While they’ve always been antagonistic in the comics, the Skrulls were portrayed as sympathetic refugees, victims of Kree imperialism, in Captain Marvel. The only other time we’ve seen them since was in Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which we find out that the Nick Fury and Maria Hill we saw throughout that film were actually Talos and his wife Soren, while Fury was busy up on a space station.
The first episode of the new Disney+ series Secret Invasion answers many of the questions posed by the post-credits scene of that Spidey film, in service of a series that looks like it’s bringing quite the John le Carré vibe…
Spoilers for Secret Invasion: “Resurrection”
One of the reasons why the MCU has been successful is because they’ve embraced other genres. The existence of S.H.I.E.L.D.—which provided the backbone for Phase 1 of the MCU and also was the basis of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series—would seem to lend itself to this type of espionage thriller. However, aside from the Black Widow film, there’s been surprisingly little of this style of storytelling in the MCU, including on the AoS show, which was much more of a standard superhero tale than a show about spies.
Secret Invasion, though, does a lovely job of blending the superhero universe that has been building since 2008 with a storyline—as well as a look and feel—that wouldn’t be out of place in a Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, or James Bond film.
It also continues one of the more despicable trends of the last five years of the MCU.
I was already mildly annoyed to find out that Soren—played in both Captain Marvel and Far From Home by Sharon Blynn—has died off-camera. Of the various Skrull refugees living on Earth, a large group of them—led by a revolutionary named Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir)—are engaged in a plan to take on Earth as their new homeworld, which they will do by getting rid of humanity. To that end, they’re posing as various terrorist groups, hoping to destabilize the world enough to start a world war. Since Skrulls are immune to radiation, they’ll be all right.
The plot is so very Cold War, even though the world of the early twenty-first century is not really one of two super-powers on the brink of annihilating each other like it was in the last half of the twentieth. Indeed, the world of the MCU is even less so, given the post-Blip world. The wars are smaller, though in deference to that, the Skrull plan involves a buildup of conflict all over the world.
Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and Soren have been working with various spooks—among them Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), a guy named Prescod (a delightfully batshit ranting performance by Richard Dormer), and Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman). The latter turns out to be one of Gravik’s Skrulls impersonating Ross, but the impression is that the real Ross is part of the fight.
Prescod’s death at the hands of the fake Ross—and the fake Ross’ subsequent death at Talos’ hands—prompts Fury (Samuel L. Jackson without his eyepatch and with a full beard, and limping) to come down from the space station he was last seen hanging out in at the end of Far From Home. The station is called S.A.B.E.R., and is—based on a conversation between Rhodey (Don Cheadle) and the U.S. President—an orbital defense against alien invasion, which is an understandable thing to have in a world that’s had several extraterrestrial threats…
Fury’s performance is the standout in this premiere episode. For the first time in the dozens of appearances Jackson has made as Fury, he’s broken. Being dusted in Avengers: Infinity War majorly affected him (we even flash back briefly to the post-credits scene where he watches himself disintegrate in that film), and he’s very obviously a shadow of his former self. Fury looks smaller in this episode. Even when he was near-fatally injured in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he always felt like the tallest person in the room; even when facing off against a god in Avengers, he always felt like he was in charge and, as Hill puts it, three moves ahead.
But not now. He’s playing catch-up and very obviously doesn’t have a plan. He’s gone full Indiana Jones, making it up as he goes. As a result, the op he leads with Hill and Talos to try to stop three bombs from going off in a crowded square on Unity Day in Moscow fails utterly.
That failed op leads to the moment that threw me completely out of the episode—which was quite engaging up until then—because Hill gets shot and killed.
We’re up to seven adult women regulars in the MCU who have been murdered since 2018: Gamora, Natasha Romanoff, May Parker, Wanda Maximoff, Jane Foster, Queen Ramonda, and now Maria Hill.
