Warning: Full spoilers follow for Secret Invasion.
Now that the sixth and final episode of Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion is available on Disney+, it’s fair to say that we should stop talking about “superhero movie fatigue” and focus on what may be the real problem: Marvel’s creative funk.
If there’s one thing gained from watching that dour, messy, and ultimately pointless show that was relentlessly promoted as an “event series,” it’s that the streaming TV arm of the MCU is in dire need of a rethink. After the initial success of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye, Marvel-ites were over the moon. Kevin Feige and Co. had transferred their magic touch from the movies to the small screen, creating ambitious series that expanded the Marvel Universe. Expectations grew… until shows like Moon Knight underwhelmed and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law polarized audiences.
Then came Secret Invasion, the adaptation of one of the best and most popular events in the recent history of Marvel Comics. It tells the story of Skrulls secretly infiltrating Earth for years, impersonating powerful and influential humans and superhumans in a plot to gain control of the planet. Writer Brian Michael Bendis and penciler Leinil Yu’s eight-issue series (part of a wider, crossover-crazy comics event) was not perfect, but it was wildly compelling and ambitious. Neither of those words could be used with any accuracy to describe the televised adaptation.
Taking an Uru Hammer to the Greatest Spymaster's Legacy
Advance footage of the series during 2022’s San Diego Comic-Con and D23 suggested a series steeped in paranoia and menace, a political thriller with similarities to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Instead, the show turned out to be dull, meandering, and low-stakes, frustrating in its creative decisions, and flat-out boring at times. It also wasted MCU OG Samuel L. Jackson’s first true starring role for Marvel. On top of that, Secret Invasion’s creative team took an uru hammer to the mystique of Nick Fury, Marvel’s greatest spymaster, undermining his entire legacy episode by episode.
Series showrunner Kyle Bradstreet seemed to craft scenes in every episode meant to chip away at the Fury character and erase his image as the ultimate secret agent. It hammered home the point that Nick Fury was old, washed-up, and ready to be put out to pasture. Yes, Samuel L. Jackson is 74 years old, and despite looking great for his age, 74 is still 74. But you would think Fury was bedridden and in need of 24-hour care the way the scripts and director Ali Selim portrayed Fury. If this was to be Nick Fury’s Unforgiven, they forgot the part where they reminded the audience why this was a man to be feared in the first place.
In the second episode, “Promises,” we learn that Fury promised the Skrulls who arrived on Earth, including the young shapeshifter Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) who would turn out to be the series’ Big Bad, that in return for his help in protecting the planet, he would help them (with Carol Danvers’ help) find a new planet to relocate to. OK, Fury’s a spy and broken promises come with the territory. And the Blip is certainly a worthy excuse for not keeping one’s word. But Fury’s friendship with Talos and his respect for the Skrulls was heavily emphasized during the entirety of Secret Invasion. He even married one! So the fact that he broke his promise and didn’t seem particularly regretful about it was out of character.
Secret Invasion and the Truth About the Skrulls
And then there's the fact that in the same episode we learn that Nick Fury, the former head of S.H.I.E.L.D., had no idea that his good friend Talos, who also happened to be a shape-shifting alien, lied to him about how many Skrulls were on Earth. Instead of a hundred or so, there were a million. A million! So much for the all-knowing Fury who had eyes on everything, and who once told Steve Rogers, “Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.” He put his faith in an alien, who kept a rather large detail from him. It runs completely counter to everything we’ve come to expect from Fury. We’re talking about one of the great manipulators in Marvel, the guy who used Phil Coulson’s trading cards - and a few well-placed splotches of blood - to bring the Avengers together.
