Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we're talking a
little bit more about Echo with star of the MCU podcast, the Grand Pandaimo
of the Stranded Panda podcast network and really the inspiration for me getting into podcasting.
So I'm so glad you're here with us, Matthew, Carrol dude,
how are we doing today, Matthew. Very kind intro. It's good to
talk to you. Matthew. It's been a bit a while since we've gotten
a cast together, so I'm definitely excited to chat about this show with you.
Yeah, very much so, very much so. And to give you
a little bit of background, I see. I imagine it's probably a very
small percentage of you who don't know, but Matthew, talk to you,
talk to us a little bit about the podcast you do, but more importantly
also kind of your background with Marvel. Because one of the reasons I wanted
you on right now for this is I've been talking a lot about the representation
in this show and it'd probably come up, but you are I think kind
of one of the leading voices out there, at least in my world about
Marvel and the MCU. So what's kind of your background with Marvel and both
comics and on screen. Well, I love a connected universe, always have,
so, you know, going way back to pretty much everything I grew
up on, I loved a good connected universe. And then when Marvel started
doing that on such a big scale, with big budgets and a lot of
forethought and interesting actors and directors, I just fell in real hard. And
then around Guardians of the Galaxy we started. So twenty fourteen we started the
MCU cast, that Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast if you don't know, And we're
over there and we've been doing it for almost we're on our tenth year and
we're nearing our thousandth episode. Awesome, and so we're hoping, we're hoping
we can align those two things. So it's like the ten year anniversary is
right around the thousandth episode, we do a big bonanza, but it's coming
up, so we gotta get on, we gotta get on planning that.
But yeah, so you've been just talking about this stuff multiple days a week
for ten years, and I love it. I love how deep the universe
goes now, with so many things and so many different corners of it that
have varying level of canonicity, and so we can kind of just I like
being able to like I love being able to watch uh Echo and be like,
but what if Punisher showed up and did this, you know, like
just like it's just weird, Like, well, is that canon? Maybe?
Maybe not? Like, let's let's get into it. I love I
love how expansive the world is, and it's just fun to play in that
sandbox and speculate and discuss so so so I and I and even with this
Phase four and FA five haven't been as well received. But I'm in a
I'm in a mindset of they're in a rebuilding time, clearly after endgame,
and it's just sort of like it's the it's the growing pains of rebuilding,
uh to the to the next big thing, which is probably five years away
at this point. So uh, I think I think they're in a good
place. And just to say to say where I am at this exact moment.
Though, have you seen have you seen Loki? I have not?
Oh man, have you seen what If? No? I have not.
Okay, those two shows combined have me in an incredibly excited place. I
loved them both and they both had U endings that led to cool speculation.
It they just ended well, it ended really really well. And then they
put up the trailer for Echo. Did you see the final trailer for Echo?
You don't watch trailers, right, So I did not watch trailers,
which we'll talk about in a bit, because I feel like I got the
best reward in the world for having no idea what was coming in this in
this show. Oh yeah, yeah, Well, they they had a trailer
that dropped for Echo, and after I'm coming off the high of what If,
and they had the final trailer drop for Echo, and it was just
they just took clips from all of the Daredevil stuff and showed the story of
Matt Murdoch and Kingpin and how it intersected with Echo and then the So the
entire trailer was is like basically saying this is canon with the Netflix stuff,
like you are going to it is gonna be canon, And like that got
me really really pumped. So those three events in succession has me on a
really high. Uh that's amazing level for Marvel right now. Well, and
I have to say I'm feeling in a very similar place, coming from a
very different direction, and we're gonna get into some details, but I think
this is kind of a fun place to start, especially with the canonicity of
it all, because I want to hear your thoughts on that. I,
like I said, I was, I was so excited for this show.
I think a lot those who are regular listeners to Mike podcasts probably know this,
but we may get some new people for this. I think this episode
is also going to get rebroadcast in the MCU cast, So for those who
don't know, I am myself an amputee in the exact same way I'm missing
a leg below the knee that both the character of my Lopez and the actors
who plays her A Loqua Cox is And so I was incredibly excited that this
show also trepidacious, and so I didn't want to know anything about it.
And I think people I want to see trailers. That's awesome, and I'm
so glad you get that. But I got to have a moment early on
of seeing in the background a new person enter the fight in kind of a
reddish suit that looked like it might have horns, and saying to my partner,
is that daredevil dls in this? And I had no idea, Yeah,
that's wonderful. That is wonderful. Yeah, that's something that they did
announce when they first announced Echo as a show that she was going to,
that he would appear, and so so I knew that was coming. I
didn't know it would be such a small part. I wasn't upset by it.
I think his role was kind of perfect. It gave it. They
have done the opposite so much with the MCU shows as of late, where
they saved the big connection for the end, and I think it tends to
overshadow the storyline that's happening, and this one did it the opposite where they
sort of sprinkle in a little MCU connection at the top and then they saved
the They left the finale of this show to be the finale of the show,
and I think that was way better than things like Hawkeye that like,
you know, speaking of Echo Hawkeye, you know, I think that show
bringing in King Pitt in the last episode was like really overshadowed some of what
was going on there. It's like the story didn't get its resolution like it
needed. I think that's so true. And I think one thing I talked
about a lot because one thing I think is worth noting and again, I
think there's no right or wrong in this, just different perspectives. I've definitely
been a little bit burnt out by the MCU, and I'm not one of
the haters, like you know, people if they love it, that's awesome.
I'm not saying it's all terrible. I just the couple of things that
I saw most recently above the MCU I didn't really love. I loved She
Hulk, but other stuff didn't grab me. Secret Invasion, the little I
saw. I didn't have any interest, Loki didn't have much interest, and
I was kind of just done with it for a while. And this show,
to me, really really brought me back, particularly because I felt like
this show touched on a lot of the things that I had loved about the
Netflix MCU. You know, it had a much darker tone. It was
much more street level, to the point where literally when I watched the first
couple of minutes, which are there, like we find out it's this gorgeous
thing of the Choctua sorry Chaqua creation myth, but it's very like mystical and
kind of Neon e lights almost that that's obvious supposed to be like mystical,
not actual Neon I had to stop and make sure I was watching the right
show, right because I started something else. But one of the things I
think that really kind of was like, Okay, I think they're doing this
better was the Daredevel appearance. Because one thing I remember that I had sometimes
been frustrated about was when you get to a point where in the story of
the larger universe it didn't make sense that other characters weren't showing up, you
know, and like The Defenders is one of my favorite examples. I don't
think Captain America or Iron Man cares if Wilson Fisk is taking over more of
the construction industry, you know, right, whatever, right, right,
right, But when the Hand is trying to raise a dragon and there's earthquakes
happening all throughout New York City, I kind of feel like Captain America or
Tony Stark or someone else might notice, you know. Yeah. And but
but of course having one of them show up at the end of The Defenders
would have, as you said, just kind of taken it over. Well.
I think there's a there's always if you it's a suspension of disbelief thing,
I think. And I think if the show is done well, you
don't care about that as much because you can always make up your own headcnon
for why someone's not there. Oh, they're on a different mission, they're
doing this, Tony's whatever, Tony's in space. Who knows? Like that?
There's always that's the thing. Marvel Comics has always done this. And
if the comic's good, no one's asking that question. If the show is
good, no one's asking that question. It's when you lose your suspension of
disbelief because the show is not grabbing you that you start going really, it's
a dragon, Come on, Where's where's start? But you could easily headcanon
like none of those five Defenders that were there, No, oh Tony Stark,
none of them know Captain America. No one has their number, you
know what I mean? So like, yes, sure they could call some
organization maybe, but maybe they whatever, Maybe they don't know who they can
trust. Blah blah. There's always head cannon. But like it, it
doesn't. It only works that only I feel like happens when the show isn't
grabbing you. And I think Defenders is one of those that didn't grab a
lot of people. Yeah, I think that's fair, and I think it
also maybe the difference in how we see these stories, because for me,
even if it's a very good story, I think in parts because I didn't
grow up reading comic books, so I don't have that kind of like I
haven't been taught how to watch these things, it would pull me out of
a story. But to me, my point is, so therefore, having
Daredevil's not gonna be a main character in the show, but she's fighting Kingpin
in New York City, and so it makes sense that Daredevil's going to be
there. Yeah, And so to me that was just the like that's the
perfect way, like in the same way that like I feel like if you
know, something pulled them into Harlem, you know, and Luke Cage showing
up like it would make a lot of sense. So yeah, it just
gave me a lot of hope about where the MCU is going and some of
these things. And I don't know how much you know about Spotlight and their
new direction with Spotlight. Do I'm sure you notice when it came on the
screen that it' said Marvel Spotlight. Have you have you researched that at all?
