First Trailer for Marvel's 'Echo' Reveals its First TV-MA Project under Marvel Spotlight, All Episodes Drop in January

by Darian Scalamoni

    While Marvel might be in a major flux recently with decision making and re-aligning their brand to make it resemble consistent quality again, the train keeps on moving. Loki is approaching its season finale for its second season, The Marvels hits theaters next week and now, we finally have a trailer for its next streaming series, which is taking a bit of a different approach.

    Echo will be the very first TV-MA project under Kevin Feige's leadership since the Netflix series that were shepherded by Ike Pearlmutter previously, however, with that news comes another announcement made by Marvel Studios. The series will be the first under a new banner called, Marvel Spotlight, which was announced in an unveiling of the first two episodes of the series during a special event with the Choctaw Nation. "Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over a larger MCU continuity. Just like comics fans didn't need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic, our audience doesn't need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what's happening in Maya's story." That quote comes from Brad Winderbaum, the head of Streaming, Television and Animation at Marvel, and gives a good look at the direction the brand is going in terms of differentiating these more mature, "R-rated" sorts of stories. 

    The trailer is heavy on brutality, viciousness and drama, which signals a departure from recent output from the comic book studio. Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin character looks to act as a second lead opposite Alaqua Cox's titular deaf Native American character. This trailer was right up my alley, looking to cement a great new chapter in the MCU with street-level stories leaving room for "genre-filmmaking" within the confines of comic books similar to the earlier phases and projects from people like The Russo Bros., James Gunn and Ryan Coogler. 

    Check out the trailer below for Echo! The series stars Cox, D'Onofrio, Charlie Cox, Devery Jacobs, Tantoo Cardinal, Chaske Spencer, Graham Greene and Zahn McClarnon, with the episodes being directed by Sydney Freeland and Catriona McKenzie. Echo will also be the first in which all five episodes drop at the same time, January 10 on both Disney+ and Hulu.