Marvel’s Echo is finally here! The series starring Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez is not only the MCU’s first bingeable series, but the first to have a mature rating. While Echo has been greatly advertised as taking place on a more gritty side of the street, the latest of Marvel TV shows opened on a rather supernatural front. When CinemaBlend spoke to Echo director and producer Sydney Freeland, she shared with us why she chose to open the show how she did.
Echo opens with a group of indigenous people rising from magical pools. One woman decides to drink from one of the pools, leading to a bird appearing in front of her and then flying away. Suddenly, the group’s home begins to furiously shake before they are transported to a new place, blooming with greenery and the gaze of the sun. Their clay forms begin to melt away to reveal their human forms. The three-minute sequence leads into young Maya’s origin story. What was that all about?
Echo opens with a group of indigenous people rising from magical pools. One woman decides to drink from one of the pools, leading to a bird appearing in front of her and then flying away. Suddenly, the group’s home begins to furiously shake before they are transported to a new place, blooming with greenery and the gaze of the sun. Their clay forms begin to melt away to reveal their human forms. The three-minute sequence leads into young Maya’s origin story. What was that all about?
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00:00I wanted to ask about the way you opened the series because it was really surprising to me
00:05about that supernatural way that you opened the show. I was wondering if you could talk about
00:10the decision to open that show in that way and maybe some more context around it.
00:17Yeah, you know, I think, you know, we always knew that we were going to tell a sort of
00:21grounded street level, kind of a grittier side of things story revolving around Maya Lopez.
00:29But the other thing we always knew we were going to explore was her ancestors or her ancestral
00:34lineage. We didn't know that we were going to explore her matrilineal ancestor line. That was
00:39something that sort of came about in the writing process and as we as as the project evolved.
00:43And then as we went further and further back in time, and as we as we incorporated the Choctaw
00:50nation, then we got to create more specifics. So the in the beginning of the first episode,
00:57we actually are there for one of the Choctaw creation stories.
01:02And that was something that came as a direct result of our collaboration with the Choctaw nation.