Do you know anything about it? Yeah? Since this I did a
lot of research and learned it. Yeah, it's it's kind of going to
be like not like the Netflix MCU, but kind of its own, Like
it's in the same continuity, but it's a little bit more street level.
It's a little bit more adult focused, and it's a little more like trying
to tell these stories in a connected way, well in an unconnected way.
It's kind of the goal, like, yeah, to do a allow a
place for individual stories that don't have to connect, that are smaller, and
I think it's right. It's it's so funny because for years we have been
begging for connection. We've been begging for those moments that you're talking about,
where like why don't they call Captain America, why don't they call it?
Well, But like I think if we all look back, like and I'm
changing my stance on this, I've been for years that guy who wants more
and more and more connection. But I think that the MIMCU when it was
at its height, when it's at it's like the thing that most people remember
as the best, which is like phase two and three, it is they
had great things happening in the movies that were very sparsely populated, and like
they were very connected, but they were like every year or two we were
getting like two movies a year or something like that, and then on TV
we were getting these very grounded stories that were not connected at all. The
Agency, Shield, the Defenders, all five of those shows on Netflix,
they had almost no connection. They were just in the same world. And
I think the Spotlight is sort of bringing that around and saying, Hey,
if you want to be a deep fan of Marvel and you want to watch
everything you can, the one thing I think I need they need, though,
The secret sauce of this formula working in an even better way than it
worked on Endgame is whenever we get the next version of the portal scene where
everything's opening and people are coming through, we need to see the characters from
Spotlight come onto the big screen at some point. They don't have to be
ultra connected. You don't have to explain who they are even, just give
us that little bit as fans. So we freak out and the rest of
the audience goes, oh, I don't know who they are. Oh,
well, you don't know who every person comes through the portals is. You
just need that little bit of that would if Dared Evil had walked through the
screen and the portal scene. It's the only thing that would have made that
scene better, you know what I mean, like it it would have been
increased how good I mean, And I think they even started to do that
to me and Spider Man where you know, oh right, right right,
yeah, where Spider Man needs to find a good lawyer who can help him
with stuff about Mega Superhero and who does he go too? Met Murdock?
Yeah, you've no idey who met Murdock is it's just a lawyer who happens
to have really good reflexes. Yeah, I'm totally with you there, And
so let me actually ask you this then, because I've been diving into this
a lot. Mostly though my discussions about Echo and the people I'm following and
talking to have been discussions of like the wrap presentation in it, and as
you expect with you know, most shows where it's a brown woman is the
star, there's a lot of people who are hating on it. There's a
lot of people who are loving it talking about how to represent it. We'll
get more to that in a bit, but I haven't really dealt with a
kind of like hardcore Marvel people talking about it much, and so I want
to ask you about the canonicity of it all, because clearly I think it
is, like you know, it is a Charlie Cox Daredevil, it's a
Vincent Ainofrio Kingpin. By the way, after watch, that was another reason
why it felt like it worked. I felt like I liked Kingpin and a
Hawkeye, but he didn't feel like the same character. This felt much more
like the same character. And there are there are probably others who are on
his level, but I think Vincent Andofrio is in terms of just the body
of work of the MCU, at the very highest level of acting performances we
have seen in the MCU. He was just incredible, incredible in this.
Yeah, and such are morally complex character the thing though, but I did
notice that there were some things that didn't seem to fit with the exact canon
of the Defenders universe. And some of them like in the fact that like
all of this has already happened, but that now he's starting the process of
running from Mayor. They showed like what I think is supposed to be the
painting that reminds him of the wall in the home where he killed his father.
Uh, and that in the Netflix. It's just kind of a quick
flash, but they show him looking at that painting in the last episode,
and you know, in the mc in the Netflix MCU verse, he buys
it from Vanessa and that's how he meets Vanessa. And it's a horizontal painting
and in this it was a vertical painting. And there's like one or two
other things that that kind of got me thinking, and because I do think
they're gonna have a real problem of how do you tell a lot of those
stories when in some way you've already told all of those stories going back to
you know, all the stuff that happened in you know, how is he
running for mayor again? Uh, when he's kind of already done that in
the Netflix MCU, I don't know, talk to like Chris Christy well,
right, like that's the thing. Talk to Joe Biden, Like people run
for the same office all the time. And I think the way they should
handle it, this is what I said on the MCU guest last night.
If the next time we see Kingpin he's already mayor, that's how they should
handle it. Like next time we see Kingpin. They were talking on that
show about how like he's a he's an out We need an outsider, blah
blah. Someone could swing in right now and become Mayor. We need that
to happen. And then he's like hmm. And the next time we see
him, it's like Daredevil born again. It's two years later and he's just
Mayor Fisk and like Daredevill's having to deal with that, it's a different story
and it's just he ran again, you know, Like that's how I think
they could handle it. I think that's true. I'm going in a different
direction though, because to me, the fact that he was looking at it
as though like he'd never thought of this happening. As well. The vertical
painting, to me was the most obvious, but there were some other things
like that I didn't see the painting. When did they show the painting,
Because when you're talking about in his dream, I think so in his I
dream that was the actual wall. It may have looked like the painting.
I think it may have looked, but it was the wall he was staring
at. So he's in his original bedroom in the dream and he's looking at
the wall. There's another scene where it looked like it was very it had
like a frame around it and stuff. But Okay, my point with all
this being it feels like trying to say this is the exact same canon cannon
of all this stuff we already saw feels like it's gonna be problematic just because
there's so many story beats that we've already seen. What I'm wondering is we
now are in a multiverse. Are they going to perhaps say that the Netflix
Defenders took place in a different part of the multiverse, and so what we're
seeing here in this version, in the six one six or whatever it is
that they're describing it as. For the MCU, it's the same Daredevil,
it's the same Kingpin, and it may well be the same Luke Cage and
all these other people. But by saying this is a different continuity, a
different cannon, that way, they're not tied to the exact details of the
Netflix, right, They're not tied to the exact casting it. Whether like
it felt to me like they were setting that up in this Whether or not
you think that though, do you think that that is a possible way they're
going with all this? I think that is absolutely a possible way they could
go. I think that this show makes that less likely, not more.
I think those smaller details that you're talking about, I mean, fist running
for mayor is not a small detail, but it's like an entire season of
the show. But I do think that like they could easily say he just
ran again and this time he won, like he they last time, they
weren't looking for an outsider the city was. Now he sees his opportunities like,
oh, I can do that thing I always wanted to do. Yeah,
but but the vertical versiars little thing. I'd have to see the screenshots.
I'm looking it up online. I'm not seeing that like as a have
you seen I guess, like, uh, yeah, it's entirely possible that
you're right. I misunderstood it, uh and saw that. So I don't
want that to be the thing that it hangs on for me. It's more
that like in this he felt to me like a businessman who is very well
respected in the community and pre corrupt already, but like, you know,
he has all this power and influence over the cops as we see, he
has all this power and influence with the casinos in ways that I feel like
if he's already been to jail and had everything revealed about him the way Karen
Paige and Mett Murdoch and Foggy did in the shows doesn't really work. I
don't think that's true, okay, And I just don't think like I think
just the way the entirety of season three was about that exact dichotomy, Like
Matt Murdoch, Karen Page, they're all yelling about how he's a corrupt criminal
and like trying to stop him, and half of the city is like,
oh, yeah, he's corrupt the way we like and you can absolutely see
you and you could see it mirroring our world today. Oh look, they're
trying to put him on trial. That just makes us like him more.
Like I just think it. I think they're setting up Yeah, that's fair.
