New Marvel Series Releasing Early And Dropping All Episodes At Once, Is It Terrible?

That’s why we were surprised when Collider reported that not only has Disney moved the release date of Marvel’s Echo up by one day (it will now premiere on January 9), but all five of its episodes will be released on Hulu and Disney+ at 9PM ET).

That sounds like good news for fans wanting to binge a new show, but considering how starved Disney is for good MCU content, we think dropping the episodes early and all at once means Marvel has little confidence in its new show.

If you’re not sure what Marvel’s Echo whole deal is, you may need to go back and watch the surprisingly decent Hawkeye series on Disney+.

While that show mostly followed the exploits of an aging archer and his young protege, it also introduced Maya Lopez, a deaf martial arts expert who was working with the Kingpin.

When she finds out that it was this criminal mastermind who killed her father rather than Ronin (Hawkeye’s temporary character who was himself consumed by revenge), she ends up channeling all of her rage on Kingpin.

Echo is going to follow the story of Lopez as she takes to the streets and delivers justice as only she can.

Part of what makes this Marvel Echo character such a powerful threat to criminals is that she only has to observe someone fighting in order to mimic their fighting style successfully.

She uses this ability to defeat Hawkeye, and we imagine that her solo series will be filled with creative uses of this power.

Originally, Marvel wanted the Echo series to be a different kind of “echo”.

Specifically, they wanted a show that brought back the “street-level” characters and combat of Netflix’s Marvel shows such as Daredevil.

To drive that point home, both Daredevil actor Charlie Cox and Kingpin actor Vincent D’Onofrio will reprise their roles in Echo.

Fans are excited enough to see Daredevil return, but most of the fan speculation has centered on just how the heck the Kingpin is back after seemingly being shot and killed by Lopez at the end of Hawkeye.

That’s the kind of mystery that might normally keep Marvel fans streaming new episodes each week, so why are we getting everything Echo all at once?

It’s possible that Marvel just wants to generate buzz by dropping all the episodes ahead of the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and it’s equally possible that Kevin Feige is nervous about prolonging the release of the first TV-MA Marvel show on Disney+.

However, we have a more depressing theory about the early release: that Disney knows they have a stinker on their hands and want to bury it as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t that long ago that we learned Daredevil: Born Again is getting completely restructured after Marvel belatedly discovered the need to throw out entire episodes that had already been shot.

Given this happened to the most hyped Disney+ MCU show, it’s easy to think that it could have also happened to something as small and experimental as Echo.

Suppose that’s the case, and there was simply no time or money left to reshoot this five-episode series.

In that case, Disney may be rushing everything out in January (winter is usually the time to drop forgettable movies and shows) in the streaming equivalent of ripping the bandaid off and hoping their franchise can heal the rest of the way on its own.