Yahoo News Echo director talks Maya Lopez's fight with Daredevil
Sydney Freeland speaks to Yahoo UK about the upcoming clash between Maya Lopez and Matt Murdock
Watch: Sydney Freeland discusses Echo fight scene between Maya Lopez and Daredevil
Echo will soon land on Disney+ and introduce a new chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with some familiar faces, and ahead of its release the streamer has shared a clip of the fight scene between Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) and Daredevil (Charlie Cox).
The scene, which is only partially shown in the preview for the series, has generated some early reaction from Marvel fans, with some even prompted to make memes criticising the fight sequence before they have had the chance to watch it in context.
Ahead of the show's release, Echo director Sydney Freeland speaks to Yahoo UK about the show and teased what fans can expect from the clash between Maya and Matt Murdock, sharing the importance it represents in Maya's character arc as an anti-hero.
"The fight sequence with Daredevil was something that was... it wasn't always certain, you know? And one of the things that we talked about was that scene in particular [was] the way that we shot it was intentional," Freeland explains.
"That scene sort of becomes known as the birth of a villain."Sydney Freeland
The director adds: "What I love about that scene on the page is that Maya goes into that scene as a teenage girl and she comes out of it as a cold-blooded killer, and that kind of motivated this idea of shooting it as a one[-shot scene] and having everything coming in.
"And, again, Daredevil showing up forces Maya to raise up her game, but then that has positive questions for her and Kingpin [Wilson Fisk, played by Vincent D'Onofrio].
"It brings them all together and it puts her firmly on Kingpin's radar to say like, 'oh, this is somebody to pay attention to'."Sydney Freeland
Echo centres on Maya Lopez, the villain of 2021 Disney+ series Hawkeye, and follows her in the aftermath of that show's finale, where she was seen shooting her adoptive uncle Fisk after learning of the role he played in her father's murder.
The new show will see the character return to her hometown of Oklahoma, but Fisk is not far behind and he is out for blood. Both D'Onofrio and Cox reprise their roles as Kingpin and Daredevil in the MCU after first taking on the roles in Netflix's Daredevil series from 2015 to 2018.
Reflecting on the process of filming the fight between Daredevil and Maya, Freeland adds: "I think putting that whole sequence together was so much fun, and it's complex.
"It's complicated to do a oner like that because you can't really shoot the whole thing in one so you have to digitally stitch them together. It took a lot of rehearsal, a lot of practise, a lot of photography, multiple departments working together, but I'm really happy with how it turned out."
Echo premieres on Disney+ in full on Wednesday, 10 January.
Read more:
Watch the trailer for Echo:
