Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs at the presentation of Backspot at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, on Septe. 8, 2023.MARK BLINCH/Reuters
Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs is discussing the Reservation Dogs to Marvel Cinematic Universe pipeline. The Mohawk actor and filmmaker, who is appearing in the superhero factory’s new Indigenous-led series Echo on Disney+, doesn’t make the transition – from rascally comedy to franchise action fare – sound as whiplash-inducing as I would have suspected.
“There was people from Rez Dogs who ended up coming onto Echo,” says Jacobs, who is seated alongside her co-star Chaske Spencer on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. She cites director Sydney Freeland and fellow actors Zahn McClarnon and Graham Greene among fellow Reservation Dogs alumni recreating communal vibes in the new Marvel series, which is about Maya Lopez, the deaf anti-hero from Choctaw Nation played by astonishing newcomer Alaqua Cox.
“I didn’t ever think that I would see a moment where there were native storytellers on a platform like this, with cranes, huge sets and big budgets. Marvel has handed this over to community members. It was really special.”
I’m pressing Jacobs about Reservation Dogs, Sterlin Harjo’s sublime and groundbreaking TV series about a group of misfit teens from Muscogee Creek Nation finding warmth and healing in their community. The series bid farewell after three seasons (currently streaming on Disney+) that rallied Indigenous talent from across Turtle Island. Everyone from Night Raiders director Danis Goulet to acting icon Greene got in on the cozy bear hug of a series, which has largely been ignored by award bodies such as the Golden Globes and the Emmys, but found its champions among critics rightfully celebrating it with top spots on numerous year-end best-of lists.
“I think everybody is mourning the loss of that show,” says Jacobs, who started out on Reservation Dogs as a lead before adding writer and then director to her credits over subsequent seasons. She became caretaker over her character, Elora Danan, writing the episodes specifically about the melancholic cub’s reconnection to her family and roots. If you haven’t already caught up to Jacobs’ knockout Season 3 episode, where she stars opposite Ethan Hawke, … well … what are you waiting for?
“I’m really proud that we’re as strong, if not stronger, than we started in Season 1,” she says, acknowledging the bittersweet moment saying goodbye to Reservation Dogs while appreciating the doors it opened for Indigenous storytelling, and shows like Echo.
At 30, Jacobs has already had a long and storied career, persistently riding the cutting edge in Indigenous storytelling since she broke out over a decade ago in Jeff Barnaby’s bare-knuckle residential school caper Rhymes For Young Ghouls. She has since anchored films by promising new filmmakers including Coco Monnet (Bootlegger), while directing her own shorts and co-writing queer dramas This Place and Backspot. Now she’s voicing Marvel’s new Mohawk superhero Kahhori in the animated series What If…? and appearing in Echo.
“Being a part of the MCU feels like some marker of success,” says Jacobs. “Black Panther was so influential and emotional for so many people. So was Shang-Chi. I had been just waiting for the day that they would embrace Indigenous storytelling.”
Echo, which premiered Tuesday on Disney+, reintroduces Maya after her debut in another Marvel Cinematic Universe series, Hawkeye. She was a ruthless enforcer, serving up ferocious MMA-style butt-kicking on behalf of her adopted father Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), a.k.a. Kingpin. The latter is a staple Marvel villain who Maya eventually turns against in the Hawkeye finale.
Echo doesn’t necessarily require prerequisite viewing to follow along. The pilot episode is essentially a glorified “previously on” segment. It clumsily hurries audiences through Maya’s origin story before making way for Echo’s coming-home narrative, returning the character to her community among Oklahoma’s Choctaw Nation. The narrative has a sense of sovereignty. It’s detached from so much of the interconnected plotting that makes Marvel content such a chore.
“It’s a standalone piece,” says Jacobs, during our crammed interview, one of the few dozens she is no doubt partaking in for that day. Typically, actors in these tightly scheduled conversations tend to lean on rehearsed answers, an understandable crutch during an exhausting day filled with non-stop talking for the cameras. But Jacobs has always been more thoughtful and eloquent. When she drops a well-practised sound bite, you could tell she’s filling our limited time with salable material instead of dead air, while she valiantly works out a more specific and nuanced response in her head to make the conversation stand apart.
I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect metaphor for what Echo is trying to do, searching for space to bring specificity and nuance to a sausage factory that makes indistinguishable content about a Doctor Strange or Ant-Man stumbling through multiverses, quantum realms or galaxies far, far away. I know that latter expression belongs to a whole other franchise, but really, what difference does that make?
Echo is part of Marvel’s new Spotlight banner, a branded distinction meant to set this narrative apart from the media franchise’s baggage while boasting bloodier fights and shootouts. For the first time, Marvel fans will have to make sure their Disney+ profile is set to TV-MA. More crucially, Echo manages within the contours of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to feel like an Indigenous story – an Indigenous spin on the Western, really.
The series is at its best when it homes in on Maya’s return to her community – her reclamation narrative – and her relationship with Kingpin. The latter is a paternalistic figure repeating colonial harm, pretending to care for Maya while burying his role in the violence committed against her elders.
“The focus was keeping it as this family drama,” says Jacobs, “as this human story that obviously has echoes of different things that have happened to Indigenous folks across North America. In Hawkeye, there was conversations that Maya was walking in two worlds. That’s not only an analogy for being a deaf person who is operating through a hearing world, but also being an Indigenous person who’s now removed from her reservation and living in Western society.”
“Being Indigenous storytellers, there’s innately a sense of politics,” Jacobs adds. “There is a sense of resistance in being who we are and having survived colonialism. That’s baked into the DNA of the show.”