Marvel’s Echo director Sydney Freeland on Maya: “The goal wasn’t to turn her into Captain America”

The director of Marvel’s latest series, Echo, has opened up about the MCU villain. Starring Alaqua Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, K. Devery Jacobs and more, the series delves into Maya Lopez’s Choctaw Nation roots as he returns to Oklahoma.

At a press conference, attended by Filmfare, director Sydney Freeland shared insights about spotlighting the character who is a deaf-mute, Native American. She said, “Everything stems from the story. What is the character? Where are they coming from? Where are they going? What is the emotion? We have Maya Lopez who is introduced as a villain in Hawkeye. That was really our jumping-off point with Wilson Fisk and the New York criminal underworld.”

Echo will not try to paint Maya Lopez as an out-and-out hero, revealed the director. “It’s actually very interesting that she’s a villain. So the goal was never to try to turn her into Captain America. In the conversations with Marvel, the response was, ‘Hey, let’s lean into that. Let’s see if we can push it out a little. Let’s see how far we can go down that rabbit hole.’ The tone and the visual style came from the story and the circumstances of the character,” she said. 

She added, “We looked at, ‘Oh, this is a deaf, indigenous amputee girl from Oklahoma. How the hell does she end up being one of the top-ranking lieutenants in Kingpin’s army?’ And answering those questions was such an exciting place to be.”

Echo will release on January 10, 2024.