Many shows and movies in the MCU have been subject to changes, especially recently as the writers and actors continue to strike and put almost all projects on pause. However, one project that has seemingly taken several hits from the jump has been Echo, a spinoff show from Hawkeye. Between Marvel announcing that all episodes would drop at once and then pushing back its release date of late November 2023 to January 2024, fans are beginning to worry more about the project.

Echo was announced near the end of 2021, right around when its predecessor show, Hawkeye, was coming out. While many fans embraced it with open arms, as they do with any Marvel project announcement, Echo did receive some initial backlash from some fans who had no interest in Maya Lopez, the character and lead of the show. Even today, you won’t struggle to find people online who still don’t care for the show, even as we draw closer and closer to the premiere (as long as it isn’t moved again). A lot of this debate comes also from the fact that some fans don’t believe Maya needs her own show when other characters who they deem as more interesting should either have their own shows or should have them sooner. As she played a supporting character role in Hawkeye, many fans just don’t see the need for her to have an entire 6 episode show just for herself.

One of the characters that fans want content from sooner is Daredevil, as Daredevil: Born Again is slated but now on pause. As these two properties would run in the same realm together, connected by the man himself, King-Pin, many wonder about the need for Echo when we could instead just get Daredevil, a hero many have waited a long time to see again. With his show coming on the horizon, Echo appears to be a filler on the slate rather than a real need in some fans’ eyes.

The show also received more backlash from fans when rumors floated around that Maya would gain powers that would border a form of magic, straying from what we know of the character. Many fans were upset by this primarily because she is supposed to be an on-the-ground hero without any flashy powers beyond her fighting and felt that this was being taken from her. With this new information, the projection of the show’s plot could greatly change, alienating some fans who were waiting for the show’s more grounded nature amongst some of the crazy space and Multiverse storylines of late.

But nothing makes this show seem more cursed than the fact Marvel is planning to drop it all at once, rather than doing the weekly episode drop that it has done with quite literally every other Disney+ show to date. Echo will be the first show to break the mold, and there is significant speculation that it isn’t for the better. With all this drama with the fans leading up to the show already, it seems that the idea to drop it all at once is most likely more of a negative reflection of how the studio feels about the show itself. It comes across as if they want to just push it out and move on from it, as there has also been nearly no information about the show or early promotional pieces. Now that the date has moved, this doesn’t seem as weird, but if you think it should have been here at the end of November and we haven’t even gotten a first poster, well, that doesn’t always look great.

Speaking of the move, there are two ways to speculate why it is taking place. Again, we can go with the idea this show is just cursed. It’s already made, so the studio won’t scrap it but it’s not a priority. Or we can assume it is part of the strike. Marvel is unsure of where their 2024 slate is going to land when we are now roughly four months into writers and actors being on strike. Moving a finished show back gives them content to start 2024 and to shift all their other projects and gain more time before fans see gaps happening. Pretty much, it’s either strategic or lazy.

So, is Echo cursed? I’m not sure I would say cursed, but it definitely doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the cusp of other shows popularity both with the studio and fans. From the current standpoint, I do think we will see the show premiere, as it would be the first Marvel show shot and finished that would be scrapped by the studio. We will just have to continue to wait and see if the show survives its’ crazy road to a premiere. In the meantime, we are closing in quickly on Loki, premiering the first Friday of October, so get ready, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Echo”, Benjamin Patel, Startefacts