Marvel Studios will fight continuity fatigue with a new line of MCU releases
Street-level stakes and more mature amazing tales.
Echo, the next Marvel Studios TV series coming to Disney+ (in early January), released its first bloody trailer last Friday, and fans and casual viewers alike were wowed by the first look. Now, we've also learned this show is the first produced under the new Marvel Spotlight banner.
The official Marvel website has all the details about the debut of Echo's first trailer and what Marvel Spotlight means for the brand and the MCU moving forward. The first two episodes of the upcoming series were screened by Marvel Studios during Choctaw Nation's annual Powwow in Durant, Oklahoma. Early reactions are positive, highlighting how it's more of a grounded and street-level story that closely follows its main character, Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), after the events of the Hawkeye series, which re-introduced Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin after his Netflix tenure.
Those who watched the trailer also noticed how much fiercer and cold Echo feels versus anything that Marvel Studios has produced before, with blood and gnarly deaths being shown front and center. It feels like a direct throwback to the Netflix days of Marvel TV shows such as Daredevil and Luke Cage, and with the return of the "Man Without Fear" on the horizon, many fans were wondering whether Disney-owned Marvel Studios would be willing to embrace mature TV and movie ratings beyond Deadpool 3 and maybe the troubled Blade reboot. Well, the answer is obviously positive, but the company is taking things a step further by introducing the Marvel Spotlight banner.
Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum said the following: "Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity. Just like comics fans didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic, our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story."
Now we're left wondering about whether this is a streaming-only banner or something that will also mark the darker tales currently in development for theatrical release. Also, where is the line drawn? Is it more related to tone and age ratings, or to projects' potential independence within the MCU sandbox? Could Moon Knight have fallen under this umbrella had it debuted later? We'll have to wait and see.
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