But the greatest damage to the myth of Nick Fury comes in Episode 3, aptly named “Betrayed.” During a car ride with Talos (played ably by Ben Mendelsohn), Fury’s entire career arc is essentially revealed to be a result of the Skrulls’ spy network. Talos is angry that Fury hasn’t fulfilled his promise to his people, and has spent years in space at the S.A.B.E.R. space station. He points out that when he arrived on Earth in the ’90s, Fury was “a bench-warming nobody in a dumpy field office in S.H.I.E.L.D.” The well-meaning and loyal Skrull goes on to tell Fury that his career wasn’t going anywhere until he and 98 other Skrulls started feeding Fury more intel than he could have ever possibly gained on his own. Fury offers a half-hearted defense in this sequence, but it’s clear to the audience that what Talos is saying rings true. Fury isn’t some master spy who rose to the top simply by being the best and most merciless agent around. His alien shape-shifting friends did all the heavy lifting.
In the season finale of Secret Invasion, Fury goes to Russia to face off with Gravik and end things. At least that’s what we’re led to believe. It turns out it was G’iah (Emilia Clarke, in another poorly-written role) disguised as Fury, which then leads to a Super-Skrull mano a mano with Gravik that isn’t nearly as engaging as it should be. Where is the real Nick Fury? Chasing down the Skrull impersonating Rhodey. Fury ends up killing that Skrull and saving the President of the United States’ life, but all that ends up doing is leading President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney) to declare war on all Skrulls. Nick Fury ends up going back up to the S.A.B.E.R. space station with his Skrull wife Varra (played by Charlayne Woodard).
So at the end of this event series adapting one of the biggest stories in the history of Marvel Comics, Nick Fury is back where he began, hiding in the S.A.B.E.R. satellite HQ, while the Skrulls who helped him rise up the ranks in S.H.I.E.L.D. are now worse off than they were before his return. Yeah, what a total mess.
Nick Fury in The Marvels: A Chance for Redemption?
Is the damage to Fury’s spymaster brand permanent? It depends. Captain America: The Winter Soldier chipped away at the character in many ways, with Robert Redford’s Alexander Pierce, Fury’s kind-of mentor, proving to be a bitter betrayal. But it didn’t kneecap the greatest weapon in Nick Fury’s arsenal: his mystique. That’s a key error Secret Invasion’s brain trust made, but is it too late to undo it?
He’s prominently featured in his space lair and on Earth in the trailers for The Marvels, firing weapons and cool one-liners as only Sam Jackson can do. So there is the hope that Feige and the rest of the MCU creative Illuminati saw Secret Invasion early enough to realize they needed to salvage one of their key characters from the mistakes made on the TV series. And if that’s the case, could that be a strategy taken by the theatrical team with other characters who get done dirty by creative blunders on the Disney+ side of things? Would that satisfy fans who feel betrayed by the maddening inconsistency with the Marvel streaming properties? We likely won’t get a sense until The Marvels arrives in theaters in November.
One day, we’ll learn the full details of why Secret Invasion was adapted for streaming instead of being the backbone of a multi-film storyline. The reveal that Rhodey has been imprisoned and replaced by the Skrulls potentially since shortly after Captain America: Civil War certainly indicates how a big-screen adaptation could have retconned a number of elements to help capture the scope of a Skrull infiltration. On its face, a six-episode series would seem to be a smart way to deliver a story, albeit on a smaller scale, that does justice to the original source material. Many fans, including this writer, were certainly excited about the potential. But despite an all-star cast featuring Clarke, Don Cheadle, Mendelsohn, Mulroney and the scene-stealing Olivia Colman, Secret Invasion fell flat on its face.
It not only failed fans with a plot that lacked consistency and a gripping central narrative, it failed its star. Samuel L. Jackson has waited a long time to get the spotlight as Nick Fury, and it’s profoundly disappointing that this was the starring vehicle he received. He deserved better. Instead of a deconstruction that sets up new storytelling avenues, it potentially ruined one of the great characters in the MCU. Let’s hope Marvel realizes this and does what many fans will likely do: Pretend Secret Invasion simply didn’t happen at all.
For even more on the show, check out our five biggest burning questions after the Secret Invasion finale.
