In ‘Echo,’ There’s No Easy Divide Between Heroes and Villains

Echo, the new Marvel Spotlight series telling the story of Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) has hit Disney+ and Hulu. The show explores the gritty world of Marvel’s street-level heroism—and it’s filled with complicated antiheroes and villains.

So who is the villain in Echo, exactly? Let’s break it down.

This article contains moderate spoilers for Echo.

Maya Lopez, a villain turned anti-hero

We first meet Maya in 2021’s Hawkeye, in which she’s in charge of Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’onofrio) Tracksuit Mafia. Maya is on the wrong side of the law in Hawkeye, going up against Marvel heroes Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. However, when the series aired, fans of the comics knew Maya would have a redemption arc, because in the original comics she’s a good guy: she’s the superhero Echo, who fights alongside Daredevil.

Sure enough, at the end of Hawkeye, Maya turns on Fisk when she finds out he ordered her father killed, and she shoots him in the face.

The first episode of Echo follows Maya’s life leading up to her attempt to kill Fisk. In one early scene, in which Fisk sends her out on her first mission, Maya goes up against Daredevil (Charlie Cox), laying the groundwork for a rivalry and potential future partnership. However, by the end of episode 1, Maya is working against Fisk’s remaining criminal empire—although she’s not trying to take it down out of altruism. In her own words, “It’s time for a queen.”

One particularly interesting moment in episode 4 takes place to the tune of Alison Krauss’s spiritual “Down to the River.” We see Maya walk into Fisk’s hotel room as Krauss sings, “Oh, sinners, let’s go down.” Maya hasn’t made the best choices in life, but there’s still hope for redemption.

Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin

In episode 3 of Echo, we meet the real villain of the series: Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, one of the most powerful crime bosses in New York City.

But Wilson Fisk has always been a complicated character. In Netflix’s Daredevil (now streaming on Disney+), Fisk has a troubled past, having grown up under the thumb of an abusive father. In one especially disturbing episode of Daredevil, we learn that a young Fisk killed his own father to save his mother. Echo revisits that episode, with Fisk even giving the hammer he used to kill his father to Maya, inviting her to use it on him.

Formative experiences like that one seem to have given Fisk a warped sense of family. Fisk considers Maya family, and comes to Oklahoma to try and bring her back to New York. But Fisk is operating from such a deep place of trauma that the only way he knows to get what he wants is through threats and violence.

One of the things that makes Echo such a compelling series is that there’s no easy divide between good guys and bad guys. Maya is wrapped up in Fisk’s empire. So was her father (Zahn McClarnon), and so is her uncle Henry (Chaske Spencer), who runs the local skating rink and helps with Fisk’s shipping operation. But at the center all the heartbreak, anger, and desperation that drives Maya and other characters, there’s one troubled man: Kingpin. Does that make him a villain, or a lost soul? It might depend on which character you ask.

(featured image: Disney+)