It’s been said in the past that casting is the most important thing the MCU gets right. It’s easy to forget that when he was cast as Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t exactly box-office gold. It’s reinvigorated careers, created superstars and made it impossible to imagine other actors in the same roles — we’ve had about 12 Bruce Waynes, but it’s hard to imagine a Steve Rogers played by anyone other than Chris Evans.
They’re keeping it up. A lot of Hawkeye episode three is a showcase for Maya/Echo, played by newcomer Alaqua Cox.
Alaqua, who is both deaf and missing part of her leg in real life, is pretty revelatory – this is her debut role, but she’s an incredible presence, furious and magnetic. The higher-ups at Marvel clearly realised they had found something pretty special in her, and recently announced a spin-off series focusing on her character.
The extra running time afforded by it being a TV show rather than a movie means Maya’s backstory is dealt with movingly and sensitively. It might just be the fact that Hawkeye drops first thing in the morning UK time, or that they brought in the great Zahn McClarnon (star of the best episode of Westworld) to play her dad in a few scenes, but there might be some prickly eyes in this episode.
All that being said, Maya seems to have learned nothing from every action movie ever made, and has deployed the kind of shelving arrangement in her warehouse – row after row of free-standing bookshelves of a uniform height – that is always going to end with someone running across the top of them and making them fall on a baddie. It’s a dance as old as time.