Echo & Daredevil’s Epic First Fight Explained By Director: “She Leaves It As A Cold-Blooded Killer”

As the character gears up for a full return in his own TV show, director Sydney Freeland teases Maya and Daredevil’s epic first fight in Echo. The upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe show will follow Alaqua Cox’s titular character as she grapples with the demons of her past while also encountering Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock. Following the end of his Netflix show, Cox finally made his MCU return in Spider-Man: No Way Home, followed by an appearance in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, all of which is leading up to the in-production Daredevil: Born Again.

In honor of the show’s premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Freeland to get some insight on Echo. When asked about the premiere in which the eponymous Marvel character is seen fighting Daredevil, and how it compares to his MCU past, the director teased how it sets Maya up as a “cold-blooded killer” and acknowledged that the creative team knew “it was ambitious” going into actual filming. Check out what Freeland shared below:

I think everything stems from the story and the script and the unique specific circumstances of our show. In reading that scene, the thing I loved about it was that before we even shot anything, on the page Maya Lopez enters that scene as a teenage girl, and she leaves it as a cold-blooded killer.

I wanted the audience to be able to see that transformation happen in real-time and try to put them in her shoes and experience things, in some cases literally as she perceives them. I don’t want to spoil it, but after you see the scene, you’ll understand what I mean by that, and so that lent itself to us shooting it as it [was]. We knew it was ambitious going in, especially on a TV schedule, but we wanted to take that swing.

How Echo Can Bridge The Gap Between She-Hulk & Daredevil

Much of the marketing for Echo thus far has emphasized that the Hawkeye spinoff will be Marvel’s first true foray into TV-MA territory, showing plenty of brutal violence coming from Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, as well as Maya herself taking down a wide variety of foes. The aforementioned Daredevil and Echo fight, on the other hand, has been kept largely secret, with only a few glimpses shown of Cox’s street-level vigilante fighting some form of the character, which Freeland seemingly indicates above will be a flashback. That being said, even if Cox’s appearance is a similarly brief one to his prior two MCU appearances, it will be an important step forward for his future.

The last time Daredevil was seen in the franchise was in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which took a decidedly different approach from his Netflix show in offering a more humorous look at Matt both in and out of his suit. Though some fans of the Netflix show were a little mixed on the approach, Cox has defended the tonal shift, even framing his arc in the show as “a little bit of a holiday” for Matt in comparison to the darker world of Hell’s Kitchen he’s lived in for his whole life. The infamous Walk of Shame scene in particular was something Cox was initially reluctant about, but ultimately found it exciting to explore a new side of the character:

By returning to the more serious side of the character, Echo can better bridge the gap for Cox between his Netflix show and Daredevil: Born Again. In addition to more practical, bloody fights, some reports indicate Matt will be looking for Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, a key figure in his MCU past, in the Disney+ title, opening the door for the franchise to steadily return to the grittier world of the street-level Netflix stories. While it remains unclear how Daredevil’s tenure in She-Hulk will factor into Born Again, his appearance in the more mature Echo is sure to create much anticipation for his MCU future.