‘Echo’ to Launch Marvel Highlight Banner for Initiatives With out “Bigger MCU Continuity”

Echo will launch a brand new chapter for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Disney+ sequence, starring Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, would be the first one underneath Marvel’s Highlight banner, which is rooted in Marvel Comics’ decade-long publishing historical past. Within the comics, Highlight was an anthology sequence launched in 1971 that served because the origin of characters like Ghost Rider and Spider-Girl.

“Marvel Highlight offers us a platform to deliver extra grounded, character-driven tales to the display, and within the case of Echo, specializing in street-level stakes over bigger MCU continuity,” Brad Winderbaum, the studio’s head of streaming, tv and animation, shared on Marvel.com.

He continued, “Similar to comics followers didn’t must learn Avengers or Improbable 4 to get pleasure from a Ghost Rider Highlight comedian, our viewers doesn’t must have seen different Marvel sequence to grasp what’s taking place in Maya’s story.”

Echo picks up after the occasions of Hawkeye and sees Maya face her previous, reconnect along with her Native American roots and embrace the that means of household and neighborhood if she ever hopes to maneuver ahead along with her life, per its logline. Vincent D’Onoforio and Charlie Cox will return to the MCU forward of Daredevil: Born Once more for the sequence, which marks the beginning of Marvel’s foray into TV-MA rankings.

“It’s a bit of on the grittier facet for Marvel and exhibits the breadth of what Marvel is able to,” Winderbaum advised a bunch of press who previewed a number of scenes from the present on the Disney lot in October. “It’s type of a brand new route for the model, particularly for Disney+.”

Throughout the identical occasion, Echo director Sydney Freeland defined that the reason for the sequence’ drastically totally different tone from earlier ones is that it follows a villain.

“Folks on our present — they bleed. They die,” Freeland mentioned. “They get killed, and there are real-world penalties.”

All 5 episodes of Echo concurrently hit Disney+ and Hulu on Jan. 10.