Echo' Director Discusses That Supernatural Opening Scene, And How The Choctaw Nation Inspired It
Marvel’s Echo is finally here! The series starring Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez is not only the MCU’s first bingeable series, but the first to have a mature rating. While Echo has been greatly advertised as taking place on a more gritty side of the street, the latest of Marvel TV shows opened on a rather supernatural front. When CinemaBlend spoke to Echo director and producer Sydney Freeland, she shared with us why she chose to open the show how she did.
Echo opens with a group of indigenous people rising from magical pools. One woman decides to drink from one of the pools, leading to a bird appearing in front of her and then flying away. Suddenly, the group’s home begins to furiously shake before they are transported to a new place, blooming with greenery and the gaze of the sun. Their clay forms begin to melt away to reveal their human forms. The three-minute sequence leads into young Maya’s origin story. What was that all about?
Echo opens with a group of indigenous people rising from magical pools. One woman decides to drink from one of the pools, leading to a bird appearing in front of her and then flying away. Suddenly, the group’s home begins to furiously shake before they are transported to a new place, blooming with greenery and the gaze of the sun. Their clay forms begin to melt away to reveal their human forms. The three-minute sequence leads into young Maya’s origin story. What was that all about?
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00:00I wanted to ask about the way you opened the series because it was really surprising to me
00:05about that supernatural way that you opened the show. I was wondering if you could talk about
00:10the decision to open that show in that way and maybe some more context around it.
00:17Yeah, you know, I think, you know, we always knew that we were going to tell a sort of
00:21grounded street level, kind of a grittier side of things story revolving around Maya Lopez.
00:29But the other thing we always knew we were going to explore was her ancestors or her ancestral
00:34lineage. We didn't know that we were going to explore her matrilineal ancestor line. That was
00:39something that sort of came about in the writing process and as we as as the project evolved.
00:43And then as we went further and further back in time, and as we as we incorporated the Choctaw
00:50nation, then we got to create more specifics. So the in the beginning of the first episode,
00:57we actually are there for one of the Choctaw creation stories.
01:02And that was something that came as a direct result of our collaboration with the Choctaw nation.