Not to sound too cynical, but Marvel Studios making the bold call to compare the already-troubled Echo to “comics fans don’t need to read” doesn’t make it sound like can’t-miss television.
Sure, there’s the chance the freshly-minted Marvel Spotlight banner opens the doors to street-level stories with harder edges that don’t have to tie themselves in knots to fold into the overarching story of the Multiverse Saga and beyond, but it’s easy to infer that the titles in question will be inessential.
Not only that, but the last time Marvel did this exact same thing, it couldn’t have gone much worse. Obviously, this was when Kevin Feige’s arch-nemesis Ike Perlmutter was overseeing the now-defunct small screen arm that was ultimately folded into the studio itself, but that doesn’t mean the failed “Adventure Into Fear” experiment should be forgotten.
When Helstrom was first announced at Hulu back in May of 2019, it came with the caveat that it would act as the first installment in a splinter franchise that would exist within the same universe as the rest of Marvel’s episodic output, but wouldn’t cross over with them directly. Gabriel Luna’s Ghost Rider spin-off was revealed as its second series, and we all know what happened there.
The former was canned after a single 10-episode season and the latter was scrapped before it even had a chance to shoot, leaving Adventure Into Fear as a footnote in Marvel history. There are eerie similarities to Marvel Spotlight on paper, but we can only hope they don’t exist in execution, otherwise the beleaguered superhero sandbox is going to come under even heavier scrutiny.
Published: Nov 5, 2023 04:07 am