‘Echo’ Director Says Maya’s Story is an ‘Exploration of Trauma’

Audiences first met Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) in the 2021 series Hawkeye. Now they’re going to find out where it all began for the formidable, complex fighter known as “Echo,” who holds the designation of being the first Native American and deaf character to headline a Marvel Studios show. And director Sydney Freeland is just as pumped as fans are for the character’s debut.

“I’m incredibly excited for people to get to see Alaqua,” she tells TV Insider. “She went from a total of six days on Hawkeye being her sum total acting experience to becoming a number one on a Marvel television show, with a 90-day shoot that she was in the majority of the scenes on. I can’t even comprehend what that looks like for her. But she rose to the challenge and just inhabited the character and brought a gravitas, an empathy, and a toughness that I think is just gonna resonate with fans in a great way.”

Freeland, who previously worked on the show Reservation Dogs and is Native American and Indigenous, says that the opportunity to helm a show so closely tied to her heritage was both a challenge and rewarding.

“I think once I got over that initial feeling of, ‘This is absolutely terrifying,’ it became exhilarating because it was an opportunity to get to tell a story through their perspective,” she admits. “It was really about just getting representation all across the board.”

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Maya was last seen grappling with the knowledge that her long-trusted ally Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), had orchestrated her mob boss father William’s (Zahn McClarnon) death. In Echo‘s five-episode series, Maya returns home to Oklahoma to reconnect with her family’s roots. While she’s there, certain events occur that set her on a potentially villainous path.

“This series was always going to be an exploration of trauma,” says Freeland. “Kingpin and Maya have one of the central relationships, and we’re going to explore that dynamic between the two of them and what it means to have an uncle figure who is also a very powerful force in the criminal underworld in New York.”

Echo, Series Premiere, Tuesday, January 9, Disney+ and Hulu