Echo to launch new Marvel Studios label with less emphasis on "larger MCU continuity"

Marvel Studios just released the surprisingly cool trailer for Hawkeye spin-off Echo (surprising because Marvel’s in an arguable slump, not because Echo stars Alaqua Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio aren’t awesome), but there’s also a potentially big reveal about Marvel’s future in a little news post on the Marvel website: Apparently, Echo will be the first entry in a new series called “Marvel Spotlight,” with Marvel’s Head Of Streaming, Brad Winderbaum, saying that the label will be applied to “more grounded, character-driven stories” that focus on “street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.”

Winderbaum compares it to the way that the Spotlight label is used in Marvel’s comics, where you “didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic.” He says viewers won’t need to have seen other Marvel shows in order to understand Echo, which seems… like it might be a stunning reversal of the whole MCU gimmick.

Part of the reason that’s surprising is that, as you may have noticed up above when we called Echo a spin-off of Hawkeye, is that this new show is deeply indebted to a thing that already came out, you know, like every other MCU thing. You apparently don’t need to have seen Hawkeye to understand Echo, even though Hawkeye is where Cox’s character was introduced, and it had a big reveal about her relationship with D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, and a lot of that show was about dealing with her grief over her father’s murder (at the hands of Hawkeye himself, in his Ronin persona). But… none of that is relevant? Even though it seems relevant in the trailer? Seriously, what on Earth is Marvel talking about here?

It seems like both a nod to the fact that not every Marvel Studios thing “matters” in the grand scope of the series, which, duh, but also an attempt to plead with viewers that they should still care about what happens here anyway. It’s not completely absurd, and it’s something Disney+ has tried in the past with its one-off “Special Presentations” like Werewolf By Night, but having Marvel itself come out and say “hey, heads-up, there aren’t any Avengers in this thing” seems so backwards compared to everything it’s been doing up until now—which may be the first, or second, clear acknowledgement we’ve gotten that things aren’t totally working the way they should be at Kevin Feige’s house.

Echo hits Hulu and Disney+ on January 10.