LOS ANGELES – The protagonist of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Echo, Maya Lopez, is not your typical superhero. The Native American is also deaf and an amputee with a prosthetic leg.
She attended the Wisconsin School for the Deaf, where she played on the girls' basketball team from 2014 to 2015 and on the volleyball team. Part of Cox's right leg is amputated. She uses a prosthesis.
Alaqua Cox is making history as the lead star in the new Disney+ series, "Echo." Cox, who is deaf and hails from the Menominee Nation in Wisconsin, said Monday on "Good Morning America" that being an actress has given her a platform to address the importance of representation in Hollywood.
Marvel Studios' Echo - Official 'Becoming Echo' Behind the Scenes Clip (2024) Alaqua Cox
Does Maya have a fake leg?
I want them to know that their dreams should not have limitations and that they don't have to 'fix' themselves.” Although Maya did not originally have an amputation, Marvel studio execs rewrote the character to have a prosthetic leg like Alaqua.
"I grew up playing different kinds of sports — I would play one-on-one basketball with my older brother — so I love doing those kinds of physical things," the actress, who, like her character Maya Lopez, is an amputee and has been deaf all her life, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.
3. Halle Berry. Halle Berry, the first black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress, lost nearly 80% of her hearing in her left resulting from a blow to the head during a domestic violence incident in a previous abusive relationship. Berry is now an outspoken advocate for raising awareness about domestic violence.
The entire cast (and crew) learned American Sign Language in order to not only communicate with Alaqua Cox, but to talk on-screen with Maya. Because of this, the close-up shots in the show are done differently – something director Sydney Freeland and her team worked really hard to incorporate.
According to 'Hollywood Reporter', production finally started back up and the original Daredevil stunt coordinator has returned. It also said that Marvel Studios "is interested in doing more with the character and is already developing new ideas as it seeks to build out its street-level heroes."
She later takes on the "Echo" guise to hunt down Daredevil. On her face, she paints a white handprint, similar to the bloody handprint left by her dying father. Maya proves more than a match for Daredevil, having watched videos of Daredevil and Bullseye fighting.
Originally thought to be learning-disabled, once her teachers notice her ability to duplicate musical performances, they come to realize she is in fact deaf. At age nine, Maya's gangster father works with his partner in crime, Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, who eventually kills him. Fisk becomes her guardian.
For those unfamiliar, the American actress has triumphed over the challenges of her physical disabilities to become an MCU star. While Cox is also an amputee with a prosthetic leg, the details of how she lost her leg have never been revealed.
The new leg came with special designs that affirmed Maya as a real Choctaw warrior as well as some other cool features. Maya portrayer Alaqua Cox shares, “We had three or four different prosthetic legs in the series that we used.
Following his capture by the Separatists, Echo was transformed into a cyborg. He was outfitted with cybernetic replacements for his legs, while his right arm, which he had lost, was replaced with a socket-arm that allowed him to interface with computer systems.
The prosthesis user has a cyborg body in the quite literal sense that his or her biological and mechanical “parts” need to function together, and he or she uses these to be open to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1962; Zlatev 2018), as discussed in the previous section.
“I wanted to show people that amputees and people with disabilities can do anything,” Cox said in the press release of the show, adding, “Although I am deaf and an amputee, I was able to do a lot of my fighting and stunts and it was important to me to show my prosthetic leg and not try to hide it under clothes."
The former “The Practice” star is currently showcasing that skill in a crackling Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening,” which mixes hearing and deaf performers. It turns out that a hole in her transcript, a car accident and some inspiration led Manheim to become fluent in sign language.
The show's director, Sydney Freeland, took sign language classes and adapted the visual style to properly represent the character. Echo's diverse cast, including Native American and Indigenous Canadian actors, marks a commitment to authentic casting and sets a new trend for representation in the MCU.
Marlee Matlin is, to date, the only deaf performer to have won an Academy Award. Her career has spanned nearly five decades, including acclaim for her lead role in Children of a Lesser God in 1986, which earned her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Academy Award-winning actress and advocate Marlee Matlin became deaf at 18 months old. Then one day, at around eight or nine, she was watching TV and noticed a deaf actor signing — or, as she put it, “speaking my language.”
Many are suprised to know she also has type 1 diabetes. Berry's acting career has allowed her to don many different roles including 'Catwoman' and Bond girl Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson.
The only real standout being Vincent D'Onofrio's excellent portrayal of Kingpin, but even that is tarnished by the writing and a limp wiltering flower of an ending. Echo also suffered from bad editing with the pacing and storyline feeling like they were all over the place.
Alaqua Cox, portraying Maya Lopez in Marvel Studios' Echo, has performed all her own stunt scenes in the show. She received high praise from the series' stunt coordinator, Mark Scizak, for her efforts.
Alaqua Cox's performance as the titular character in Marvel's new limited series Echo is a tour de force. As it turns out, the 26-year-old Menominee/Mohican actress is a force to be reckoned with, too. She's bringing Indigenous, deaf, and disability representation to television in a way we've never witnessed before.
