor or an actress could be.

“Typically, that would be somebody who’s CIS, white, and male or female. But there’s a whole rich, diverse talent pool out there. At the end of the day, it’s all human stories,” she says. “For us, it was all about focusing on the humanity of the characters in the situation because that’s what allows you to tell a more universal story and allows people who aren’t necessarily from the community to be able to relate to them. It’s really about no matter how diverse the character is, no matter how many hyphens they may have in front of their description, they’re still a person.”

Both Cox and Freeland say they were excited and thrilled to be able to represent their culture in such a globally popular franchise like Marvel. As such they went to great lengths to get it right.

“There’s this common misconception and tendency with Native Americans and indigenous Canadians to lump all indigenous Americans together, when in fact, there are over 600 nations, each with their own unique languages, cultures and traditions,” Freeland explains. “Myself, I’m Navajo. I’m from the southwest corner of the United States. In Echo we’re portraying the Choctaw Nation, which is from the southeast portion of the United States. These are two vastly different cultures with vastly different languages and traditions. So one of the first things we did was engage the Choctaw Nation and first of all, get their permission, but then get their collaboration and their input and their cultural expertise. For myself, it was bringing the specificity of the Choctaw culture to the screen.”

Echo has been in the works for four years, with Freeland saying she was still working on the show right up until the week before release. Now that it’s finally done she describes this period as “a welcome jolt of energy” as people respond to the show.

“It’s incredibly exciting to see people responding like ‘Wow! This seems gritty. This seems violent. This seems like a different Marvel’,” she smiles.

Cox on the other hand, had forgotten that the show was about to drop. That seems unbelievable when you consider it’s the 26-year-old’s first lead role in a major series but she has an airtight excuse.

Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez in Marvel Studios' Echo, exclusively on Disney+. Photo / Marvel Studios 2022

“Oh my gosh, I didn’t even realise it was so close because I’ve just had a baby,” she laughs. “My son was born and I’ve been focusing all of my attention on him. Time is flying already. It’s just been a crazy wild ride at the moment.”

The pressures, joy and lack of sleep that go with being a new mother is a lot to juggle by itself, let alone adding global promotion for a new show into the mix. Cox really has two life-changing events happening at once.

“It’s so overwhelming,” she says. “I’m lucky that I have a great support household and system that’s able to help me out. My mum is babysitting my baby right now, while I’m doing all of this work here. And I didn’t of course get enough sleep last night and now I’m working at the junket all day in the media.”

Then she grins and says, “But you know, I’m like Echo. We’re both resilient, and we’re gonna get through it.”

Echo is streaming on Disney+ now.