The second episode of Secret Invasion is mostly about providing exposition, and while doing so gives us two great conversations, several not-as-great conversations, a bunch of clichés (including the perpetuation of a lie that really needs to stop being perpetuated), and a surprise ending that is, at least, not as annoying as the surprise ending last week.
THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR SECRET INVASION HERE!
Let’s start with the confirmation that all the wishful thinking in the comments last week was just that: Maria Hill isn’t just mostly dead, she’s all dead. We even get to see her body being flown out of Russia and into the care of her mother (played with steely piss-offedness by Juliet Stevenson). It was obvious last week when they lingered on her body and it didn’t change shape that it really was Hill and not a Skrull, and it’s confirmed this week.
The hope that it was going to be the thing that prompted Fury to get his mojo back is a forlorn one, at least this week, as Fury is still kind of stumbling around trying to figure out what to do. Along the way, he gets fired by Rhodey (that’s one of the great conversations), and in the end we find out that he has a Skrull wife. Yes, really.
We also find out that there are a lot more Skrulls on Earth than previously believed. Fury just thought there was the handful that he and Danvers rescued in 1995 in Captain Marvel, but it turns out that Talos invited a whole lot more Skrulls to Earth. When Fury expressed understandable outrage at this, Talos angrily counters that Fury has been faffing about on S.A.B.E.R. for ages (as seen in the post-credits scene in Spider-Man: Far from Home). Unfortunately, many of these Skrulls have been radicalized by Gravik and are working to take over the planet.
It also turns out that the Skrulls have infiltrated the planet pretty well: a high-ranking U.S. government official, the British Prime Minister, the Secretary-General of NATO, and a couple of others. They also all—with one exception—join Gravik in going for a more scorched-Earth action than the more passive roles they’ve been taking up until now.
Meanwhile, Fury asks Rhodey for a meeting, and to his surprise, it winds up being Rhodey firing his ass. Fury plays on their shared history, both in the superheroic end of things as well as being Black men who have clawed their way into positions of power despite the best efforts of mediocre white men. (Fury specifically cites Alexander Pierce, Robert Redford’s character from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.) Rhodey, however, has to play politics, because politics affect everything. Fury has been able to avoid them by working in the shadows, but Rhodey doesn’t have that luxury. And Fury’s presence at a bombing that killed at least 2000 people isn’t working in the shadows anymore.
For all that that conversation is excellent, and beautifully delivered by Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle, it has one major flaw in it, and it’s a flaw the whole series has. Rhodey suggests bringing in the Avengers from, um, wherever they are (this is the second time, after Far From Home, that it’s been implied that they’re not readily available for some reason).
Here’s the biggest problem with doing a cinematic universe: plot is dictated, not by what makes sense, but by actor availability. When Rhodey suggests bringing in “our friends,” Fury may as well come out and say, “Sorry, man, but we can only afford to have one Avenger in this series, and you’re it.”
But this is a story that really requires at least some kind of superheroic presence. Even Rhodey is notably bereft of his armor, though it is mentioned twice, which just draws more attention to the fact that he hasn’t worn it at any point. But this is a story that cries out for someone on the superheroic end of things to be involved: the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, the USAgent, the new versions of the Black Widow and Captain America, somebody. (Hell, this series would’ve worked beautifully as a companion piece/sequel to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.)
Instead, we have several conversations in this episode that reinforce the notion that Fury is alone. Because the story must be contorted to be the Nick Fury vehicle.
Which is fine up to a point, because watching Jackson is always a joy. In particular what I like about this series is that Fury is showing his age. The talk on the train between Fury and Talos in particular shines a light on this, as Fury opens up about his childhood, taking a train from Alabama to Detroit with his Mom, and having to ride in the colored car and have to use bathrooms that didn’t work, and having to bring their own food on board. That’s something that is mercifully in the past, indeed far enough in the past to not be something most of Secret Invasion’s viewership would have any memory of in their lifetimes. Which is a good thing, mind, but it also reminds viewers that Fury is not a young man. He’s slowing down—both physically (note how he stumbles as soon as he leaves the meet with Rhodey, the verbal confrontation having exhausted him) and mentally.
One friend of mine came out of last week’s episode assuming that Hill’s death was a fake and that Fury had a master plan, and I countered that Fury would never have executed a plan that got thousands of people killed. And the Fury of a decade ago (the one who assembled the Avengers, the one who helped bring Hydra down) would’ve had a plan. But this Fury is a shadow of his former self, and he may not be able to get it done.
Which, of course, is all the more reason why he should call in the big guns. Sigh.
Elsewhere in the plot, we have G’iah, whose alliances are still not entirely clear. If nothing else, she’s obviously conflicted, as Emilia Clarke’s facial expressions change subtly but dramatically when she’s alone as opposed to around her fellow Skrull revolutionaries. She’s obviously appalled by the carnage of the bombing, and she starts investigating what else is going on. For starters, there’s a scientist named Rosa (Katie Finneran) who is doing some manner of experiments that appear to involve harvesting alien and/or super-powered beings.
And then we have Olivia Colman’s Sonya Falsworth, whose role in the episode managed to piss me off even more than the death of Hill last week, because it perpetuates the dangerous lie that torture is an effective interrogation tool. One of Gravik’s Skrulls was captured by the FSB, and Falsworth interrupts FSB’s torture to come in with her own torture, injecting something that boils his blood and obviously causes great pain. This is enough to get the Skrull to talk, which is not how this has ever worked. Worse, the Skrull himself mentions why torture doesn’t work: to make the pain stop, people will say whatever they need to in order to get it to stop, including lie. When Gravik rescues his fellow Skrull, he tells Gravik that he lied to Falsworth. Indeed, the reason why torture doesn’t generally work is that the person being tortured will say anything to make the pain stop, which makes any intelligence they do provide suspect.
Of course, Gravik doesn’t believe him and has him shot and killed, because that’s what bad guys do. It’s a tired cliché from beginning to end, and the only thing that makes it watchable is Colman’s blunt not-giving-a-fuck, which is at least fun to watch. (Also Ventsislav Yankov’s FSB commander is hilarious. I particularly like him wiping his hands on one of his subordinates’ shirts before taking the phone from Falsworth to talk to his superior.)
It’s lazy storytelling, which is dogging this entire series so far, from the only-one-man-can-save-us nonsense to showing how nasty the bad guy is by having him shoot a loyal subordinate to the use of torture.
And then in the end we find out that Fury has apparently married a Skrull woman. That’s how the episode ends (over Otis Redding singing “Try a Little Tenderness”), and as much as the episode annoyed me in so many ways, that piqued my curiosity something fierce…
This and That
- The opening of the episode takes place in 1995 and uses footage of Fury and Talos from Captain Marvel to remind everyone about the Skrulls’ plight in that movie. Having said that, we see no actual footage of Carol Danvers, and she’s only mentioned briefly once in the second scene, which takes place in 1997, and has Fury recruiting Skrulls to be part of his fifth column.
- G’iah finds files on one of the computers Gravik and his people are using on Groot (of the Guardians of the Galaxy), the Extremis Project (from Iron Man 3), Frost Giants (from Thor), and Cull Obsidian (Thanos’ toady from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame), all relating to whatever science project Rosa is involved with. Amusingly, because this is an abandoned Soviet nuclear plant, the computer is ancient, with a monochrome CRT monitor.
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