This week saw the release of brand new Disney+ show Echo, one of many recent releases as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). After first appearing as an antagonist in Hawkeye in the final weeks of 2022, actress Alaqua Cox made a significant impression with her portrayal of the character, and the announcement that Echo would get her very own series was met with much excitement. However, to many fans Echo is not simply another series in the MCU, but carries much more significance; after all, there aren’t many TV shows out there that are centred around a deaf and disabled Choctaw (an indigenous American tribe) woman.

As always, I will try to keep my discussion of the show as spoiler-free as possible, but if you want to completely avoid spoilers, save this article and come back to it later!

Before sitting down to watch the show, I already had faith in it’s depiction of disability, because unusually the casting directors had actually found someone deaf and disabled to play the part. I also noticed that, while Alaqua is of the Menominee tribe, the production team acknowledged the contributions of Choctaw tribe members to the series. I can’t comment further on the authenticity of the representation due to my own ignorance, but having looked at the reception of Echo within indigenous communities, it seems to have been mostly well-received. What I can comment on, however, is how disability is represented.

Echo opens by showing how Maya Lopez (a.k.a. Echo) lost her leg. As a disabled person I’m pretty tired of how Hollywood has to give almost every disability an origin story, promoting the idea that it’s OK to ask disabled people intrusive questions about their condition outside of a medical setting. The segment did at least serve to introduce characters and locations that would be significant to the story, but I was a little disappointed that they chose to open with this segment. I was relieved that they did not attempt to repeat the trope with Maya’s deafness.

My only other major criticism of how Maya’s disability is portrayed came in the following episode, when Maya’s prosthesis becomes trapped in the clamps joining train carriages during an action sequence. The moving train crushes the prosthetic seemingly beyond repair, but where there was an opportunity here to show how difficult a prosthetic limb is to replace, Maya’s grandfather makes her a make-shift appendage in a matter of minutes, and a permanent replacement soon follows. The destruction of an accessibility aid is truly soul-crushing to a disabled person, because it usually means that the next few weeks will be an isolating and expensive battle to replace what was destroyed, and this experience is barely touched upon.

While Echo’s depiction of disability has it’s flaws, it is still a shining example of how to get it right. In particular I appreciated Echo’s relationship with crime lord Wilson Fisk (a.k.a. Kingpin). After Maya’s family is torn apart she and her father move to New York, where Kingpin quickly recognizes her tenacity and swoops in, isolating and manipulating her under the guise of concern and paternal love. He has her over for dinner every Sunday and teaches her that only he can be trusted. Despite this regular contact, and unlike the rest of Maya’s family, he never learns to communicate via sign language. I appreciated the subtlety of showing the “good guys” using what looked to my limited knowledge to be authentically performed sign language, while the villains did not.

Instead, Kingpin pays for an interpreter when speaking with Maya, but when sending her out on missions no such accommodation is provided. Maya is unable to communicate with the people she’s working with and struggles to understand what is going on, and Kingpin uses this to push her into situations where she must rely on his protection. It is a sad fact of life that disabled people have been and continue to be exploited by those with power over them.

Later in the series, Kingpin forces Maya to wear a special contact lens that translates his speech into holographic sign language, while he wears an ear piece which translates her signing into speech. It is very characterful that Wilson Fisk would rather invest in science-fiction technology over making the effort to learn sign language for someone he allegedly considered family. It’s immediately obvious that this tech is completely impractical as it only works for one-on-one conversations if both people have the right tech, and anyone who would have to wear contact lenses for eyesight issues is royally screwed. This is sadly something we see in the real world all too often, with videos frequently doing the rounds showing exo-suits that can make paralysed people walk or wheelchairs that can climb flights of stairs, which are both extortionately expensive and completely impractical. When disabled people reject this technology, however, we are told we are just ungrateful.

Needless to say I was very pleased to see Maya throw the contact lens away as soon as she could.

There is a lot more that could be said about Echo and how it’s depiction of disability is excellent on the whole, barring a few minor criticisms, but ultimately it boils down to this; it was truly revolutionary to watch a show about a disabled person that showed not just the disability but the person too. Echo did not shy away from making the audience remember that she was disabled, often using sound design (and even a silent movie) to mimic deafness when showing the audience her perspective. Nor was Echo afraid to show a flawed human being who makes mistakes and bad choices, who harbours anger and resentment, and who cares deeply about those around her. In 2024 it’s about time disabled people, especially intersectional disabled people, got the representation we deserve. Echo might be among the smaller MCU productions, but Hollywood could learn a lot from the show. Its impact should echo throughout the industry.