Marvel Studios is developing a Hawkeye spin-off about Alaqua Cox's Echo for Disney Plus

We’ve only gotten one season of one show and one episode of a second show so far, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s foray into television on Disney+ seems to be going pretty well. So well, in fact, that the streaming service is apparently already developing a spin-off of one that’s not out yet—and a spin-off that seems like a surprisingly big swing at that. According to Variety, Disney+ is developing a solo show about Echo (a.k.a. Maya Lopez), a hearing-impaired Native American woman with the ability to perfectly replicate another person’s fighting style. Echo, as played by Alaqua Cox, will make her MCU debut in Disney+’s Hawkeye, which is going to premiere on the service at some point later this year.

Though primarily a supporting character in Daredevil comics, Echo originated the Ronin persona that Hawkeye used for a time (as seen in Avengers: Endgame when he became a sad murder-ninja), so there is also a connection between her and Clint Barton. She was also raised by Wilson Fisk and briefly fell in love with Matt Murdock—as Marvel characters so often do—but it seems unlikely that either of those things will happen here.

Now, a Disney+ series about a Marvel character that both isn’t an A-lister and isn’t making their debut in a multi-million dollar movie is one thing, but Hawkeye itself will also be the debut of Alaqua Cox herself—which means this is a potential spin-off about a character that people don’t necessarily know and starring an actor who people definitely don’t know (at least not yet), which seems like a an unusually big risk for Disney and Marvel. The fact that it seems kind of risky, though, could also be taken as a good sign: Marvel Studios must be happy with what it’s seeing from Hawkeye and Cox in particular if it’s even considering this.