Echo finale explained – Maya vs. Kingpin
Disney+Echo, Marvel’s dark and bloody mini series, has finally arrived, but some fans have wondered how the finale wrapped up the entire season.
After months of waiting, Disney+ has released Marvel’s latest mini series Echo, as the show’s entire five episode season is now streaming.
Acting as a spin-off of 2021’s Hawkeye, the series follows Maya Lopez, the deaf Native American ex-leader of the Tracksuit Mafia as she evades the wrath of her adoptive uncle Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin while also confronting her complicated past.
In our four-star review of the first three episodes, we praised the show for being a darker entry in the MCU cannon as the show acted as a great introduction for the anti-hero. But, a lot of fans are wondering how the season wrapped up after the credits rolled, so here’s everything you need to know. Warning – spoilers ahead!
Echo finale: Did Maya kill Kingpin?
Echo’s finale sees Maya spare Kingpin’s life as she tries to appeal to his human nature.
Throughout the five episode season, Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) was being hunted down by Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) people after she shot him in the head and left him for dead at the end of Hawkeye.
While on the run, Maya goes back to her hometown in Oklahoma where she is reunited with her estranged family who she hadn’t seen for over 20 years after her mother was killed in a car accident and her father William (Zahn McClarnon) moved her to New York to work for Fisk.
We learn of the complicated relationship Fisk and Maya have as he acts as her adoptive uncle, but was also the reason why her father was murdered by Ronin (Clint Barton) during the time period between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
After a bit of cat and mouse play, Fisk and Maya finally come face to face in Episode 4 where he offers her his criminal empire in exchange for her returning to New York with him.
Maya realizes that aligning herself with the man who murdered her father and destroyed her family isn’t a smart decision, so she attempts to skip town in order to protect her family. But that backfires as Fisk’s men kidnap her grandmother and cousin in order to force her out of the shadows.
Fisk and Maya end up fighting one on one during a powwow held in her hometown and, while it seemed like Maya was going to murder Fisk to get revenge for her family, she instead uses the healing powers granted to her by her Choctaw ancestors and attempts to heal Fisk’s childhood trauma in order to make him into a better person.
While it’s left unclear if Fisk decides to take Maya up on her offer to leave his pain and anger in the past, he eventually leaves her hometown alive and Maya reunites with her family.
Echo highlights the importance of remembering your roots
Maya’s supernatural abilities that are shown throughout the series come from her Choctaw roots as the first episode shows a Choctaw warrior drinking from a celestial pool of water and gaining supernatural abilities.
While she is not considered a mutant in the comics or within the series, Maya is not a typical assassin as her connection with her ancestors gives her different heightened abilities when she needs them most.
Disney+The main message from the Echo finale and the show as a whole is how important it is to be connected to who you are and where you come from. Maya’s strength didn’t just come from her uncanny fighting skills or her ability to handle things on her own, it came from the connection between her and her family, even with the distance between them.
As one of the first Native American “heroes” within the MCU, this messaging is incredibly important as tribal connection and family history is very important to Native American people.
Echo left Maya’s fate within the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole a bit unclear but, if she is to appear somewhere in the future, there’s no doubt that these themes will continue to be a big part of her character.
Echo is now streaming through Disney+. For more content about the show, check out the list below: