While Alaqua Cox did a fantastic job as Maya Lopez in Hawkeye, it's always been a little hard to figure out why the character needs her own Disney+ series. While the MCU is a great way to boost Disney+ subscriber numbers, it's beginning to feel like more Special Presentations would be a better idea instead of stretching these stories out for six weeks at a time.
Following rumors that Echo has faced some production issues, those reports appear to have been confirmed thanks to comments from the show's Head Writer.
Talking on a newly released edition of The Writers Panel podcast (via The Cosmic Circus), Marion Dayre said she expects Echo to premiere "probably a year from when this [podcast] comes out." While it had previously been announced for a Summer 2023 debut, it now looks like the series will land much later in the year, likely November or December.
While not outlining any specific problems with Echo, Dayre would go on to say that joining the MCU was something of a "crash course." She'd add, "I came in as a [co-executive producer] and that changed a little bit. I didn’t start there at the ground level, but [it was] really like shifting and changing a process to work with deadlines."
"'Better Call Saul' very much uses a brick-by-brick process where we essentially break each episode three times. You do sort of a general overall break, and then we lay out some arcs, and then we go back in and brick by brick."
"So it was really about finding a process in the moment that allowed me to get to some deadlines and be a little more flexible than I would have been if I had all the time in the world. I would have done it a little bit differently.”
There's already been chatter online about Marvel Studios delaying or scrapping a number of upcoming projects in order to get back to a quality-over-quantity approach to storytelling. While we don't anticipate Echo being scrapped, we can't help but wonder whether it's being reshaped, possibly as a Special Presentation or a much shorter TV series.
It could be a while before we learn about concrete premiere plans for the Hawkeye spin-off, but with Vincent D'Onofrio set to return as The Kingpin, it looks likely to be a pivotal chapter in the wider MCU mythos heading into Daredevil: Born Again.
Stay tuned for updates on Echo as we have them.