The Echoes Of 'Echo' In 'Daredevil: Born Again'

Marvel

Apr 26

The MCU has fostered a mini interconnected universe of shows on its platform over the past handful of years. Daredevil: Born Again was the most recent, and perhaps was the first show to bring multiple elements of the others together into its first season narrative. That season did have a rocky development, though the end product has been superb, and the difficulties surely set the stage for a Season 2 even more deeply integrated than the first. One of the shows Born Again links back to is Echo, a Marvel Spotlight miniseries we can’t recommend enough. Looking ahead at where Born Again will go, we should first look back and see how Maya Lopez’s actions in her own series impacted Wilson Fisk and the world built by Born Again.

Fisk, Born Again

The most impactful part of Echo in Daredevil: Born Again has to be the, well, rebirth of Wilson Fisk. Using her mystical powers of healing, Maya reached into Fisk’s mind, into the core of his rage and hatred, and did…something. Fisk seems extremely confused himself, and we don’t fully know what Maya did, but a good bet is that she healed his trauma, or at least as best as she could, from that horrible childhood.

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Wilson Fisk, Image Source: YouTubeBut that doesn’t “fix” Fisk. If anything, Born Again shows a devious and malicious Fisk evolved compared to his previous appearances. Fisk went missing for an entire year, and came back, professing to have been changed, and seeks office through legal means, initially following the letter of the law. But we know from Born Again’s Season 1 finale that he never changed, and had been scheming the whole time to use a development project as a cover for his criminal activities, so what did Maya really do?

We think that, despite his original trauma being healed, Fisk has lived a life shaped by that trauma. He has done terrible things for years, and that one mystical experience doesn’t change a worldview like his, even if his deep anguish regarding his father has been calmed. Instead, Fisk just finds a new source of anger, and quickly, in Born Again.

Vanessa cheats on him with a man named Adam (though to be frank, Fisk, totally ghosting her instead of bringing her into your plan was a poor choice), and upon his return, Fisk secretly locks Adam up. Fisk beats and abuses him for weeks in his cell, and when Vanessa sees what he has done, Fisk describes how Adam’s very presence makes him imagine what the two were doing together while Fisk was gone. We don’t imagine that Maya’s healing will work again on Fisk, but his rebirth wasn’t pointless. It simply, sadly, birthed a more dangerous and devious figure who has returned to darkness instead of taking a different path as Maya offered him, however subtly.

Fisk’s Defanged Enterprise

Fisk’s destroyed armory, — Image Source: YouTube

This is a smaller impact from Echo, but it seems likely that Maya’s destruction of Wilson Fisk’s armory and the devastation wrought on Fisk’s men weakened his organization in a few key ways. First, it is likely why Vanessa Fisk had to contract out the hit against Foggy Nelson to Benjamin Pointdexter, aka, Bullseye. Without the weaponry or the willing bodies from Fisk’s organization, she had to turn to an outsider. This patsy would do her dirty work, and break Daredevil, ensuring she would retain power while her husband was gone. Yes, having someone from Fisk’s organization might have led Matt Murdoch back to her, but knowing Vanessa, she probably would have preferred someone genuinely loyal rather than someone whose loyalty she had to buy and work to ensure. This is something that comes up acutely near the end of Born Again when Vanessa begins the moves that would have led to Bullseye’s death in prison, as he escapes and moves to take his revenge on her.

The next is the balance Vanessa had to strike with the other criminal factions. While Wilson was gone, she ran their criminal empire, using the authority built and reinforced by her husband to maintain control. But, we don’t see much in the way of Fisk’s operatives in shots of her or Fisk throughout Born Again. We see Buck Cashman, but he seems to be an exceptional, lone figure, from what was once a sea of willing warriors. Wilson Fisk discusses how Daredevil broke his empire, and he lost loyal men, but even when he’s the mayor, he creates a new armed force for himself out of the city’s corrupt cops. The old-guard are nowhere in sight, probably because Maya and her family helped take most of them out, or helped them get arrested that fateful night at the roller rink, and the powwow night that followed.

A New Recruit?

With both of the above factors, we think it's a strong possibility that Maya Lopez will appear in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2. Not only has her adopted uncle gone right back to hurting people despite the chance she gave him to rethink his life, but she has connections back in New York City. Sure, they’re fairly weak ones at this point, as she has reforged a bond with her blood family, but Daredevil’s need for allies will surely spur Maya into action.

When she might show up, or how, remains to be seen. But unfortunately for Fisk, Maya is one of the worst enemies he could have against him at this time. She knows his operations, she knows his tactics, and even if he has evolved and changed his methods, or Vanessa complicates things, Maya will surely be able to help figures like BB Ulrich or the uncorrupt police of New York pick at threads of the Fisk criminal empire. Oh, and surely she’ll also absolutely beat some task force police officers into the ground in the process.

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