Marvel’s Echo Ending gave off a big Daredevil Born Again Teaser, so we’ll break it all down. They just started reshooting Daredevil Born Again, like Vincent D’Onofrio was talking about them getting ready to work on episodes. So we’ll get more footage from the actual series pretty soon, and Echo is meant to set that up.
The reason why it’s only five episodes and not six like the typical longer Marvel series or nine episodes of half-hour series that Marvel does is mostly because of the way they pace it.
Reportedly, there was a deleted episode, like a whole episode, that they shot and then basically got rid of at the last minute. I think what they probably did is they worked in all the footage from Hawkeye during episode one. That wasn’t in the original cut of the series, but there’s a lot of footage from her time on Hawkeye introducing her character.
They basically use episode one, or at least the first half of episode one, to tell her backstory. A big part of that happened in the Hawkeye series in flashbacks, so a lot of it is reused footage from the Hawkeye Series. Careful for spoilers from the ending of Echo if you haven’t seen it yet.
Finale Explained
In the final episode, Echo has essentially unlocked her cosmic powers that she gets biologically from her ancestors, the original Choctaw Native Americans. I know there are going to be a ton of questions about how her powers work. Like, who are these people, and What is going on inside this cave?
This is meant to be the MCU adaptation of the real-life Choctaw Nation’s origin story myth. So, in real life, the Choctaw have their own creation myth, and this is them basically saying that in the MCU, the Choctaw actually came from this alternate dimension based on the Choctaw’s real-life beliefs. They just tuned it up a little bit and made it a little bit more cosmic for the MCU version.
During the series, you keep seeing her ancestor Chafa here, who was a different type of being that was transformed into a human when she was knocked into the main dimension. She existed in this other little pocket dimension here before it was destroyed, and there are a lot of questions about that, too.
Right now, it seems like that has something to do with the Kang Multiverse War. So there’s a little bit of crossover because we’re all heading up to Avengers Secret Wars, and so everything is meant to connect finally by Secret Wars. This is why I think that is what is happening here: to destroy this pocket dimension, throwing all of her ancestors into the main dimension.
The way they depict her powers, they seem like Captain America level, just a little tune-up. She has the ability to throw people into their memories and to heal people. But it’s not something on the level of, say, like Thor’s powers.
Ending Explained
But the whole idea of the ending here is that she basically rejects Kingpin and his violence. She tries to genuinely help him to her credit, even though it seems like he’s just completely shaken by it. He winds up taking off at the end of the series just because he’s so messed up by having to revisit his childhood trauma.
But if it wasn’t clear, he left of his own volition. He’s not trying to kill Echo or force her to come back anymore, so basically, she is free for the most part. She is probably still wanted by the law for a bunch of murders that she committed for Kingpin. Back in the day, though, she killed a lot of people for Kingpin. They basically end the series, though, with a fast and furious family dinner, like all about family, and post all the memes.
Echo Post Credits Scene Explained
When we get to the actual post-credits scene, though, this is meant to be the big Daredevil Born Again teaser. You see Kingpin on his jet, ready to fly back home to New York City, ordering a meeting with the remaining heads of all the crime families in New York who essentially work as his underboss. Kingpin is meant to be the boss of bosses in New York.
I know there are a lot of questions about how powerful he was during the events of Hawkeye because of the five-year time jump, such as what happened during that.
There are a couple of flashbacks during the series to the events of the five-year time jump. They revealed the Kingpin did not get snapped. So, he was around during that entire period.
It sounds like he gained a lot of the city’s territory during that period, as if he took over a lot of the criminals’ families.
On the jet, the situation that he references that is in danger of spiraling out of control is the fallout that’s been happening to his organization since the events of the Hawkeye Series.
Kingpin sees the broadcast about the upcoming race for mayor of New York City and is inspired to run when the broadcasters say that “there’s no strong candidate, the city is in dire need of someone who understands the plight of the people in the best way to fix the city. Somebody who’s a bare-knuckle brawler who isn’t afraid to fight with the other career politicians”
In the comics, Kingpin is actually a champion fighter. He is just way bigger in the comics and is way more physically powerful. When he leans in, and they play that ominous music, the whole idea is that he believes he knows the right way to fix New York City. Like his way is the best way, as you would expect Kingpin to believe.
But essentially, that amounts to him running New York like his own personal playground of fantasy, doing whatever he deems to be right in trying to get rid of anybody that he doesn’t like—namely the heroes and vigilantes like Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Punisher.
Kingpin Running For The Mayor
So part of the idea is that when Daredevil Born Again picks up, he’ll be running for Mayor. It’s like he’ll be in the middle of running for mayor during those early episodes. I think I talked about this all the way back when the Hawkeye episodes were happening a couple of years ago.
Because they’d had this plot in place for a while, they wanted to foreshadow Kingpin eventually becoming mayor of New York City as he did in the comics during the Devils Reign era.
Part of the idea is that he runs for mayor on an anti-vigilante campaign and uses that as an excuse to go after people like Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Punisher. Those are their vigilante-level characters, street-level characters. It’s part of this whole Marvel Phase Five Dark Reign era going on in the MCU. Thunderbolt Ross is doing that with the office of a U.S. president as he does it on a national level.
The whole idea is that on a street level, things are kind of thrown into chaos. Like things just start going crazy, and you have a bunch of people like Thunderbolt Ross and Kingpin coming in saying, “No, no, I know how to fix things.” But essentially, they’re ruling their territories, either New York City or the United States, with an iron fist, turning things into something akin to a police state.
If you didn’t read the Dark Reign era in the comics, essentially, it’s Norman Osborn who sort of takes over this kind of role. He takes over SHEILD, he takes over the Avengers and replaces the traditional Avengers with a bunch of career criminals who are like more hardcore stabby versions of the characters. Inside the MCU, they’re kind of replacing that role with the Thunderbolts team.
Vincent D’Onofrio was actually asked about this, too. What does Kingpin actually want to do? And the way he talks about it, he basically just says Kingpin is going to get whatever he wants, which he always does. So this whole idea with Mayor Kingpin, like whether it’s right or wrong, in reality, if he thinks it’s right, if he’s something that he wants, he’s going to do whatever it takes to actually get it.
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