When discussing Ramonda’s death in my rewatch of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, I said, “It’s at best lazy-ass storytelling, and at worst despicable misogyny,” and “Resurrection” has me leaning toward the latter. Mainly because Hill’s being fridged is the third strike. (And before y’all start asking me again if this is really a fridging in the comments, let me assure you that this is classic: killing a female character to motivate a male character, as Hill’s death is very obviously meant to goad Fury into going back to being the badass we all know and love.) The first strike was Soren’s off-screen death. The second was the casting a male actor as Pagon, who was a woman in the comics. For that matter, the mastermind behind the comics story this was based on was also a woman, the Skrull Princess Veranke, but here it’s Gravik. This is a universe that already had far too many white men in central roles as a byproduct of most of it being created in the 1960s. To take two of the female roles from the comics and make them male in the same episode that kills off two established women in the milieu is a bad look.
It’s especially frustrating because Smulders has been excellent in the support role of Hill, providing a near-effortless competence (starting with her kicking ass at the beginning of Avengers), as well as an ability to call Fury on his bullshit when necessary. The character and actor deserve better.
As always in the MCU, we get some very strong performances. Smulders’ swansong is at least a good showing, as she keeps kicking Fury and Talos back in bounds throughout. Mendelsohn is his usual brilliantly snotty self as Talos. The opening with Freeman and Dormer is not only a good bit of exposition, but also gives us two excellent actors at the top of their game.
And then we have two other characters whose motivations and loyalties are a bit up in the air. Olivia Colman is magnificent in her too-brief appearance as an MI-6 supervisor and friend/rival/colleague of Fury’s. Since Colman is a regular, we should be seeing more of her, which can only be a good thing. Emilia Clarke takes over the role of Talos and Soren’s daughter Gi’ah (played as a little girl in Captain Marvel by Auden L. Ophuls and Harriet L. Ophuls), who has defected to the bad guys, working for Grivak. She doesn’t find out about her mother’s death until this episode, and it seems to turn her—or does it? She fills her Dad in about the plan to blow up Unity Day, but she’s also a decoy. It’s not clear whether or not she deliberately lied to Talos to set him up or if she was set up by Gravik. Clarke does her usual fine job of microexpressions subtly showing the conflict on her face, and I like that we genuinely don’t know which way she’ll go.
This was an enjoyable thrill ride for the first fifty minutes but the last five piss away the good will. The fact that Smulders wasn’t in the opening credits (and hey, look, Secret Invasion actually puts the opening credits in the opening where they friggin’ belong!) was a bad sign.
However, I will give the show credit for, once again, doing what the TV series have done a much better job of than the movies: show the consequences of Thanos’ snap. WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, and now Secret Invasion have done fine work in showing the effect that the five-year disappearance of half the people had, both on those left behind and on those who were blipped.
This and That
- This miniseries is based on a 2008 event Marvel did in the comics. The primary story was told in the Secret Invasion miniseries by Brian Michael Bendis & Lenil Francis Yu, and also crossed over into several other comics. In the comics, the Skrull Empire had been devastated, first by having their homeworld eaten by Galactus (Fantastic Four #257). Princess Veranke engages a long-term plan to invade Earth, which includes impersonating various important people, including the superheroes Elektra and Spider-Woman. The storyline picked up themes from “Civil War” and led into “Dark Reign.”
- The Skrulls were one of the first bad guys in the modern Marvel Universe, debuting in Fantastic Four #2. They didn’t become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe until Captain Marvel, possibly due to being part of the Fantastic Four license, and therefore part of 20th Century Fox’s FF license that gave us the 2005 and 2015 Fantastic Four films, as well as Rise of the Silver Surfer. However, Disney’s purchase of Fox has made it all one big happy family…
- Ross was last seen in Wakanda Forever being freed from CIA custody by the Midnight Angels. How he got from there to being part of the nebulous agency that Fury, Hill, Talos, Prescod, et al are a part of is left as an exercise for the viewer, at least so far, as is where the real Ross actually is…
Keith R.A. DeCandido is very busy on this site these days, as his Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch runs every Monday and he’s also reviewing the new episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as they debut every Thursday. Wheeee!