I gott to withdraw that point. I think they're just setting up a
perfect parallel to what's happening in our world, and they're trying to tell a
story that is going to be like very on the nose about what if,
you know, like, what if a corrupt politician just keeps on being corrupt
and people won't believe it? And what does Daredevil do Because now he's the
mayor, he had his chance to kill him in that hotel room, and
he chose not to, and that was the victory of season three, him
overcoming his rage. And now he's gonna see the result of not doing the
Punisher thing. And now he's the Mayor. Now he's America's mayor. Now
he's running for president, like whatever they want to do with it. And
then he's like catapulted into so much power. And then you could you could
tie that into the Thunderbolts, which is something Marvel's coming out within a few
years. You could have it like he's the power center that's like sort of
corrupting an Avengers like team, you know, like it could it could be
huge, King Kingpinn could be an even bigger character. And I'd love it
if nothing else draws a personal a perfect connection between Daredevil and Echo because she
also had the chance to kill him. Yes, yes, yeah, so
totally yeah, yeah. I can see it working either way, So I'll
be very curious to see it. I will admit that, like the airplane
running from Mayor scene was great. I was really hoping to see Foggy or
Karen or even the Punisher kind of sitting down with Echo and being like,
so we have a friend in common or we have a problem in common,
right, yeah, yeah, we we had a lot of those discussions last
night, like who we would have one of the things we did. We
actually hadn't released our episodes yet. We're like, I'm gonna lisse them to
the patrons today and they'll be up later later this week because we we just
had to release them in a certain way. But we had a we had
a big like in our episode four, we bet on like, okay,
are we going to see someone else we haven't seen? Like is someone going
to show up? And like then we all took bets on like who's going
to show up if? And it turned out to be nobody, but it
is. I love that last scene. I think it's it's perfect because it
well, first of all, also this last scene, this this Kingpin being
like Mayor or possibly Mayor or running for Mayor, also has to be tied
into the fact that Maya did some fancy magic to heal his pain and who
does that make Kingpin? And then like if you've got a if you've got
a daredevil who's regretting not killing him when he had the chance, and an
echo who's and like then they're looking at him, and he's doing terrible things
as Mayor, but also like what he's what if he's not doing terrible things
as Mayor. What if he's kind of walking the line because he's had his
pain healed and now he's like you have to believe as the what if?
What if they convince us as the audience that Fisk isn't such a bad guy
anymore, and then we have to take the ride where we're kind of disagreeing
with Matt, Like, I love the fact that it could all it could
go anyway, and the morality of it could be really really blurry. I
mean, that's why I've always said that Daredevil Season one was a big part
of starting the podcast that and Marvel Civil War, because for me, those
are both stories that are so morally gray. Like I've often said, I
think Daredevil Season one is kind of like fifty one percent a Daredevil origin story
and forty nine per like it could be so close to a Kingpin origin story.
I mean it is, but you know, in terms of him being
the more heroic and as you kind of alluded to, I think even Kingpin,
as he is like a lot of people in this country and this world,
would think like, yeah, that's what we need. You know,
he is the and here's my take on what Echo did. And we'll definitely
get to Echo herself in just a moment. But I want to talk more
about Kingpin because I think his his portrayal in this is so well done and
so good and so morally. I think it's so easy to be like,
oh, he's just manipulating Maya the whole time. I don't believe that for
a second. I think he is one hundred percent. He feels a family
connection to her, and he very much loves her and wants to keep her
safe. He just doesn't A. He doesn't even know how to do that
yet. Also like know, like to me, the scene with the ice
cream vendor is so perfect because yeah, I mean you're you're now a parent,
Matt, so you can speak to this more even more than I could.
But like when I have friends who I know have like reasons that they
would get teased or harassed, and I see that happen, there is a
part of me that wants to get violent and go hurt that person. And
A I'm disabled myself and have never learned how to fight, so I couldn't
do it. Anyway, but like, also, I think it's the wrong
thing to do. But like, to me, part of what made that
scene with the ice cream guy so perfect and like so uncomfortable is that I
was like, yeah, I get him, and then looking at how intense
it was getting, and then when you know, little Maya shows up,
I was like, oh God, how traumatic is this going to be for
her? And my partner said, I hope she kicks him, and I
was like, no, yeah, I kind of hope so too, but
no, that's terrible. And then of course she does kick him, and
it's just, yeah, okay, so I've got I'm gonna go in a
different direction with this, but let you talk about that. Yeah, what
was your take on that scene and kind of the whole his feelings Maya in
general? Well, they're two very different. What I love about this show
is it, and you mentioned it in Daredevil being a great origin story for
Fisk. This is another great Fisk story sitting on top of this Echo story,
and it's it's great for both of them, and that scene means something
different in both of their tails. It is Fisk had a lot of pain
and trauma and he is a broken, broken person who doesn't understand love and
that hammer represents something really dark to him, but he thinks it represents freedom.
We'll talk about the hammer scene. The hammer scene is I think one
of the most interesting scenes in the whole show. But that is the scene
we're talking about Fisk. One of the things that first, let me talk
about it for Maya. First, I'll just have to pick pick a person
here, Maya. For me, it was interesting to think about that scene.
I think it was episode four that it started. And then the fifth
scene which is before her mother dies, and it kind of shows she out
of curiosity and like adventure shoots a baby, shoots a bird with the with
the rock right, and then she immediately has all this empathy for the bird,
the hurting bird, and wants to go like see it saved. But
then after her mother dies, she has no empathy. Like the reason Fisk
is fearful when of him seeing her it is because children have an innate empathy
when they see someone hurt and then they and and he's scared that he'll see
her. Fisk is the monster who hurt this poor vendor, even if he
was the bad guy in this moment, you know, but she after her
mother dies has that same trauma, and she's like, I have I have
trauma and I don't know how to I don't know how to heal. And
now she's losing her empathy, and I think that's like, I think that's
a very deliberate thing. So for her, I think that moment is showing
her sort of beginning down sort of a dark path, you know. And
for Fisk, it's this moment of I found someone broken like me, I
found someone that also, you know, at that young age, like at
my young age, when I was young, I killed my father with a
hammer. This child sees this bloody mess on the ground, breathing or not,
can't even tell, blood dripping down his face, and just wants to
kick him, and he sees himself in her. So I agree with you.
I don't think that that scene is a like I don't sorry, I
don't think that scene is I'm sorry, my brain is facing edit edit edit,
So I think we're Are you trying to say that you don't think that
scene is him trying to me? I think that scene, I don't don't
think that scene is showing us a Fisk that is. I don't think this
whole show is him manipulating her because I think he genuinely needs someone who understands
him, the same reason he loves Vanessa, the same reason Vanessa works is
because when she finds out when he blows up all the Russians in season one
of Daredevil and she sees him do it, she doesn't turn away. She
turns toward him. She wants to be with him because the power he's projecting,
but she is just like him and doesn't turn away, like Vanessa doesn't
turn away from the horrible things that Fist does. I mean, in some
ways, I feel like and I never really put it together until they just
heard you describe it so well. The Echo Fisk relationship is very similar to
the darker tellings of the Batman Robin relationship. You know, if you look
at things like Titans and some other things that are really from Dick Grayson's perspective,
where there's an extent to which, like Bruce Wayne both he recognizes,
yeah, that Dick Grayson is in a similar place, and a part of
him wants to prevent that. But then when he realized that, when like
Dick Grayson, sees what Bruswayne Batman is doing, he's kind of like,
Okay, well, I guess he is going to be like me, and
so I need to train him in that regard. Man, that is a
great point. That's a really really solid point. They both lost parents in
traumatic ways. They both well one killed parents, but you know, it
is very much the dark side of that. I love that. Yeah,
And I think part of it is also to me. I think you're completely
right about how Maya has lost empathy, and I think one of the I
think the loss of her mother is a big part of it. But I
also think when basically her grandmother is in so much pain and so much anger
over the loss of her own daughter that her grandmother can't have empathy for it.
