Marvel has been taking small steps toward creating a more diverse cinematic universe, but leave it to internet trolls to act like that’s a bad thing.
In the lead-up to Echo, which features the MCU’s first Native American lead in a live-action project, some viral comments questioned whether the miniseries was necessary since the Native American character Kahhori had already been introduced in the animated series What If…?
Despite the MCU's severe lack of diversity and the two indigenous characters having different backgrounds, the viral comments claimed it would be “repetitive” to have them both.
Devery Jacobs, the Native American voice actor behind Kahhori in What If…? who also appears in Echo as the character Bonnie, clapped back at the haters while attending the Los Angeles premiere of Echo on Monday
“Would somebody go up to a white guy and say, ‘This is the one perspective for a white story that is out there’? Would somebody go and say that?” Jacobs asked while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s egregious, that’s insane that anybody would say that.”
Then she took aim at those who believed the MCU was only big enough for one Native American character. “I don’t even know if it’s justifiable for an answer, but I’ll give one anyway,” she said. “I think that the story of Kahhori in What If…? is astronomically different from that of Maya Lopez in Echo.”
“I think one is talking about colonization and history and features Mohawk cultures and communities — the community that I come from — and the other is about an anti-hero, kind of a villain, who is coming back to her Choctaw Nation and to her family, and it’s really a dark crime noir family drama,” Jacobs added. “And so, they’re both individual stories that absolutely deserve to be told.”
Echo is a miniseries starring Alaqua Cox, Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, Zahn McClarnon, Cody Lightning, Graham Greene, and Vincent D’Onofrio.
All five episodes of Echo will begin streaming on Disney+ and Hulu starting on January 9.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
