Echo: All 5 episodes recapped, reviewed, and ranked
Episode 4 - "Taloa"
The fourth episode takes us on a ride through time and emotions, starting with a flashback to 2008. Young Maya leaves school and encounters an unpleasant scene. A vendor mocks her deafness, which doesn't sit well with Uncle Fisk. He takes matters into his own hands, quite literally, and leaves the guy in a sorry state next to some garbage cans. Maya witnesses this brutal act and, surprisingly, adds her own kicks to the bloodied man. Fisk seems pretty impressed as he takes her hand and they walk away together.
Back to 2021, Maya's training shifts from theory to practice. A tense scene follows, where Fisk tells Maya her final lesson has been learned and dismisses the trusty ASL interpreter he hired to help him communicate with Maya. The interpreter is then shot and killed, as Fisk tells Maya that the only person they can trust is each other.
And just like that, we go back to the present, to the exact moment Kingpin surprises her outside her home. In yet another tense scene, Kingpin presents Maya with a special contact lens, a techy way to translate his words into sign language - which doesn't require an interpreter. They have a somewhat awkward-but-funny-but-still-tense "family dinner", a throwback to the good ol' old times. Kingpin, observing Maya's life, makes her an offer she's tempted to refuse: join him in New York and become a “Queenpin”. Vincent D'Onofrio, the actor who plays Kingpin, is phenomenal.
Meanwhile, Maya and Chula are simultaneously swept into mystic Native American visions, revealing more of their deep-rooted connections and truths. Henry, worried for Maya, brings her straight to her grandmother. After an awkward reunion, Chula shares her own past experiences and points to an unbreakable mother-child bond, and that Maya's mother, Taloa, was a healer. She blames Maya's father for past tragedies, but Maya's not ready to hear it and storms off. THEY ARE SO MUCH ALIKE AND STUBBORN.
The climax hits when Maya confronts Fisk at a hotel. Pointing a gun at him, she's frustrated by his failure to learn sign language, seeing it as a facade for his true intentions to manipulate her. In a dramatic gesture, Fisk offers Maya the same hammer he used on his own father, symbolizing a chance for her to break free. But Maya refuses to play his game. The episode wraps up with Maya choosing to leave everything behind. Fisk, alone in his jet, realizes his error too late and loses his temper. It's a somewhat predictable yet still exciting end to an episode full of twists, emotions, and revelations.
Episode 4 ranking: 3rd place.