I think from Maya's perspective, she sees a total lack of empathy from
her grandmother. Yeah, you know, and then she goes to the school
and a lack of empathy from the ice cream guy and a lack of empathy
from the teacher. Really, yeah, she leaves her community that is all
about empathy for her. Everyone in her community knows asl because her mother was
deaf, and they're all like communicating in a way that shows they care about
her. And that's why I think the fact that Fisk never learned is real
evidence to the fact that he does not know how to love. Like like
I I I not that like every person in a person's life that is deaf
has learned asl but like if he he's been, he's been in her life,
her entire life, twenty years, twenty twenty five years, and like
he's never learned, and she calls him out for it, and you know,
like he convinced that. I thought, it seems like such a great
moment when he invinced the he brings that the contact that allows her to hear
him. I thought it was so cool. But then also it's like keep
spent his money instead of actually taking the time to learn. Yeah, I
think that's the thing is like you know the stories you hear about like kids
with rich parents where it's like, you know, daddy tries to buy my
love and stuff like that, and I think sometimes it can be a sign
of a real lack of affection. And now, but I think, like,
you know, I had this with my parents a little bit, my
father, you know, where I did think it was you know, you
learn that money is often the way to solve problems, and I think to
me, that technology, which I definitely want to talk about, is a
part of it. But another part of it is, you know, she
gets in trouble with the police, and she calls him and he shows up
like an hour later. It's clearly that same night, and he has with
him an interpreter who he is comfortable talking to about talking to Maya about some
of the criminal parts of what he's doing at a very early moment. And
clearly he doesn't trust that interpreter entirely, as we find out later when he
has her killed. But to me, what that showed was is that he
was very conscious of the fact that there was a member of his family who
he needed to be able to communicate with, and he had taken proactive efforts
to be ready at a moment's notice to do that. But as we found
out, he did it by throwing money at the situation instead of actually learning.
And for me, I think this is so important and that it like
I think, if you just write off that as oh, he doesn't really
care about Maya, that's why he used the technology instead, it's all wrong
and part of why this is so important to me. And here let's get
into the representation of it a bit. And again I want to point out
I am not deaf myself. I am disabled, which is not exactly the
same but has a lot of overlaps. A lot of deaf people are very
adamant that death is not a disability, but it's a different way of being
physical in the world that you have often heard me say, I think I've
said it on the MCU cast or does send on my own podcast a bunch
of times that I and a lot of other disabled people are often very frustrated
with the idea that we get represented in like superhero shows, science fiction shows,
fantasy shows. But then very quickly people use the science fiction technology or
the magic to basically erase our disability to the point where the character is not
going through any of the things that disabled person really would go through, and
so it kind of becomes like, Eh, well, this isn't really our
story anymore. What they did with that machine is the single best example I
have ever seen of saying this is science fiction, so we're gonna use technology
that no one's thought of, but it's not going to be to erase the
disability. It's going to be to better bridge the gap, to help you
help other people better, make a world that disabled people can better function in,
or deaf people can better function. And again it's not being the same
thing, but in a way that doesn't embrace the disability. And it meant
so I cried during that scene, and I think it's brilliant that they could
both show that and be like, hey, like, clearly I think deaf
people. We were working with them to be like, no, no,
don't make She already said to Hawkeye that she doesn't want technology. She doesn't
think being deaf is bad, it's just different. Don't make the technology to
fix her deafness. Make the technology to fix the fact that he doesn't know
how to communicate with her, you know, Like to me, it would
be the equivalent if like, you know, Tony Stark or some other like
super you know, maybe Reary Richards or someone like that, or to invent
Reary Williams. I'm sorry. You know, you have a character in a
wheelchair, give them something where like they can press a button and like nanotech
will shoot out and create a ramp to go up to any step, right,
like amazing technology that does this in our own world. But it's still
not about like fix a racing the disability. It's just about making the world
more accessible to the disabled person. So to me, it was so brilliant
that they could both do that. But also then as a further beat to
the story, be like, yeah, this is amazing tech and this is
a much better representation way of doing it. But also it's a sign of
the brokenness of their relationship that he still doesn't want to just he wants to
throw money at the problem and buy the tech instead of just actually learning how
to communicate with her. Yeah, it's a really really complex and interesting moment
because the first thought, my first thought watching it was like, this is
such an amazing overture that he like that he made this device that like can
communicate, but it's still isn't him learning, isn't him taking the time,
It's him throwing money. It's the problem I I and also like watching it,
I had a real sense of like, is this is this hold on?
What's that noise? Sorry, there's a truck beeping outside, which is
Weird're not hearing it. So it's weird because I'm not near the street at
all, So like, I think they must be backing up my driveway to
deliver a package or something, but like it's it's it's funny that I don't
ever hear trucks and I'm in my office that is intentionally the furthest away from
the street, you know, anyway there Oh you say, oh, yeah,
I had a real sense of this could be I don't know if that
kind of technology exists in the world at all or could or has, but
yeah, I got a real sense of this could be a Star Trek communicator
situation, where like they they created Star Trek Communicator and then thirty years later
they had flip phones for the same reason, because those geeks were watching that
show that that's technology seems so doable. It's just animations over a like over
an augmented reality situation with with easy translation software, like you could do that,
like the right the right person could probably put that together in a fairly
quick amount of time. I was like, man, this is totally a
doable thing. And I was like, wow, that's cool. And if
it doesn't exist, I can't imagine someone didn't see that and go that's very
doable and I could do that tomorrow, you know. I thought that was
very cool, but but it did the revelation about the characters is what's most
important. And one thing if you noticed too, he does use sign throughout
the show, but only very manipulative phrases like we are family, you know,
like he's just like he uses these like I love you maya like stuff
like that, just like he uses them in the most manipulative way, only
phrases that. And I don't even think I genuinely think he wants to be
in her life. He wants love from her, but he doesn't know how
to give love, and he doesn't know how how to not be manipulating and
just trying to get what he wants out of her, you know. Yeah,
Well, and that's I think, at least the last question I want
to ask you, and then let's talk more about Echo herself. I think
that, Yeah, Like I think it's easy to write him off as he
never really loved her, is just using her. I don't think that's the
case at all. I think that one of the things that is that we
are seeing Kingpin at a time when he is still carrying He's still very more
conflicted about what he did to his father, and a part of him still
feels an awful lot of guilt about that. And when I took away from
that very end scene is that she heals his pain, but a lot of
the pain that she heals is, like I said, the guilt that he
has about that. Like I think even in that scene with the ice cream
vendor, not that he regrets it, but it's kind of like the like,
Okay, I kind of lost control of myself. This is maybe not
the best I don't want It's like, I don't want to see my at
my worst. You know, it's the monster that he is and that he
like, it's the it's the Jeckyll to his hide or whatever, or the
hide to his Jeckyl. I don't know he he's scared. He both like
knows that he uses that side of himself and needs that side of himself,
but also I think he's obviously ashamed of that side of himself. And that's
why Echoes so special to him, because she saw it and didn't shy away.
Eactly, yeah, she doesn't. And that's where I think that the
I think you're right that in some ways I think Echo may have made him
and even more of a villain because she takes away his guilt, she takes
away his shame, and that kind of tells him, no, you did
that. You protected your mother, you did the right thing. You can
protect the city in the same way. That's a really interesting interpretation. I
took it very differently, but I took it as she got out of his
pain, and I have no idea what that means for him, Like,
yeah, a Fisk without his pain, without his trauma informing all of his
decisions, and without him basing everything on that powerless little boy, and that's
why he seeks power. I don't know who is Fisk without that? And
like, I don't know. And that's what I think is such so fascinating
about ending the show this way, both there and ending the show with the
Mayor thing. It's like this could go so many different ways, and like
her healing of him could mean so many things, but I don't know what
it means, and I like, I'm completely enraptured by the idea of finding
out, Like I'm so into it, so into it as well. Let's
talk about Maya. Let's talk about Echo then, and nice, simple,
easy ethical question. Is Maya Lopez a hero? Not yet? Well?
I mean she clearly Okay, lots of things I've been saying not yet all
season but obviously this last episode. I've just watched last episode, so I'm
kind of reframing everything. We watched it late last night on cast it about
it. I think, clearly the ending she is taking heroic actions to save
her family, but that in itself I don't think shows heroism. Fighting for
the people that you specifically care about, yeah, doesn't necessarily make you a
hero, And I think she's a bit of an anti hero. Clearly,
she's done some terrible things. She's turned over a new leaf, it seems,
in the way she saved her family, but at the end she's her
healing of Fisk is both a beautiful thing because it's her choosing to use this
power she can. She has these glowy hands that she can either fight with
or like hurt people with, or heal people with, and she chooses to
heal in that moment, and I think that's freaking beautiful. I love it.
