Cody Knight

Marvel’s newest series Echo has made its way to Disney+ and fan reviews have been drastically different than other recent Marvel projects. Is Echo enough to keep casual fans around or will Marvel take its unexpected success and go back to running in the wrong direction?

Why has Marvel been struggling?

For the past four years after exiting the Endgame era and the beloved infinity saga, Marvel and its projects have tanked in the box office for a plethora of reasons. According to Rebekah Barton at insidethemagic.net, a recent Wall Street Journal reports that “since the beginning of 2021, the average global box-office gross of the six films produced by Marvel has fallen to $773.6 million– roughly half the $1.5 billion average of the previous six films.” A big source of this loss comes from the speculation that Marvel has become hyper focused on producing poorly written jokes with poorly written plot-lines involving new, poorly written characters. Recent movies such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania had fallen victim to these claims. The director of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, Jeff Loveness, made a comment to Zack Sharf over at Variety.com regarding his surprise for the films unsuccessful debut. “I was in a pretty low spot… Those were not good reviews. I think I learned how to take a punch this week.” Sharf also reports that “the film dropped 69% at the box-office in its second weekend, marking the second-biggest drop in MCU history.”

Another reason as to why fans have grown so tired of recent Marvel projects is because every project has become intertwined with one another, and there have been so many projects crammed into so little time. To clarify, Marvel is broken down into phases. For example, Phase one is used to introduce each hero. Phase two intertwines each heroes stories and introduces the “big bad” or villain that will affect the entirety of the upcoming saga. Phase three contains those heroes defeating that villain. With that being said- Phase One contained six projects in four years. Phase Four, directly after Avengers: Endgame, consists of eighteen projects in crammed into one year.

To make things worse, fans must watch every project in order to keep up with what’s happening next, making the act of watching each new project feel like it is something you have to do with such little time between projects. According to Dani Di Placido, a senior contributor at www.forbes.com that writes about all things television and film, states that “the fading relevance of the MCU has been attributed to superhero fatigue and over-saturation. The glut of TV spin-offs on Disney+ appear to have diluted the brand and created too much lore for casual fans to keep up, giving the impression that Disney is hastily churning out content.”

What makes Echo so different?

Echo has gone out of its way to prove that they will not fall victim to these claims, and that Marvel can get back up after having been down for so long, having separated itself completely from other Marvel movies and Disney+ shows. Unlike recent subpar works, Echo is filled with action from beginning to end, bringing back that on-the-edge-of-your-seat feeling that Marvel fans have grown to know and love–and at this point, miss.

This show brings back two extremely beloved and well-received characters, the hero Daredevil and the ever-so-intimidating Kingpin. The trailer shows a character being beaten to death at a dumpster in a dark alleyway by the terrifying and antagonizing villain with a highly familiar silhouette for those who viewed the highly popular Marvel Netflix show, Daredevil.  The audience is magnetized back to their seats to see these characters back in action. Marvel is hoping to gain viewership back with familiar characters.

This show does not hold back. According to Rotten Tomatoes, some reviews of the show consisted of comments such as “Disney Plus’ Echo limited miniseries feels like the studios’ first successful attempt at matching the energy that made Netflix’s shows so great” – Charles Pullium-Moore (The Verge) and “For both Marvel and the larger television landscape around it, Echo is a blast of fresh air delivered with the force of a thousand lightning quick punches and kicks” – Andrew Parker (The Gate).

The end of each episode leaves fans wanting more and more, while also wanting to see Maya, the main character who is an amputee survivor, a part of the Deaf community, and trained assassin, in action. The end of the series directs its audience directly into Daredevil: Born Again, which is a show that is highly anticipated as it was an extremely popular Netflix show at the time of its release. After Echo, Marvel and its fans can plan on being back on top because this changes everything.