Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez stood out immediately when she appeared on Disney Plus Hawk Eye back in 2021. Among a cast of charismatic fools and killers with hearts of gold, Maya was a terrifyingly deadly foil, constantly reminding the audience and the characters what was at stake. Disney was so enamored of Cox’s portrayal of the deaf Native American heroine that he greenlit a spin-off, and on Friday we saw it for the first time. We also received the surprising announcement that the program, Echo, would arrive on Disney Plus and Hulu simultaneously.
This news comes just days after Disney committed to buying out Comcast’s stake in Hulu and just as we’re all starting to wonder what that means for the future of the smaller streaming service. Hulu doesn’t have nearly the same subscription base as Disney Plus, but what it does have going for it is live television and a willingness to stream much more violent and “adult” content than the kid-friendly Disney Plus.
Watching the trailer of Echo, which includes people beaten to death and shot in the head, it’s pretty clear why it would come to Hulu. That’s where things like And: The last manabout the graphic death of all creatures with Y chromosomes, and The Handmaid’s Tale, about the violently graphic subjugation of women in a run-of-the-mill, patriarchal theocracy. When Disney first launched Disney Plus, it differentiated the two services in similar ways. Disney Plus was the place where you went to watch things with the whole family. Hulu is what you watched after the kids went to bed.
But as Disney has become more adventurous with programming on Disney Plus, the lines have blurred with more adult fare like Loki and Andor. Premiere Echo, starring a character that first appeared on Disney Plus, on Hulu makes sense in that context. Echo seems too violent for Disney Plus, even if the previous seasons of Reckless and Jessica Jones (both originally produced for Netflix) are on the service.
But the show couldn’t have appeared on Hulu and not Disney Plus, since Disney Plus is where the Marvel canon lives, hence the simultaneous release. I am sure of the fact that EchoExecutive producer Sydney Freeland previously worked on Reserve dogs on Hulu also helped.
The program will premiere on both services on January 10 and as Variety noted in a story today, will feature a mostly indigenous cast and will make the Choctaw heritage of the Mayans a prominent part of the story. Notably, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk also plays an important role in the show. Fisk was originally introduced in Reckless and made a surprise return in Hawk Eye. Presumably, he will also return for the next season of Recklessbut that show faces a major production overhaul after Marvel hated the show’s direction and its focus on courtroom drama instead of the violent action sequences that helped the original show break out on Netflix.
Yeah Reckless plans to be as violent as Echo It looks like it will probably appear on both streamers as well. So Echo is, in a sense, a trial balloon for Disney as it figures out how to make these two streamers, including the new one it’s about to acquire, work together.
