Echo and Agatha’s Poor Ratings Show That Viewers Only Want A-List Marvel Heroes on Disney+

Bad news, True Believers. The numbers are in for Marvel TV series Echo and Agatha All Along and they aren’t good. According to Deadline, all major franchise streaming shows did poorly last year, but that Echo and Agatha “underperformed previous Marvel streaming series.”

Tempting as it is to blame the shortcomings on superhero fatigue, the fact remains that X-Men ’97 did very well for Disney and that Deadpool & Wolverine was the second highest-grossing movie of 2024. A more basic explanation might be that not many people care about third-stringers like Echo and Agatha Harkness.

Need proof? Look at how many series the respective characters had carried in their original home, comic books. Agatha Harkness has been around for decades, having been introduced as Franklin Richards’s elderly nanny in 1970’s Fantastic Four #94. While she played a supporting role with the Fantastic Four, the West Coast Avengers, and even Captain America, she never took the lead in a book until the 2022 Midnight Suns series — and even then she ceded the cover to bigger names like Wolverine, Blade, and Ghost Rider.

Maya Lopez aka Echo debuted in 1999’s Daredevil #9, part of a beloved run on the book, and later played a big part in the buzzy New Avengers series by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch. She even became the new host of the Phoenix Force, the planet-devouring cosmic being most often associated with Jean Grey of the X-Men. Yet, even what that huge boost, Echo only took the lead of two miniseries — Phoenix Song: Echo (2022) and Daredevil & Echo (2023) — always sharing top-billing with a bigger name.

Given the lack of traction that the characters were able to gain in years of comics, why would Marvel think that Echo or Agatha could carry a television show?

It’s laughable when put like that, but these shows came out the same year that Sony released Madame Web and Lionsgate put out another take on The Crow, a character who has only appeared in a handful of miniseries over the decades. Furthermore, Marvel and DC/Warner Bros had huge hits with Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad, movies filled with very minor superheroes.

At the height of the superhero boom, people would flock to anything about a character in a cape. And because movie and television studios will drive into the ground any successful trend, they gave the greenlight to even the thinnest idea (remember Pennyworth?). But if even comic book readers don’t care enough about these characters to accept them as leads, then general audiences certainly won’t either.

The same expectations can’t be applied to Superman or Fantastic Four, both foundational titles that have remained constants in various forms since their founding. These character have not only carried multiple books at once, but they’ve launched spinoffs that have had more success than anything enjoyed by Agatha Harkness or Echo. Superhero fatigue may diminish interest in Echo or Agatha All Along, but the failures of those shows shouldn’t lead people to think that Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps, or the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again or season two of X-Men ’97, will suffer the same fate. These are A-list characters.

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Daredevil and the X-Men weren’t always A-listers. Yes, both have starred in their own comics since their debuts in the early 1960s. But Uncanny X-Men simply reprinted earlier stories between 1970 and 1974, until Giant-Size X-Men #1 reimagined the team and paved the way for a 16-year-run by Chris Claremont. Daredevil was on the verge of cancelation in the late 1970s, which allowed penciller Frank Miller to make massive changes.

Both of these examples show that any character can be an A-lister with the right creative team. Although incredibly talented creators have worked on Echo and Agatha comics, no one has yet found a way to make the characters compelling enough to drive stories. For that reason, it should surprise no one that their shows flopped.

Superman, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and other heroes gracing the small and big screens in 2025 have unquestioned A-list status, which promise greater public name recognition, richer stories, and greater success, regardless of Echo and Agatha‘s failures.

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