Orphan Black: Echoes Review: AMC’s Spinoff Is a Pale Carbon Copy That Can’t Live Up to the Original

Orphan Black was a jolt of sci-fi adrenaline when it debuted on BBC America in 2013, powered by a spectacular performance from Tatiana Maslany as a bevy of identical clones. (Maslany won an Emmy in 2016 over the likes of Claire Danes and Viola Davis — and she damn well deserved it, too.) But if you took away Maslany and the whole #CloneClub concept, what would you have left? The answer might be Orphan Black: Echoes (premiering Sunday, June 23 at 10/9c on AMC and BBC America; I’ve seen the first five episodes), a disappointingly mediocre follow-up that lacks the unique spark of the original and isn’t interesting enough to justify how convoluted it is.

Krysten Ritter stars as Lucy, who wakes up not knowing who she is after some kind of “procedure.” Years later, Lucy begins to uncover the truth: She was cloned from a cutting-edge “4D printer” that can reproduce human flesh and bone, and she’s still haunted by fleeting memories of a bloody knife. Soon enough, she’s tracked down by shadowy creeps and has to go on the run with her boyfriend Jack (Avan Jogia) and his deaf daughter Charlie (Zariella Langford). Along the way, she forms a bond with disgruntled teen Jules (Amanda Fix) and reconnects with a scientist (Keeley Hawes) who has an intriguing link to the Orphan Black universe.

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Echoes has an eerie, Severance-like quality to it, taking delight in keeping us in the dark. But for those of us who made it through five seasons of Orphan Black as well as countless other sci-fi shows, we know we won’t get the answers we want anytime soon, so our patience is thin to begin with. (The fifth episode starts to put together the puzzle pieces, but not in a way that’s satisfying enough to keep us hooked.) Echoes doesn’t give us much to chew on while we wait for those answers, either, saddled with clunky plot machinations, bland supporting characters and sinister, mustache-twirling villains.

Granted, the original Orphan Black definitely went off the rails at times, too, but it always had Maslany’s wizardry to fall back on, and her absence is glaring here. (Fear the Walking Dead alum Anna Fishko takes over as showrunner, with original co-creator John Fawcett back as director and executive producer.) Echoes does have some connections to the original series I can’t reveal, with a familiar face providing much-needed comic relief. But it feels less like a worthy successor to Orphan Black and more like just another interchangeable paranoid conspiracy thriller. (Plus, despite being set in the year 2052, it has precious little future tech on display and mostly just looks like it’s set in present day.)

Really, the joy of an Orphan Black show is seeing an actor play multiple clones, and watching those clones bounce off each other, and marveling at how distinct those clones can be from each other. Echoes doesn’t have any of that. Ritter makes a solid lead as Lucy, but she can’t live up to Maslany’s titanic performance(s), because Echoes never gives her a chance to. Fix has a sarcastic, cynical edge as Jules, but her storyline feels too much at times like Orphan Black: The Teen Years. Watching Echoes just made me appreciate how special the original Orphan Black and its once-in-a-decade performance from Maslany were. In trying to replicate Orphan Black’s success, Echoes just proves that a copy is never as good as the original.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: The new spinoff Orphan Black: Echoes is disappointingly mediocre, lacking the spark that made the original so fun.

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