But in that in that thing, she says, you are my uncle,
like so, so is her doing that a real choice of from empathy
or is it a choice from uh like another person that she just needs in
her life that she has has always known as her uncle and she wants to
see him better, you know, wants to see him healed. She doesn't
want to hurt him. I think I think one thing that that scene reveals
is Fisk was right when he said, I saw the look on your face.
You were happy to see that I was alive. And like I think
she I think she she's she did it in a rash moment, but like
she cares about Fisk, which makes this relationship and all of her decisions way
more complicated than just the hero did the thing the hero. The hero didn't
just turn the other cheek. You know, it's not the hero to turn
the other cheek. Story. I do think that she had a very luke
Skywalker moment with the hammer, and that is you strike me down, you
know, like like that the Emperor is. He's playing the Emperor and and
Vader when he says, you know, kill me with this hammer and you'll
be free, because really that will just cause her to forever be in the
cycle of violence. That hammer scene is so fascinating to me because it's here's
the hammer, kill me right now, and you'll be free. And he
said I had to do it. I had to do it to be free.
Do you think Fisk is free. No, he's still in that freaking
bedroom yelling about his father beating his mother. And that's because he just accepted
the cycle of violence and continued it. Now, he was a victim at
that point, his mother was a victim. He did, but he never
healed from those things. I think that's what the healing Maya gave him is
supposed to represent. But I just don't know what it means for the future.
I just think so much of this I love, I love it.
I love it all. I love it all. I love what you said
there. But the only difference I think is and this is where I think
it's he's more like Vader than he is the Emperor. I don't think Kingpin
and anyway thinks he's going to live through like I think Kingpin is both kind
of inviting her into the cycle that he wants to be free of. Yeah,
oh yeah, I think. No, I agree. I think a
part of it is because he is somewhat like he is. Like, I
think he is so hurt by the idea that something with this what he saw
as a loving, familiar relationship has been so broken that there's a part of
him that's like, yeah, if you are in some ways. It's a
perfect test where he is like, I don't want to live if Maya,
the person I thought was my family, hates me that much, and so
this is the way to test it. If you hate me enough to kill
me, then I don't want to be alive. And I want to you
know. And I think that's the like and yeah, and it's you're right,
It's it's just it's, oh, this is and like I like the
Disney I think the Disney Plus shows have been good. WandaVision was great.
You know, I really love some other things, but this is the kind
of like like and then I know people who are out there who are like,
oh my god, there wasn't enough fight scenes. There was this,
There wasn't that. To me, this is the like, deeply ethically rich
stuff that I love so much. The only the only thing I would just
say, and I love what you said about being a hero, because yeah,
to me, the two things that most make someone a hero are one
that they're willing to recognize the difference between trying to do the right thing versus
acting out of vengeance and and you know that kind of thing, And to
me, I think that's the fundamental star Wars question, which once again you
bashed on Star Wars, on the Star Trek, a recent episode of Star
Trek Quest, and a Star Trek Universe podcast. I have a corrective email
to send to you about that that we'll get to another time, but I
don't even remember. Just flows out of me, you know, I'm so
angry there. Oh yeah, it's the fan host Wanda moment right there,
and I'm Wanda, but like we actually that means something works in today's world.
But anyway, you know what I mean, Uh, Doctor Strange and
all that put aside, the point being that, I think the other important
part of being a hero is yeah, that that is you're not just defending
your own You're you're not just defending yourself and your family. You're defending the
defenseless. You're defending people who aren't part your group. To you hate to
me. I think what was so brilliant about this was it was like seventy
five percent of a hero origin story. Yeah, because it is her moving
past or desire for vengeance. It is her you know, moving to a
better place and accepting that healing can be a power. But she's not quite
there. Of like, I'm gonna go save a whole bunch of people who
I don't care about because bad things are gonna happen. And I think it's
what I think in a lot of ways, she's gonna wind up kind of
being to take the Batman thing again. She's gonna kind of want it being
Catwoman to Daredevil's Batman, you know, in terms of the like much more
morally gray, much less of a hero, but probably willing to do a
heroic thing in part because of like her connection to Daredevil and and met Murdock
inspiring her, not even inspiring her, but like helping to you know,
because I think she's in a like one of the things I loved, and
that makes it sound like I think her story is in service to Mett Murdoch's.
I don't think that's the case at all. I think she has her
own story that I like that she's not just a one of the male hero
now. And so I've been going on for a while. This is the
last thing I'll say. I love that when they talk about all the different
parts of the different Choctaw Warrior women who they've been highlighting, that one of
the things they mentioned is ferocity. Mm hmm. Because you almost never hear
ferocity talked about as a positive trait for a character. It's kind of like
a berserker thing. If there's one character in the entire MCU who I would
say has like embodied ferocity, it's Kingpin, you know. So I just
thought that was such an interesting like she's not gonna be your normal hero.
She's gonna tap into things that we're not comfortable with heroes tapping into. But
she's someone we're gonna root for in a lot of ways. Yeah, man,
I love that whole thing of a cunning strategy Ferocity loves those are your
tools. I just loved it, Like those are your tools that you get
from your ancestors, from this line of women that you come from. I
thought that was so freaking cool and just like a way of stating her like
the core of her character in a really non cheesy way. I in some
ways, I obviously some people will think that's cheese. Her dead mother appearing
to her and like having an entire speech. I keep uh yeah, I
kept trying to like reframe a lot of what was going on through like because
I really like a show when it like dances on the line, is this
religious experience really happening or is it not? You know what I mean?
And this show, when when she finally like spread her powers out to her
uh, her cousin and her grandma and they started fighting, I was like,
oh, no, this is happening. This is fully like they fully
Everything up until that moment was like, even when she pushed the train,
it was like, that could have just been her believing that that's what allowed
her to out of that situation. It could have been a change in the
you know, the chain itself with a combined with the train changing directions slightly
or something. You know, it could have been anything. And uh but
until that when when the grandma starts beating up the thugs, I was like,
Okay, that's not really Yeah, that's the I can't I can't headcanon
this anymore. But yeah, it was one of my only quibbles. I
did wish that they'd kind of done a little bit of a forced ghost thing
with Maya's mother because in a show, granted, comic movies have gotten me
very cynical about is someone actually dead, but particularly in a show where someone
who was shot in the face is still alive, when her mother just showed
up a part of me was like, wait, is her mother just still
alive? Like in an actual literal sense, because again, totally someone was
shot in the head, so maybe she lived through a car accident somehow.
Yeah, but yeah, it was really well done. Yeah for sure.
I in the middle of it, And I said this on mcucast last night,
in the middle of it, I said, what is this Disney shit?
Because and I didn't even mean it in a negative way. I meant
it in a I was looking for a dark, gritty show about Kingpin and
Echo, like just trying to kill each other, and suddenly I am weeping
because a character is talking to her dead mother and like talking about the generations
and how they empower her. And it was just so like it was such
a beautiful moment. I I didn't when I say Disney shit, I just
mean like it was happy, Like it was just so freaking happy, and
like, uh, I had a hard time like uh yeah getting back from
that, Like I found myself crying through most of the last half of the
show when all of her Another Star Wars connection and this this is the last
mention of Star Wars was me like referencing Star Wars. This is me making
fun of Star Wars. But how in the world did they pull off that
scene where all the ancestors appear better than Star Wars did? Like, I
was so much more emotional when her It's because it was personal, Like I
realized why, but it was her. Her family appears behind her as basically
as you say force ghosts, but you know, without the blue translucence,
all the force ghosts appear behind her to show the support of her ancestors.
They do the same thing in uh, you know the lat was what's the
last one called the Rise of Skywalker. They do the same thing, but
it like it's so impactful here, you know, it's the same moment,
but it's so freaking good here. Yeah, and it makes me I'm so
curious for Maya's character going forward because does she have powers now? Is one
of my questions? Or is she just they say at moments of great Trial.
They say it throughout the thing that at moments a great trial they come
to people in their in their their ancestors and give them power to protect their
family sort of thing. Yeah, that's sort of how they go with And
like that means that if that that that holds, I don't really want to
see Maya become just uh, you know, captain glowy hands that can do
cool things and heal whoever she wants and do whatever she needs. Like I
kind of want these powers of hers to be rare. I want her to
continue to use her her other things, the kind, the strategy, the
fierceness, and I want her to like be awesome because she's Maya. And
then occasionally, oh, this is one of those moments. This is a
This is one of the moments is where her she calls on her ancestors to
do some big feat, you know, and that's always I want always to
have the kind of impact that had here. I don't want it to become
like that's just what she does in every fight, you know. Yeah,
I mean like in some ways her story reminds you a lot of Jessica Jones,
especially how Jessica Jones similarly was like, I don't want to be a
hero for a long time. And we know that Jessica Jones has like super
strength and can kind of fly sort of kind of maybe, but like most
of her stories, but situations where those powers won't actually fix things, you
know, And I think kind of a similar way, it's the same way.
I don't want, like you know, Danny Rand or Reary Williams,
to like rebuild her prosthetic and make it totally different, you know. And
just about that, I first of a out the powers. Then I'll get
to the ampute part. I have been part of why that first few moments
through me, I do know there's an awful I'm not Native by any means
myself, but I know there's a really long, awful history of white people
kind of you know, mythologizing and like being like, oh, you know
Native indigenous wisdom and like they have all these like mystical powers. And so
when I saw some of that, I was a little like, You're not
going that direction, are you? And I think what becomes very clear as
you go further is that no, everything about the chalk Tawk connections that she
has is very authentic, and it's very much based in their mythology and their
understanding of things and their kind of visions of stuff. And I think that
what I'd keep reminding myself was I have an idea of what it is supposed
to look like when a dead person comes back to speak to someone, either
just in their mind or in kind of a mystical supernatural way, or in
something that's kind of a combination of it. I have an idea of what
it looks like when the ancestors speak to you, and my idea comes out
of a very particular perspective and mythology set. That's not what this show is
dealing with. And the Chalkton Nation itself, like there's a little thing at
the very end of the last episode that says that they worked in partnership with
them. If you go to the Choctaw Nation's own website, it has like
a long thing about here's all the stuff that Echo draws upon and how connected
it was. And I think it is just I talk about representation all the
time and how important it is, and I really think this show is a
master class in how you do that right, in how you really do it.
Not that it, you know, as the anti woke people will say,
like, not that it like obliterates her character or obliterates any of the
amazing story beat moments we get or there's a great story. But it really
felt like they did so much to make this very authentic to that background,
to that history and to kind of invite others in but without being like,
we're not going to dumb it down for non native folk. We're going to
tell you the story as it would be from this perspective. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, that's very cool. And I you know, I I didn't
give them any thought, but I do, like I am, I,
I I definitely like had to trust. I know they got creators and consultants
on the show that we're putting putting a lot of effort into trying to make
it more authentic, and so I I admit I've been giving it a lot
of credit for just like, Okay, I'm assuming this is all authentic.
I'm not. I'm not doing a lot of digging myself, but I but
I I I'm hopeful and just based on what I've heard the creators say and
stuff, it seems like they're they're really drawing upon Yeah, they're they're myths,
you know, And I think I'm not native, So like you,
I'm kind of like, as an outsider, I'm trusting, but I'm also
hearing that I'm hearing from a lot of deaf people and hard of hearing people
that like they really felt very similar and how authentic was I can say as
an amputee, I won't speak for the entire empty community. I already had
a Twitter argument with one person who was like, I'm an amputee, but
wokeness is bullshit, and like, I don't want to be represented. I
just want stories of you know, fine, but I think that like and
I certainly heard a lot of my empty colleagues talk about this. It was
for I felt one hundred percent seen by this character, Ayes. I think
it's it really speaks to intersectionality and the interestingness of like, this is a
deaf character, this is a native character, this is a woman. I'm
not any of those three things. I can't say I understand the character experience,
but just the like, I'll give you one basic example. Misty Knight,
I think, is another one of those things where it's like, yes,
she loses a limb, but it's not the amputee experience that anyone else
knows because her arm is cut off, and like, three days later,
Danny Rand and his corporation have made her this amazing high tech arm for most
amputees. And I should say, by the way, that like, amputee
is not the perfect term for people who are missing limbs, because some people
are born without that in this case, the characters the amputee and the but
like the people use prosthetic limbs who are similar. But for anybody who does
lose their limb in any kind of traumatic way, it takes like think about
any injury and how much it swells, like that entire area swells up and
is also incredibly tender. And also often there's muscle graphs and skin graphs that
are needed. The idea that you're going to put anything on that for weeks,
let alone months, is just ridiculous. Yeah, And so the fact
that little girl Maya when she and her father are leaving Oklahoma to go back
to New York, it's clearly been a couple of weeks, like her mother
has been buried, she's out of the hospital, and she still has her
stump bandaged, and she's not using a prosthetic leg yet. I was like,
that's what representation looks like, you know that? And then stuff like
about how when her leg gets damaged and her grandfather has to help her rebuild
it and the first version he makes isn't perfect and so she limps on it
like just there were so many things like that, and then because to me,
what I want to see is kind of my experience at its best,
you know. And so I don't think I know how to have a fight
where at some point I cock my prosthetic limb like a weapon and hold it
back so that I release it with even more force. But she did that
and it was freaking awesome. It made for a great fight scene, and
it felt like, yeah, is that stretching the bonds of stretching the bounds
of credulity? Sure? Do I care? No, because any less realistic
than you know, Tony Stark building the first Iron Man suit in the cave,
you know. So yeah, I just everything about it really spoke to
They really were being serious about we want this to be a comic book story.
We want to have fun with it, but we're not gonna We're gonna
tell a story about an actual amputee and understand what that experience is like.
And it just made me so so happy and feel so so seen. That's
awesome. Man. I found myself thinking more about it with the uh with
the the deaf experience, just because it's so uh, it's it's it's very
different from my own. And so there were a lot of things on the
show where I was like, man, I like, I didn't even realize
that something would be different. Does that? Does that make sense? Like,
oh, you don't even realize that this would be different in your life
if this if you had this disability or uh not disability or difference. Yeah,
yeah, so so so I love to hear that that you felt that
way with the the the amputee portion of it when she the one the one
part I wanted to ask you about, And did it seem to stretch the
bounds of credulity? Uh? When when the grandfather was able to fix her
leg? Did that seem a little like far fetched? It did to me?
And I don't know. I just know that, like there are various
levels of prosthesis and like some can do a lot more than others. Clearly
the one that Maya has been using in her fight sequences are is amazing.
But the fact that her uncle or her grandfather was able to do it and
in a fairly quick manner and make one that in a few seconds later she
was jumping off the house with I was like, that seems to strain that
but like the strain realism, but like I'm going with it, But like
you said, it's not much different than a you know, Tony start building
it in the cave, building the ironman in the cave. So this is
actually a great question and gets it, I think a part of the prosthetic
experience that most people don't understand. And like I hadn't even thought it in
these terms, but you're right, it's one more way they get it very
right. There are two parts to every prosthetic or at least every prosthetic leg,
because that's what I know best about. There is the actual foot itself,
and then there's the socket, which is what your leg plugs into and
connects to. Okay, the leg itself is incredibly It can be very basic
or it can be very high tech. And like you think about that South
African runner who then also I think like killed his girlfriend or like did something
horrible, but like he he ran at the Olympics on these prosthetic legs that
basically like gave him a huge advantage. And there's some interning conversations about because
like, like even my prosthetic leg, which is still like if it's what
insurance will pay for, it's the high end of what insurance will pay Forcause
I'm very prilugient I have a very good insurance. It has better shock absorbers
than my car does. Like and I fully believe that Wilson Fisk could paint
wood and could pay for the very top level of like foot that she could
have, and like, to give an example, there are times where she
like drops down and is fine with it. That would probably be painful for
me because just I don't have quite a high quality. So like, if
I drop from a distance in my foot lands, it like creates a reverberation
that goes up into my stump, but it's quite painful. But I fully
believe that she has the foot that that's not a problem with the foot then
attaches to a socket and the socket is you know, it's a plaster mold
that is that it's built of to that fits around your your stump, and
then there's a at the bottom of the socket is the piece that connects that
to the foot. They were very careful to show that the foot itself was
not damaged. It was the socket and the way that the socket connects to
the foot, because part of why I have trouble walking a lot is that
in part because I'm heavier. This is not a fat shaming thing in the
slightest. It's just the way bodies work. The more fat there is on
something, and my stump has a good deal of fat, not just because
of my own weight, but because of just I have a very short knee,
and so it's the way it's must. There's also biological details, but
the point is it's hard to get a very good perfect fit, and so
it wobbles a little bit. So like if I if I kicked someone,
it probably knocked my whole leg off of alignment. Maya has a very well
made one that fits her perfectly. When it's damaged as it is in that
train scene, it's very hard for her and that's why. And he can
fix it to some extent. But if you notice, even after what her
grandfather does, initially it doesn't work very well and she is still limping somewhat.
