At one point in the latest Secret Invasion episode, Sonya Falsworth asks Nick Fury why he doesn’t summon the Avengers. Fury’s response is that this is personal, and it needs to be him who stops Gravik—mostly because he can’t actually say, “Well, Sonya, this is just a TV show, and we absolutely cannot afford to bring all those actors on our budget. Hell, we could only afford you because you’re British and don’t cost as much…”
That budget problem is all over this, the second straight 38-minute episode of Secret Invasion in which very little actually happens…
The other answer Fury gives to Falsworth is to state that we can’t rely on superheroes all the time to save our asses, and that’s a hilarious comment coming from the guy who put the Avengers together specifically so that there would be superheroes around to save our asses.
It feels like the writers of this show have been spending a lot of time and effort to come up with ways to justify not having the Avengers in this story, and that wouldn’t be so bad if they’d come up with a good one, but they haven’t yet.
Worse, the one Avenger who is in this is actually one of the bad guys, and the Skrull posing as Colonel Rhodes has yet to don the War Machine armor for no compellingly good reason. In fact, Rhodey’s status as a superhero in general and an Avenger in particular is never even mentioned.
The first part of Fury’s answer makes even less sense: that it’s personal. I mean, yeah, okay, it’s a little personal because of the animosity between him and Gravik, but it’s also the fate of the entire world at stake, so maybe put aside your ego and call in the big guns?
But that would cost money. So does showing Gravik and G’iah using their newly acquired superpowers. As it is, Gravik only uses his once, very briefly, to kill Pagon (more on that in a bit). G’iah doesn’t use hers at all, which makes absolutely no sense, as she and Priscilla are ambushed by a hit squad in the latter’s home. Both Priscilla and G’iah use the stash of weapons that Priscilla keeps in the house (given that it’s her and Fury’s house, a weapons stash is pretty much expected) to gun down their attackers.
But G’iah has the power of Groot, Cull Obsidian and other of Thanos’ henchthugs, and the Extremis Project. Why is she using guns?
Of course, the answer is that weapons-fire is an easy and cheap practical effect, whereas CGI costs money.
I’ve already written some 500-odd words of this review, and if it seems like I’m focusing overmuch on how much money they didn’t spend on the show, it’s because there’s damn little else to talk about. The less-than-40-minutes run-time is even more glaring this week because very little happens in that abbreviated span. And when I’m not staring at the screen wondering why they’re telling a story that requires a big budget on a small one, I’m wondering why Fury is still alive.
So Fury gets the president to a hospital to be treated. The fake Rhodey follows up along with Secret Service agents (who must also be Skrulls, since Skrull!Rhodey talks freely around them), and he informs Fury that he’s followed through on his threat from last week. The footage of Gravik murdering Maria Hill while disguised as Fury has been released, and Fury’s now on the most-wanted list.
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(Hilariously, Skrull!Rhodey says that this will be the top news story all over the world while standing in the hospital where the President of the United States is being treated for injuries suffered in a major ambush involving Russians and aliens. I’m fairly confident that that’s gonna stay the top story for a while…)
But then Skrull!Rhodey and his squad of armed agents just let Fury go, and huh? That makes nothing like sense. Why wouldn’t they arrest him? They themselves provided the justification…
The episode does have a few redeeming features. For starters, prior to the ambush on Priscilla’s house, we have the one thing Secret Invasion has been unreservedly good at: powerful, well-written and -acted one-on-one conversations, in this case between Priscilla and G’iah. Priscilla’s loving discussion of the house and why she bought it, her fond memories of the times she got to share it with Fury, and her slapping down G’iah’s attempt to shame her for maintaining her human form with Fury. It’s a beautiful talk that Charlayne Woodard and Emilia Clarke just nail, and it’s only too bad that it’s interrupted by the tiresome ambush sequence.
And we also have a great repudiation of a tired trope, which almost made the episode worth it. Early on, Pagon questions Gravik—not without reason, since the operation in London to President Ritson didn’t exactly go as planned. Gravik’s response is to kill Pagon.
