‘Echo’ Writer Amy Rardin Talks Maya’s Relationship With Kingpin, Daredevil Fight Scene & Explosive Finale

Katie Campione
·10 min read
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SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the finale of Marvel Studios’ Echo.

Though only five episodes, Echo is a rich story that strips away the bombastic nature of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to bring audiences to Tamaha, Oklahoma.

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It’s there that the series’ main character Maya Lopez [Alaqua Cox] confronts her past traumas to heal from the tragic loss of her mother and reconnect with her Indigenous community — as well as go up against the big bad Kingpin, who helped raise her after she and her father were exiled from town when she was only a child.

She views Vincent D’Onofrio’s supervillain as an uncle, of sorts, but after realizing he is responsible for her father’s death in Hawkeye, Maya begins to understand his ruthlessness and reconsider her position in his criminal network.

While she initially returns to Tamaha only to get back at Kingpin, she can’t avoid the confrontations with her family that have been looming for 20 years, which ultimately shift her entire perspective on the last two decades that she’s been gone.

“In lifting the veil of her past with her family in Oklahoma, it illuminates slowly…her past with Kingpin and realizing what kind of person he was,” Echo writer Amy Rardin told Deadline.

Rardin spoke with Deadline about the series, especially the events of the final two episodes, Maya’s evolving relationship with her family, and the possibilities of expanding the characters and relationships introduced in Echo.

DEADLINE: This is a lot of story packed into five episodes. How did you manage that?

AMY RARDIN: When we were in the room, we weren’t really thinking about the constraints of time. We just wanted to tell the best story we possibly could. That was very freeing, especially having come from some network shows, where you have very specific time that you have to meet. To really not have to think about the time was great. So, in terms of the pacing, it was just where the story led us. And that’s kind of how we approached that in the room.

DEADLINE: So, going in, there were no guidelines about how long the series should be? You just determined that as you developed it?

RARDIN: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it was. That’s the beauty of getting to do things on streaming is you let the story dictate that. That was really great.

DEADLINE: Is there anything from the story that you wish you’d been able to expand upon, but weren’t for whatever reason?

RARDIN: I feel like when you’re writing, you always want to expand on everything. Very few writers turn in short drafts. You want to just keep going and going. I feel like I could watch the Kingpin and Maya relationship forever. I think that the two actors are very dynamic together. I really, really loved telling their story. I would love to see more scenes of them in New York together growing up, so that is something that I would gravitate toward expanding.

DEADLINE: Yeah, I am fascinated by that entire time period. I think from the time her and her dad leave Oklahoma until the events of Hawkeye, there is so much to explore between the two of them.

RARDIN: I think it is really fascinating because what really gravitated me toward that story is this woman that is raised by Kingpin. That’s completely insane. But yet, he loves her in his own way.

DEADLINE: In Episode 4, there’s a scene that we’d already seen a piece of, where Kingpin assaults the ice cream man after he is rude to Maya. But when she sees him, she isn’t scared. She runs up and kicks the ice cream man as well. That reveal is very heartbreaking. How did you develop that scene?

RARDIN: I actually really remember the day that we were talking about that in the room. As soon as we came up with the scene, it really never changed. I think that is the defining moment of their relationship. I mean, children are always watching, and she’s watching this man that she admires do that. Then she does it just like him. I think it really is very powerful in terms of giving you an indication of how she grew up with this man as her uncle and what she is facing now as an adult, having to look back at her past and be like, ‘Well, I did a lot of bad stuff, too, just like he did.’

DEADLINE: In those final two episodes, as she starts to heal, it’s hard not to wonder what might have been had Maya been able to connect with her history before this moment.

RARDIN: It’s kind of heartbreaking, and that’s what I really love about this character is she has so much emotion and she doesn’t really know what to do with it when we meet her. You always wonder about those ‘would have, could have, should have,’ that sliding doors effect of your life. She’s facing that head on. But she didn’t have that life and Kingpin, for better or worse, made her who she is today.

DEADLINE: The scene with Chula and Maya, I think, starts to usher in the crescendo of the finale. Can you talk more about crafting that scene and its importance?

RARDIN: I think that’s a very powerful scene, because it’s Maya coming into her own in that scene, realizing the weights of her family, her ancestors, getting to confront her grandmother head on with all of the things that she wanted to say — that hurt that she had. [Maya] hadn’t seen [Chula] since she was a child. We talked about that scene in the room a lot, but this was sort of when she starts to come to her full power as a person. I think that in order to do that, you you can’t change the past, but you have to confront the past. That is the beginning of her getting to do that with her grandmother. Tantoo [Cardinal] is so wonderful and emotional in that scene of having to confront that, in her grief, she was not the best adult. People don’t always make the right decisions when they’re in an emotional state. In lifting the veil of her past with her family in Oklahoma, it illuminates slowly…her past with Kingpin and realizing what kind of person he was.

DEADLINE: In the finale, the scene with Maya and her mom is so emotional. I can only imagine it’s the scene that has been teased to me several times as one that is several minutes long without spoken dialogue but will make you cry. It certainly did. How did that scene come about?