It's only when she gets the finished version of it that he can.
And the first couple of times, like aprosthetic limbs made, I was expecting
it to be this super high tech, you know, experience and the foot
is that, But the actual making of the socket and everything else, it's
just a guy with screwdrivers and pliers, like fuddling around the way someone would
under the hood of like a nineteen seventies car. You know, it's very
much a you know, like grease under your fingernails kind of mechanic experience.
It's not a high tech thing. That's really cool. That were they captured
that. That's really cool. And clearly they knew what they were doing and
knew what they were talking about. That's awesome because I saw that and I
was like, I just know these things are these things are complicated, and
it seems weird that he's just been able to rebuild it at all, much
less get it working so quickly. But yeah, that's awesome. Yea,
that they were careful with that, that's super cool. It is. And
I'll say, like, I think the implication is supposed to be in the
same way that like the family learned asl I don't think any random mechanic could
do it, but I think a mechanic could really learned and studied how to
make prosthetics could do that. Yeah, And so in my head it's like,
oh, of course he's been making prosthetics for her all of her life.
He knows how to do this. Then I realized, wait a minute,
yeah, with her twenty years, So I was like, Okay,
well that that part, but I can understand him being like I want her
to be able to come back. Plus other natives are going to lose their
legs and I'm probably not gonna have good health insurance to me, I have
to head canon a bit. Yeah, but I can very easily head canon
that he decided to learn how to fix prosthetics a because the back of his
mind he's hoping she'll come back one day, but mostly said he can help
other people in his community and thus had the skills ready. Yeah, and
I was curious about that too. One of the things we talked about in
them seitcast is why they didn't really get into why the uh the grandparents get
divorced, and we kind of just headcanon. Slash talked about how it's very
possible the trauma of losing their daughter and and and having to deal with that
caused this riff, but also the fact that the grandmother refused to have contact
with Maya's father and liked, you know, writing them off, that all
of that seems very traumatic and very hard to navigate and very hard to make
those choices as a unit, as like a married couple, So I got
I got curious about the possibility, and I don't know, but it's possible
that he may have had more contact with her than the grandmother had. And
clearly when she went to town, he was the one she went to,
like He's she didn't go to that, So it's possible he has worked on
her leg before, even if it was just when she was younger or as
a child, then once she because it seemed like Bonnie also pot they were
very unclear with when Bonnie and Maya stopped talking, like it was it was
clear that the grandmother didn't want them talking, but then after the death of
her father, it seemed like she didn't want to talk to any of her
family at all because of the dark road she was taking, you know,
like it seemed that way. But they never are very explicit about it,
because we never really have evidence one way or the other what happened between the
time that she left for New York and the time that that she comes back,
like did they have any contact for those twenty years or whatever, And
it's not real clear. Yeah, I think it's really true, and I
think there's there's room to explore it. But I also felt like, yeah,
I don't exactly know, but but it all makes sense to Yeah,
I believe in gaps and the information allows us to do things like d Cannon
that, Yeah, maybe the grandfather worked on it a few times, like
yeah, whatever, Like maybe they came back to visit twice. Then he
got to do a little bit of tinkering and that informed his ability later.
And like you said, a good story is such that you don't get caught
up in the exact details exactly. Yeah, like until we go on a
podcast, and then we get and cut up in the details regardless, and
that's the point and we enjoy it. There's so much more we can say
about this, and I'll that you have a couple last words, but I
just want to say, uh, because we barely talked about the family.
But I just want to say the actress who plays Bonnie, who I know
also is the voice actress for a native character. Yes, that I have
not seen yet, but I want to see it. But there's one scene
in particular that I was like, three minutes is not enough to win an
Emmy, but I think this may be one of the best three minutes of
acting I'll ever see in television. This year, where you know, if
you're interpreting in theory, you're supposed to be kind of like dispassionate about the
information you're passing back and forth because you have to be, because you have
to be able to translate it. And so the scene when she is the
interpreter as King Pitt is explaining that he is going to kill Bonnie, like
she is having to interpret a threat to her own life, yeah, as
though she's not in it. And just the way that the actress was able
to carry the horror and the upsetness on her face without losing a beat and
translating, and that she was having to struggle so much to do it,
but she did it. I was just like, I can't imagine what that
moment is like, but I feel like I am seeing it in this acting
performance, and it was just so well done. It is the terror on
her face and the like urgency at which she's signing because she needs ma to
understand what's going on. And one of my favorite things about that scene is
unrelated to acting, which I agree with you is stellar, but one of
my favorite things about that scene is she never hears the third phrase, she
never has it interpreted because there's this really rhythm to the scene where Fisk says
some thing, cuts over to Bonnie signing it, Fisk says something, cuts
over to Bonnie signing it, and then Fisk says something and as she's turning
to like see what he's saying, a one of the thugs come in and
comes in and punches her, and it's like a very like oh yeah,
he gets interrupted, and it's another one of those moments where like, oh,
the fight scene started and we as the audience and Maya were in this
experience of just not finding out. We just don't get to find out because
the interpreter wasn't given time and it's just like a really small moment, but
it's like one of those things will if you just don't have the interpreter available
in that moment, you don't get it, you know. And it was
it was another just like great moment of that experience. You know. It's
funny. I was talking with a friend about how kind of one thing we
liked about it is it is really fun in the more traditional MCU when you
know a hero does something great and that has a really quippi line, you
know, like Peter quill or someone like that says something really funny as he
finishes a fight. Well, like, it would make no sense for that
to happen in this because that's not what she's doing. But also in realizing
like while she's using her fists, she can't come up with a quippie long
you know, like she could never be Spider Man because like the way she
talks is also the way she fights. Oh yeah, good point, good
point. Yeah. I thought a lot about that when she's tied, when
her hands are tied behind her back, because it's not only uh, not
only is she physically tied, but she's barred from communicating as well. By
tying, he has basically gagged as well. Yeah, without gagging, she's
gagged. I think that was really it just these moments you don't think about
when you don't read that experience, and it's so cool to see that on
screen and just get that oh oh yeah, that's totally different than my experience.
That's different and I would have never ever even thought about it, and
like that's to me. It's also a great counterpoint where there she's tied up
in a way that her disability makes harder. Contrasts that to when she's tied
up by the ankles, right and by the way when you concept like this
that separation I talked about between leg and socket, that's how she gets out.
Is she separates her leg from her socket, like tying up someone's legs
when you're kind of a mister potato head and can you know, takes part
of the part like doesn't work as well. And so yeah, I didn't
even thought of that. I don't even know if that was intentional. But
having one scene where she's tied in the way that makes her other disability even
harder, but another scene where she's tied up and because of her disability she
can get out, which it's just really cool. And you know, the
way she fights, as you mentioned with like cocking her leg back and springing
it forward, it is you know, it's the h and when the train
crushes her leg and the fact that she had that leg's already gone and it's
still it's still an important thing because she still has to get her prosthetic repaired,
but it is it is you know, obviously not as painful and not
as uh, not as traumatizing the the uh. It's these moments in the
show that show her disability for being aage at times too, and it's a
whole like, you know, you used to be a phrase not disabled,
differently abled, and I'm sure people use it at times, but like this
was just a real example of that throughout the show, where her her abilities
as an amputee were like different in different situations that's helped her or hurt her,
And it's sort of this like, uh, it just is showing how
that experience can be just so different from ours, from from mine. And
yeah, I thought it was very cool. I mean, as someone who
gets to park wherever I want, whatever I want because of my disability,
Like I totally got that. Yeah, yeah, there you go. I
would ask if you have any last thoughts, But the fact is, if
people want to hear Matthew Carroll's last thoughts on MCU and first thoughts and middle
thoughts, there's five episodes now on the MCU podcast, which is fantastic.
I'll give you a chance to talk about it into a second, but is
there any last things you want to And we will be doing a bonus section
maybe quick like ten minutes because it's gone pretty long, but we will be
doing a bonus section about more one of the Defenders coming into the MCU and
kind of our hopes and thoughts about that or into this versus of the MCU.
