Summary
- The Marvel series Echo fully embraces representation, featuring the first deaf protagonist in the MCU.
- The show's director, Sydney Freeland, took sign language classes and adapted the visual style to properly represent the character.
- Echo's diverse cast, including Native American and Indigenous Canadian actors, marks a commitment to authentic casting and sets a new trend for representation in the MCU.
The director of the Marvel series Echo detailed how the show has fully embraced representation as a creative influence. The new release will follow the titular character first introduced in Hawkeye as she returns home to Oklahoma to reconnect with her family heritage and come to with her criminal past. Echo will be a Marvel Spotlight series, a new venture which aims to present more standalone-style entries that don't require as much prior knowledge of the MCU as a whole.
The character of Echo - Maya Lopez - is the first deaf protagonist in the MCU, which comes with some unique challenges in of adaptation. In a recent Screen Rant interview about Echo, director Sydney Freeland discussed how representing the character properly opened up a host of new creative opportunities for the show, ultimately making it better. Check out the full quote below
Sydney Freeland: I think that's a perfect example of how representation can have positive consequences. Very early on, my crew [and I] took sign language classes, and one of the things that I learned actually ended up dictating our entire visual style.
What you're describing is intentional, and one of the things that I learned early on is that when you and I are speaking and the words are coming out of my mouth, that is the text of what I'm saying. But the subtext isn't how I deliver those words. You need both of those things to get the full emotional intent of what is being communicated.
In ASL, it's slightly different. When you sign, you sign typically here or here, and this is the text. But the face and how you emote, that's the subtext. You need both of those things to get the full emotional intent of what's being communicated, so what does that mean? That means in our show, this is a closeup. Because it's a closeup for Maya Lopez, everyone else gets that same closeup.
How Echo Marks Multiple Forms Of Inclusion For The MCU
Surprisingly, featuring the first deaf protagonist isn't the only inclusion milestone set by the new Marvel show. Alongside protagonist Maya, who's portrayed by an actress who is both Native American and deaf, the cast of Echo as a whole is incredibly diverse. The show includes many other Native American and Indigenous Canadian actors like Devery Jacobs, Chaske Spencer, and Tantoo Cardinal, marking an impressive commitment to authentic casting.
Ideally, this will help mark a new trend for the MCU when it comes to representation, and in turn inspire more of the creativity discussed by Freeland.
The many fresh changes brought by Echo are a good sign for the direction that the MCU is headed, not only by increased representation but by the creativity it's helped to inspire. The fifth phase of the MCU includes many new series and films slated to release across the next few years, and will undoubtedly benefit from an openness to new ideas, inclusions, and techniques to keep things feeling fresh. Fans will be able to see everything the new series explores when it releases later this month.
Echo is streaming exclusively on Disney+ & Hulu starting January 9th at 6:00pm PT.