RARDIN: We talked a lot in the room about exploring your past and confronting your past and healing from trauma. That’s her big trauma, seeing her mother die in front of her. Taloa, as a healer, needed to heal Maya’s heart in that scene in order for her to be able to truly become the person that she is. That’s also what prompts her to try and heal Kingpin, which obviously does not work, but I’m so glad that scene is in there. It still makes me cry, too. It’s really about Maya becoming a whole person in that moment, getting to confront the confusing things that happen when you’re a kid and right that ship…not blaming herself.

DEADLINE: Trying to heal Kingpin is also the antithesis of her trying to kill him at the end of Hawkeye.

RARDIN: However messed up their relationship is, Kingpin is obviously a monster, but there is love there, in its own weird way. Kingpin has the capacity for love in his very twisted way. He was one of the people who raised Maya, and deep down I think, she does love him, even though she realizes he did all these horrible things and manipulated her and and is a killer and not a good person. I think what makes their relationship so interesting is she’s one of the few people that can see glimpses of goodness in him. And so it’s her not giving up on him at the end. He just can’t do it.

DEADLINE: The moment she points out that he developed those special ASL contact lenses but never actually bothered to learn the language is another really interesting and sad moment.

RARDIN: I’m so glad you picked up on that because that was very important in the room to us, showing that relationship because It’s a step toward Maya realizing that her relationship with Kingpin is always on his terms. He may love her in his own strange way, but he’s never gonna love her in the way that she needs. That is part of her journey toward getting to come out from under his thumb is realizing that about him.

DEADLINE: We also have to talk about Bonnie. I love her. I love every scene she’s in. In the finale, she serves as the go-between for Kingpin and Maya’s conversation, which feels so manipulative. What went into that decision?

RARDIN: There was something that actually didn’t make the cut — there was a scene where conversely, after she realizes about Kingpin that he never learned sign language, that Bonnie always kept up her sign language in the hopes that Maya would come home. To show that connection, especially after she had said that to Kingpin earlier in that episode, to see the Bonnie actually doing that and getting to have that connection with her cousin, even though they haven’t seen each other in 20 years, even though the scene is insane and they might all get killed… They still have those family bonds. [They] are very deep, and Bonnie can connect with Maya on a level that Kingpin cannot.

DEADLINE: I would love to see Bonnie’s backstory. How has she handled all of this trauma, which like Maya, was not of her own doing?

RARDIN: First of all, Devery [Jacobs] is amazing. We talked a lot about Bonnie in the room and that she had been in this town without Maya. Maya left and went to New York, and Bonnie stayed in this small town. So they had two very different lives…Bonnie represents a little bit in my mind of what Maya would have been if she had stayed in this town and not gone to New York, having that close family and having that tight knit group.

DEADLINE: I was curious whether Daredevil might make another appearance, and he doesn’t. What made the writers want to include that fight early in the series. How did you conceptualize a way to bring in such a fan favorite character without it detracting from the lead’s story arc?

RARDIN:M I mean, we were really excited to get to use Daredevil, because he’s a very important part of in the [Echo] comics. So we knew that we were going to want to use him in a specific way. The fight between Daredevil and Maya was very important to Sydney [Freeland]. We talked a lot in the room about consistently keeping the story from Maya’s point of view. Because we know how excited everyone is about Daredevil. We were excited about Daredevil. But really what that fight is about is Maya going from student to practical. It’s the first time she kills someone. It’s the first time she proves herself to Kingpin. She took on one of his biggest rivals. It’s her coming into her own in Fisk’s operation. So that is how we approached that fight. To get to be able to use Daredevil was amazing, but it was very much in service of Maya’s story and who she is at that time in her life.

DEADLINE: I really appreciated the Native American representation throughout, but especially in the final two episodes it is really illuminated in a beautiful way. Sydney has already spoken about how important authenticity is, but what did that mean to you as you wrote?

RARDIN: Sydney was an amazing collaborator. Steven Paul Judd, one of our writers, is Choctaw. So he was a great resource in the room. We had a lot of input from the Choctaw Nation. I think it’s really important to be as specific as possible, but yet tell universal emotional stories. So the consultants from the Choctaw Nation were on set with us. They were literally sitting next to me in video village. So they were right there. We could ask any question. They were watching all the scenes. They read all the scripts…just to be able to have that resource and to have that specificity was incredible. I mean, from down to the food on set. We had a kitchen set up in Atlanta, where people from the Choctaw Nation were actually making the food in the kitchen and bringing it to set. Most of those outfits from the powwow were people’s personal outfits that they brought with them. So to have that kind of authenticity and specificity was just invaluable and very, very important to the production.

DEADLINE: Did having this series be under the Marvel Spotlight banner change the way you approached the story at all? It’s supposed to be accessible to audiences who aren’t familiar with all Marvel properties, but it follows a character introduced in Hawkeye and features characters established in other Marvel shows.

RARDIN: Origin stories are great. They’re wonderful and we all love watching them, but I think that [Marvel] wanted to do a different kind of story. And as a writer, I thought that was really exciting. So in terms of not having the traditional story points that you see in this [type of] origin story and getting to approach this more as a family drama…it’s kind of a different way in. I think we could expand on the family, expand on the town, the color of the townspeople that we see come in and out. I think that [Marvel spotlight banner] gave us the freedom to do that. So it was very creatively freeing for sure.

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