But Matt, any of the last things you want to say as part
of this conversation, Oh, Man, not really. I just appreciate you
having me, and it's good to be here. Hadn't been on the Superhero
ethics in a long time and always good to be here, man, And
I just yeah, I love this show. I think this show is really
really cool, and I love that it is so meaty for representation and so
meatiaf to have new conversations and so like just it's just really really a great
show. And as you mentioned, shows with ethical questions, I think the
Defenders were particularly good with that, and this show, again, I think
is just hitten out of the part with a lot of that and some of
it I don't even understand the repercussions of yet, and we're gonna have to
wait and see. And I think that's really cool too, the fact that
they're trusting the future storytellers in the Spotlight Arena to pick up the ball and
run with Maya story, and run with fifth story and see where it goes
from here, you know, yeah, I definitely think so. I'm I'm
nervous about that, just because with the MCU so much has been like started
and then canceled. And I do know there is a strong fan reaction of
dislike to the show so far. I think there's a lot of fans who
abolutely love it. I think it's a strong majority, but there are I
guess, I don't sure, some people of legitimate reasons, but there's also
some folks who are I had one person who was like, oh, this
is all woke nonsense. Who's trying to convince me there's an amputee I should
hate this show. And his reasoning was, if you remember, she loses
her leg in the car accident, and it happens because like you know,
when the car breaks, there's this like large shard of glass that goes into
her leg, and that is very realistic in terms of like if you cut
the femeral artery that goes to the leg, and like that leg loses blood,
like it's going to die pretty quickly and like you will have to amputate
it. People I know are coming after me and being like no, but
like a windshield doesn't break like that. A large piece of glass wouldn't come
out like that, and so therefore everything about the show is ruined and terrible.
And I was like, look, maybe that's true about the windshield,
but I just couldn't possibly care less like that. But my point being with
all that, given all of the dislike that it's generating, as well as
just like some of the discussions around like the Marvels and other stuff, I
am worried that we're not going to get as many of these stories as we
want. Sure, or it may well be that we get it entirely in
Daredevil's story, which I think will be great. I Echo gets to be
a big part of it. But yeah, I like you. I'm very
excited. We'll talk more about that in the motu section, and just yeah,
it just makes me really happy as a Marvel fan. And I'm now
going to go back and watch what If. And Loki isn't my show,
so I probably won't watch that, but I'll watch some other stuff. Do
man so much, and that's our time travel difference, But man, I
love Loki so much. It's Loki is a show built for me. Like
the it I hope you, I hope one day you'll get to see it.
And they are all you'll decide to see it because I think it ends
so beautifully and in really cool way. It just has some really coolness to
it. I may well, but I also think that's another to me,
a part of this, like this is going to be getting back to all
the topic because with you and I, like you and Paul were really bad
at ending things at least the time we're not trying to get the last word
on each other and in a disagreement, which poor Jeff used to have to
moderate those. But like, to me, I think one of the there's
a difference between a large connected universe where all these individual stories happen, but
like you're always remembering that's happening in a world after the blip for example,
you know, and like that's changed the world that's different than everything is feeding
into this larger overall plot, you know. And I think like if I
found out that Wilson Fisk was somehow working for King in some way or you
know, like that kind of thing, I'd be like, Eh, I
don't want this right, but but yeah, I I I do really love
that. It is just the I'm trying to think where in the world that
was going with that. What were we talking about right before the Loki?
Oh? Yeah, so the point the point that being, I think another
advantage of that is if I don't need to watch every single thing to understand
every single thing, they can take more risks. They can have a show
like Loki, which time travel people will love and isn't for me. Well
they might. They might have a show that's just Matt Murdoch and she Hulk
trying cases together and they get in a fight once every three episodes, but
it's just a lego drab and I love that a lot of other people won't,
you know, Like there's just so many things, like we can have
things that are not made for everybody in a lot in the Spotlight. Yes,
yeah, And I think that's that's what I was saying earlier. I
think we've all strived for this connected universe to be even more connected. But
I think there's a balance to that connection. And I think that's something that
we've we've known for a long time that there's a bad to the connection.
But I think that they're they're recalibrating that right now at Marvel because of the
sort of lack of success of some of these Because I don't think they've made
you when you compare phases four and five. People have talked about the overload
or whatever, but when you compare phases four and five, there's not that
much. I don't think there's more television than there was during the Defenders.
I think it's probably very similar amount of television when you when you include Defenders
and Agents of Shield and all that and and Runaways and but back then they
let things be separate a little more, and it's something I didn't like about
it. I was like, more connected, But now I'm like, you
know what, they tried it. They tried to be more connected, and
they lost half their audience because like so many people were like, there's so
many people out there, like like myself, that's a completest. And I
don't like watching the next thing until I saw the last thing. And so
if a thing comes out and it's not really my thing and I fall off
and I don't watch whatever, then I feel like I've lost a rung in
the ladder. And the more connected things are, the more that is.
And I think they're because more people feel that way. It's it's it's good
to have shows for different audiences. And I think they're they're they're moving towards
that. I think, Yeah, I feel like the kind of three main
universes that, like, you know, between the two of us and like
your other podcast that we cover, Marvel, Star Wars and Star Trek are
all wrestling with how to do this? You know for a sure show that
there's a lot of this conversation and just it's gonna be fascinating to see how
it all comes around. So well, thank you again, Matt. Yeah,
who are members? You know, five dollars a month, You get
ad free content, you get bonus content, and you help support us.
It is fantastic. All the information about how to join is right there in
the show notes. Please do so. But also I assume if you're listening
to this, you probably already know about the MCU cast. I think it
is the absolute premiere, as I think it's the mere superhero podcast out there,
but absolutely the MCU one. Matt, tell us a little bit about
MCU cast or where you can find it. Thanks man, it's very kind.
Yeah, we were at the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast. Everywhere you get
podcasts, so if you like the Marvel cinemat Universe, we talk about it
every week, and you know, it's just it always surprises me. Sometimes
there's not content for a few weeks and I'm like, well, will we
talk about And then we get on and we're like, there's always so much
to talk about. There's so many ways to go with it. And honestly,
a lot of that is thanks to our listeners who's writing a lot of
things, and we get great feedback that like spurs on cool convers excuse me,
cool conversations that we never would have had otherwise. And I think I
just I love being on the show. I love the community, and I
love love, love making it for you, for you listeners out there.
So if you like the Marvel Cinemat Givers, check us out Marvel Cinemat Giver's
podcast. And there is of course other podcasts that Matt's very involved with where
you can hear him give like good updates about news that's happening in the multiverse.
You can hear him heretical slander against Star Wars while he's talking about another
Star show. Gives like a quick rundown about some of the other stuff you're
on. Yeah, one of the ones we're really really focused on this year,
building Up is Multiverse News, and it is a week week, week
to week news news show where we really put a ton of work in honestly,
like it's it's the most work intensive show we've done on that I've done
on the network, because we actually like research and write the news up and
like have I'm the sort of anchor on the show, and I read read
the news and then we discussed and have sort of a panel show about all
the news stories that are going on that week, and we expand a little
far beyond those three universes you mentioned. We do talk about all those,
but we also get into everything else just in mostly in the geeky realm,
but sometimes we're just talking about what's going on in the box office and what
we like, know, Taylor Swift was big in the box office this year.
You know, Barbie was big in the box office this year. So
Urbenheimer and Taylor Swift became common topics on the show. Like you know,
it's sort of just whatever is happening in pop culture we'll kind of get into
and that good even even did dip our toe into video games and stuff.
So it's just Multiverse News. Any we say, we're your your source for
information about all your favorite fictional universes. So that's one we're really trying to
grow and we're really putting a lot of effort into. So I hope you
guys will check that one out too, And then everything else is at strandedpana
dot com. We have something for every every universe and every show. Probably
at this point something's going on. So yep, yeah, there's so much
great stuff to check out there. Stranded Panage does so many wonderful things.
There's Animation Deliberation, which does all this stuff about animated stuff. There's the
Star Trek Universe pot Star Trek is Yeah, there's a Star Trek Universe podcast.
There are just so many good things you guys got going on. Source
Notes, which is all about like the book. Yes, source pages,
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