ECHO (2024) - Maya - Episode 5 - RECAP

It is the last episode of the series and to be honest it was not so bad at all, sometimes we tend to exaggerate things without remembering there were worst, ECHO was better than Secret Invasion not by a ton but better, it also has to do with the characters, on ECHO you got Maya and Kingpin who before never had that much screen time so we didn't know what to expect but both actors did very well in my opinion, I never felt like they didn't know what they were doing or over exaggerating their acting, Kingpin was always as he should be, aggressive, smooth, intelligent and care a lot for Maya. Maya she is just a badass doing what ever and when ever she wants, looking for trouble on demand.

When I go through the different episodes I come to the conclusion that it was mostly secondary characters who lack depending on their role, mostly the bad guys like Zane and Vickie's gang, they really suck at their role, felt annoy by them but lucky that's only one episode besides that the rest was OK, probably if the series had like three more episodes and production could use that time to provide more context about the series then it would definitely be a solid 7 series instead of a weak low seven and that's just because episode four gave it a lot of context that was missing because the ending as you will see is not that solid.

Maya's mom Taloa was the next in succession of the Choctaw powers, talking about powers its not one single thing that they can do, every warrior reborn because that's how it looks things work, every certain generations the powers of the Choctaw Warrior are pass on to the next on the line and each develops a different gift some have super strength like Chafa who hold the cave to save their people, others strategies like Lowak, others gunners like Tuklo and comes Maya's mom Taloa who was healer, she could heal living things like she is healing the bird that Maya shoot down. Maya seems to be the first who could harness all those powers at will and even transfer them to others, the concept is really cool and does feels like the kind of powers that would come from many years of tradition of a native culture and not by a chemical accident or some sort of tech like a vaccine or a suit that gives you the powers.

On episode four Maya decides to get out of Tamaha and left Kingpin hanging after she didn't go back with him to New York but now he is angry about it and is looking ways to force her do as he wants, probably as Henry told Vickie and Maya, Kingping and his people will never let you go with your way; those who work for him always do what he wants or then he kills them so Kingpin is back in town taking Chula and Bonnie as hostages he also sends Zane to the Choctaw Nation event with reinforcement to shoot everyone on the event because even though he had hostages, at the moment he was dealing with Maya, Zane was about to launch a rocket to the stage and kill a bunch of locals so it was planned, he was not going to reason with Maya anymore, the plan was to kill everyone at the event and force Maya into working with him by showing her how much damage he could cause if he wanted to.

After everything that has been happening with her visions and what Chula told her Maya has been putting more attention into it, she stop at a cafe to have some lunch and got a few messages from Biscuits asking for Chula and Bonnie that never show up at the event she then sees the same red head bird who warn Choctaw about danger so she understood it was not a coincidence and start paying attention to the sings of her powers, if we ever had a much longer series about ECHO this is the kind of things we would see, Maya paying attention to nature and her environment the type of powers, gifts I don't really know what to call it, skills? that someone connected to nature would have.

Pointing guns and not using them can turn to be annoying specially on a TV series like this one, Maya loves getting her gun out but never end up using it. She goes back to Tamaha after she got Biscuits text messages looking for Chula at her place but she was not their, instead she found her mother, probably a vision that talk to her, Taloa was there to help Maya and make her pain go away, since little Maya always thought it was her fault Taloa died, as a healer Taloa use her powers to help Maya get over that feeling and move on, she also confirm Chula theory that Maya has been chosen to be a Choctaw Warrior, all she has to do is embrace it and call for the help of their ancestors who will answer back when its needed, this makes me think that probably this is not a power that you can turn on and off like other super heroes does to their advantage.

The event starts and Maya is their with her people, she looks really nice on her new suit that Chula did for her, does give that vibes of a warrior and they do put up a show. If we start to think about what are Maya's power I guess knowing or feeling where is the danger can be one of them? like intuition? reason I mention this is because why and how she knew where to look for? she goes into a barn and there was Kingpin with some goons who had Chula and Bonnie, probably for the fifth time on the series Maya points a gun at Kingpin and doesn't use it (palm face)

This part I'm going to heavily resume but comment on the details because this is the action part, I don't want to spoil it in any way. Maya confronts Kingpin and straight up told him he betray her first by killing his father and on top of that not telling her the truth for all those years she was working for him. Zane who was going to shoot a rocket at the event had it inside a cooler with ice, I'm not a gun expert but does it work if its cold? usually guns are hard to explode or work under water and in cold weather from what I have read online unless they are design to work under that type of condition. After her talk with Taloa, Maya now is willing to harness her ancestors powers and thats what she does, here we see how she use her powers to free Bonnie and Chula giving them her strength too, some sort of transfer method or "echoing"? sad part is that you can tell Bonnie, Chula and Kingpin goons didn't fit on the scene, their acting was bad and it was hilarious watching Chula throwing guys over the roof it was like out of a cartoon made me laugh, when Kingpin saw himself alone he tried to attack Maya who shock him with her healing powers and that puts him on his knees while she finish the job getting into his mind and help him heal and get rid of all that anger he had inside, in the end he probably was about to cry I think asking her "what did you just do?" after he probably felt better and let go all the anger.

I'm not going to continue beating the drum of lack of context but the series does lack on that aspect, episode four did save a sinking ship and the ending was better say than Secret Invasion so its not a bad mini series is just that when ever you are getting to watch this type of mini series about super heroes you must know that it is very likely that the story will be rush and crunch into a couple of episodes, why do they still go for it? I don't know because to be honest makes no sense unless the numbers are still good, I mention before we as adults pay too much attention to all the details and probably someone younger does enjoy it fully those are numbers I don't have and could be the reason why they keep doing this mini series super hero theme. ECHO does make sense from the first episode to the end, you have this young women with great fighting skills who starts to have visions and harness power she doesn't understand until through episodes she start to get some answers to her questions of why and how she is experiencing and discovering all this abilities, until the end of the series she finally gets it and use her powers, she also gets over some feelings that was not letting her move forward like guilt for her mothers death and anger against part of her family who was not there for her when her father died and she was left alone in New York been miss guided by her gangster uncle, in short answer the series does make sense its just that its not at the level of production of other super hero series say like Moonknight. Over all a OK 7/10