This story is going to get into massive spoilers for the latest Marvel series Echo, so bow out now if you haven’t seen it, and still want to be surprised.
The new Marvel Spotlight series Echo, available with your Disney+ subscription, served a handful of purposes. Primarily, it filled in the backstory of Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a character we met in the Hawkeye series who had deep, mysterious ties to Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), the Kingpin of Crime. The Hawkeye ending left things unresolved between Maya and Wilson, and this new series picked up the threads of their conflict, while also exploring the character’s hearing impairment, and her rich Native American heritage. But as it turns out, when you wait until the very end of the last episode of Echo, you realize exactly where Marvel wants to go with these characters, and it has been rumored for some time.
Echo has a mid-credits scene. In it, we find Wilson Fisk (D’Onofrio) licking his wounds following his confrontation with Maya, in which she used the supernatural powers of her direct ancestors to… heal the Kingpin? I don’t fully get what Maya did to him in their scene. When Maya encountered the spirit of her dead mother, the matriarch used similar powers to wipe away Maya’s anger, her vengeful heart. But I doubt that’s going to happen with The Kingpin. Instead, the scene directly sets up what looks to be the next chapter for The Kingpin of Crime, and it’s going to affect several upcoming MCU projects, without a doubt.
What Happens In The Scene?
As The Kingpin travels on a private jet from Oklahoma back to New York City, his attention turns to the television. He’s talking to his assistant about demanding a meeting with all the “remaining heads,” seemingly the leaders of the organized crime groups in NYC. He’s talking about stabilizing a situation before it spirals out of control. But then, on the television, Fisk sees what he considers a path forward, and a way to gain ultimate power in Manhattan.
He’ll run for Mayor of New York City.
The political pundits on the screen talk about voters being frustrated by the lack of a viable candidate in the race. They claim that career politicians don’t have the fight in them that’s necessary to clean up the streets, and that a bare-knuckle brawler is what’s required. But they lament that an outsider candidate has yet to present themselves. Well, it looks like Wilson Fish is about to throw his massive hat into the ring.
Is There A Comic Precedent For This?
You bet there is. Fisk has been a power broker since his earliest days in Marvel Comics, keeping his massive fingers in virtually every crime ring running through Manhattan. His actions have put him in the path of almost every major Marvel superhero, though he primarily locks horns with Daredevil, Spider-Man, and The Punisher. Around 2015, in the pages of Daredevil comics, Wilson Fisk ran for Mayor of New York City, and won. As you can imagine, this caused all sorts of problems for Marvel’s New York-based heroes.
There have been rumors online that Marvel will be dedicating its street-level storytelling to an adaptation of either the Dark Reign or the Devil’s Reign storylines from the comics. Dark Reign, which ran from 2008-2009, immediately followed Secret Invasion, but focused on Norman Osborn as he used the distrust and uncertainty following the Skrull invasion to take control of S.H.I.E.L.D. Some have suggested that Osborn (who has yet to be introduced in the MCU outside of Willem Dafoe transporting over in Spider-Man: No Way Home) could be replaced by D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk.
But to me, Devil’s Reign makes more sense as an adaptation based on where Echo leaves The Kingpin. In that storyline, Fisk uses his political power as Mayor – with help from The Purple Man – to declare superheroes vigilantes, and uses the Thunderbolts to hunt them down. There has been chatter online about Kingpin becoming the Thanos-level threat of the street-level MCU storytelling. Making Kingpin the Mayor and pitting him against the street-based Marvel superheroes makes the most sense.
Which Projects Would Be Affected By This Storyline?
Right off the bat, it seems like the reworked Daredevil: Born Again series would be directly altered by the decision in Echo to put Fisk on the campaign trail. Charlie Cox appeared in Echo and fought Alaqua Cox’s main character. And we reported that the storyline of the upcoming Daredevil series is being drastically altered. My best guess is that it will now respond to the Mayor Kingpin hint at the end of Echo, as Matt Murdock won’t stand for Fisk assuming such an important role in NYC politics.
Beyond Daredevil: Born Again, there’s a very good chance that Tom Holland’s inevitable Spider-Man 4 gets rolled into this sprawling, street-level story. Spider-Man: Homecoming was a charming, focused Spidey tale, which fans embraced because Spidey’s meant to be a friendly, neighborhood hero. After that, the demands of the MCU meant that Peter Parker went to space, blipped away, fought aliens alongside Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and then opened portals to the multiverse so he could interact with Spider-Men from years gone by. The stories were awesome, but a reset on Spider-Man should bring him back down to Earth.
I’m certainly not going to complain at all if Spider-Man 4 finds the newly humbled webslinger teaming up with Daredevil to fight the Kingpin. Maybe even mix in some of the Netflix heroes such as Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Iron Fist (Finn Jones), especially now that the Netflix Marvel shows are part of the timeline on Disney+.
Anything Else?
Sure. Let’s keep thinking big. While the bulk of the MCU is figuring out what to do about Kang the Conqueror, the Multiverse, the introduction of the Fantastic Four, and mutants, this Mayor Fisk storyline could easily expand out to bring extension to projects that have been either announced or hinted at, and keep the threat level centralized. There has been a lot of talk about the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World involving a global race by foreign superpowers to retrieve materials left exposed by the Eternals. Fisk could (and should) be one of the power brokers trying to increase his strength by reaching the material resting with a Celestial first.
We also don’t know what the main motivation driving the Thunderbolts storyline forward, but given the amount of attention that Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gave to vibranium in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, she’s definitely going to be a player in this ongoing conflict. Plus, if things get out of control, Marvel slowly has been building its roster for a Young Avengers team – featuring Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), and more. If played right, Wilson Fisk would make things very difficult for all of the above.
That’s the kind of impact one scene in a Marvel Disney+ show can have. We’re excited to see where all of this takes the MCU moving forward.
