Echo, the limited series focused on Kingpin's badass deaf lieutenant Maya Lopez--who ended up shooting the big bad in the face in the Hawkeye finale--brought back Vincent D'Onofrio's villain once again. But by the end of this story, the Kingpin might be a very different person than he was before. What that means, essentially, is that his future appearances, whether on a Disney+ series or in an MCU movie, could basically deliver a new version of this character.

For that to happen, though, Marvel will need to follow through on something it has set up, which the MCU hasn't done much of lately. Even worse, though, is that the franchise is undergoing some kind of major retooling at the moment after a year of disappointments and the career implosion of newly exiled franchise centerpiece Jonathan Majors. In that context, Echo feels like an afterthought that Marvel dumped on Disney+ and Hulu with little fanfare just because it was a thing they'd made and so they might as well use it.

But there are other factors at play--the biggest franchise in Hollywood history has a lot of moving parts, it turns out. To truly get a sense of the situation, we'll need to talk spoilers.