This is one of the most common tropes in adventure fiction, and it has never made anything like sense: the bad guy killing subordinates who don’t toe the line. It especially doesn’t make sense when you’re dealing with people who are there for a cause. When a bad guy does it to a henchthug that they’re paying, then maybe you can see it working, because the remaining henchthugs are also employees and they want the cash. But even then, why would anybody remain loyal to or work hard for someone who might kill you on a whim?
And so, when Gravik kills Pagon—who has been his right hand in all of this, arguably his most loyal and dependable underling—my first reaction was a sigh of annoyance. But then later, Beto leads a group who ambush Gravik and try to kill him, and then that sigh modulated into a cheer. Because when you’re leading a revolution, you need people to believe in you, and if they think you’re a psychotic who’ll murder you just for having an opinion, after being a loyal subject for who knew how long, then they ain’t gonna believe in you anymore…
Olivia Colman remains brilliant, as she always is, and I really hope that this series isn’t the only appearance of Falsworth. She’s a wonderful character, if a bit too typical of the MCU—a mix of ultracompetence and supreme snark. Sadly, we definitely lose Ben Mendelsohn, as Talos is not only dead, but Priscilla and G’iah burn his body in a Skrull funeral. While I appreciate that the events of this miniseries are having actual consequences, losing first Hill and now Talos is coming across more like a disappointment than an impressive dramatic turn of events.
In the end, Fury pulls two things out of his grave: the titular Harvest and his eyepatch. He puts the eyepatch on in the final shot, which is meant to be by way of saying that Fury the badass is back. Honestly? I really resent having to wait five episodes for something that should’ve happened at the top of episode two after Hill was killed. Indeed, if Hill wasn’t killed by way of motivating Fury to get his mojo back, it makes her death even more annoying, which I honestly didn’t think was possible.
Finally, I want to talk about the Harvest a little bit, because upon closer examination, it doesn’t seem all that useful.
According to Fury, it’s a harvesting of the DNA of all the superheroes who were at the battle against Thanos and his forces in Avengers: Endgame. The implication is that the DNA can be harvested for super-powers.
But does that even make sense? I mean, I can maybe see it with the Asgardians (Thor, Valkyrie, et al) and the non-Star Lord members of the Guardians of the Galaxy, as they’re all aliens. But I’m not sure it works with the others. Captain Marvel and the Scarlet Witch were enhanced by infinity stones, but would that alter DNA? Would the various versions of the super-soldier serum taken by Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and the Hulk alter DNA? What about the spider-bite that got Spider-Man or the heart-shaped herb that Black Panther took?
Those are the only possibilities, and they’re iffy. Beyond that, we have Doctor Strange, Wong, and the rest of the sorcerers, who are all normal humans who happen to know how to manipulate certain forces of the universe via intense study; Ant-Man and the Wasp, who are normal humans who are temporarily altered by the use of Pym Particles; Iron Man, War Machine, and Pepper Potts, who are all normal humans wearing armor; Hawkeye, who’s just a guy with a bow and arrow; and the other forces of Wakanda, who are also normal humans.
Then again, this the MCU, where—for all its general attempt to be scientifically grounded even with the supernatural stuff—Convenience Science is the order of the day.
Story-wise, we’re setting up for a climax that pits the two Super-Skrulls, G’iah and Gravik, against each other. But given all the other budgetary restrictions, I have the feeling they’re just gonna punch each other twice…
This and That
- Falsworth comments about Fury having other graves besides the one they visit, by way of explaining why this grave is different (both in form and location) from the one we saw in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This grave has a different epitaph—the one in the 2014 movie used the quote from the Bible that Jules quoted before he shot someone in Pulp Fiction.
- O-T Fagbenle makes a welcome and delightful cameo as Mason, the Guy Who Gets Stuff from Black Widow. Given the history between him and Romanoff established in that movie, it’s not surprising that Fury is also on his client list.
- After a cameo in episode one, we finally get Tony Curran back as the head of SIS, but he’s only onscreen long enough for Falsworth to shoot him in the leg and expose him as a Skrull. I don’t think he’s had more than five lines of dialogue. Why would you go to the trouble of casting someone as brilliant as Curran and give him a role that is better suited to a glorified extra?
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at ConnectiCon XX in Hartford at the Connecticut Convention Center this weekend. He’ll have a table where he’ll be selling and signing books, and also will be doing some panels. His full schedule can be found here.
