Disney is really trying a whole lot of different things with the release of Echo this week, bringing in a “street level” MA-rated series into the fold in a way we haven’t seen since the Netflix days. It’s only five episodes, and all those episodes are airing binge-style tomorrow on January 9 at 9 PM ET.
Another strange thing? There are no Echo critic reviews ahead of launch, so no Rotten Tomatoes score to look at. This is not because there are not critic review copies of the show, I know a lot of people have them. But the review embargo is the exact date and time of release tomorrow night. It may even be a couple hours after at midnight instead.
Tonight will bring the “social media” embargo, which is pretty much the ability to get on Twitter and say if it’s good or bad without much elaboration. But we will not see review scores until people are already watching the show.
So, why? The assumption whenever this happens for movies or video games is that the studio is trying to hide something. That Echo may in fact be bad, and Marvel doesn’t want another Secret Invasion on their hands, their last Disney Plus MCU series that was one of their worst reviewed projects ever at a 53% from critics, and what would go on to be a 47% from audiences.
I’m…not necessarily sure this is true. The reason that studios hide likely bad reviews is because they do not want to harm ticket presales and sales, or in the case of video games, day one purchases. But with Echo, which is simply yet another streaming show on Disney Plus, that isn’t really a factor. I suppose what they could be avoiding is bad buzz, which would depress viewership, but again, it’s not quite the same thing.
The other theory other than “it’s bad” has to do with spoilers. It’s been said that there are going to be other, secret MCU cameos in Echo, and not just Daredevil who the show has used repeatedly in its marketing campaign. Almost to the point where he’s overriding Echo herself in how the show is being sold. Though critics are not exactly ones to give away spoilers in early reviews, and I mean, if they were going to be jerks like that, they could just be leaking things now, as again, they all have review copies for at least the first three episodes.
So I don’t quite know what’s going on here, though I imagine it’s one of those two options. It is kind of strange. We may often see Netflix shows arrive with no or few reviews, but that’s because critics are drowning in things to review, not that there’s some strict embargo. But Echo, one of just a handful of bigger MCU projects this year? That’s definitely a bit strange.
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