Echo throws back to a time when characters mattered in the MCU

polygon.com:

Echo, the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is probably going to fly under a lot of people’s radar. The urgency of the interconnected superhero setting has ebbed as Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. retool their offerings, and that goes double for a show that’s spinning off a minor character from a two-year-old miniseries into a five-episode miniseries on Hulu and Disney Plus, and making teases about another less-than-imminent show.

Which is a pity, because when you look beyond Echo’s flaws, it’s doing exactly the kind of thing that the current MCU struggles with, the kind of thing that got everybody glued to superhero screens in the first place; Echo is just trying to be a story about Echo.

Echo may be slow in parts, its supernatural elements deserved some more time, and a rushed denouement did it no favors, but what’s good about the show is exactly what’s good about superhero stories. The true climax of the series is locked in Maya’s interior realizations, her reforging bonds broken in the past, and her discovering the community and cultural legacy that she’s both embraced by and beholden to. She’s not solving a problem simply because she was there at the time, but rather one that’s inextricably linked to her. In order to solve it, she has to fix herself. When the show is slow, it’s to make sure the audience knows what’s going on behind Maya’s taciturn face, its flawed elements are still in service of her emotional progression, not a twisty plot. It may not always pay off, but at least it’s not ending in CGI soup.

At the beginning of the story, Maya Lopez is lost, and at the end, she’s found, and head writers Marion Dayre Amy Rardin allow this to be its biggest priority. This sounds simple, even trite,