Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 4: Welcome to the Kree Empire
Well, after the previous couple of episodes being more of a tidy-up for season one, this one starts off finally delving into the Kree/Skrull alien war conflict. We've seen the Skrulls' insidious methods of having Captain America and Invisible Woman replaced with infiltrators. The Kree, on the other hand, are anything but subtle, as they announce their presence and their stakes in the conflict to gain control of Earth by showing up on Earth's orbit with a big honking spaceship.
But before that, we get the revelation that Kang's ship Damocles has been taken over as the space base for SHIELD's space division, SWORD, which includes, among others, Carol "Ms. Marvel" Danvers, who's definitely gotten superpowers since we last saw her in season one, as well as the sassy green-haired cool lady Abigail Brand. Who might be my favourite character in this show with her short few scenes of simply just being such a goddamn BOSS in this episode. Carol and Agent Brand have to deal with a threat of a different kind before the Kree arrrive, though, as they have to mollify resident snotty government agent Henry Gyrich (a name I am familiar with -- Gyrich is an X-Men antagonist!) who complains about the alien division not actually finding any aliens yet. Of course, the Kree warship shows up like a minute after that.
Of course, the Kree basically pin down SWORD (who can't use Damocles base and their fancy 40th century tech properly anyway), beat up the SHIELD mooks on Earth waiting for the team... and the Kree officers finally land on Earth. We've got Captain Mar-Vell, our old buddy, as well as his superior officer Yon-Rogg. But perhaps the most imposing among them is the gigantic Ronan the Accuser, who I recognized as the rather blandly-written generic space overlord from the MCU Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Ronan here is, of course, pretty different! It's not quite as bad as the MCU's version of Malekith, but I've always found the MCU's Ronan to be pretty pathetic, being an uppity Thanos lieutenant who ends up drunk with power. Here, the title of "the Accuser" isn't just for show, as Ronan is treated as this judge who is sent to survey Earth and see if Earth is deemed worthy to become part of the huge Kree Empire. I'm not sure about his fashion choices, but he does exude authority and does feel pretty cool. 
Speaking of coolness, I just want to take this moment to appreciate just how fluid the animation of the Kree pistols bloorping into existence from their wrist-gauntlets are.
Anyway, Carol shows up in her brand-new Ms. Marvel costume, which looks pretty damn badass. Carol gets taken out by Ronan in her first battle, but she ends up summoning the rest of the Avengers, leading to a pretty badass moment where Iron Man announces the fight against Ronan on live television. However, while Mar-Vell tries to defuse the situation, Skrull!Cap announces the battle to be joined with a very, very angry "Avengers, ATTACK!" It's a slip of the tongue that I honestly missed before reviewing this episode, and I'm glad to have caught it. It's a neat little detail that seems as odd as Captain America interrupting a negotiation moment, but no one really questions it because, hey, it's Captain America and the Skrull impostor does a pretty good job at sounding and looking charismatic otherwise.
The battle between the Kree and the Avengers on Earth is pretty dang cool, although it's obvious at times that they're just trying to show off the newest addition to the Avengers -- Ms. Marvel. A dang good character show off in any case, with Ms. Marvel unleashing a pretty sweet beatdown on Ronan. But I am just as impressed with the fight going on on Damocles, where Brand shows off the fact that she apparently has fire-based superpowers, beats up the Kree goons taking over the Damocles, and manages to gain the help of the Kree's slave, the pink-skinned dog alien Sydren. Sydren is able to interface with the Damocles AI, and this allows Brand and her forces to not only retake Damocles from the Kree, but also take over the Kree ship.
It's victory for the good guys, but the threat continues to loom as Earth basically declared war against the Kree by defeating and imprisoning a good chunk of their forces... including poor, misunderstood Mar-Vell, who had been planning to convince the Kree overlords and Ronan that Earth's nothing but an insignificant planet, but now they've just caused Earth to be target number one for invasion. Meanwhile, we get the ever-ominous shots of Skrull-Cap telling his aliens to move up their own invasion time table. Overall, a pretty fun episode even if it's one that's a bit expository -- we don't get any really memorable character moments, just the introduction of Ms. Marvel's new superhero costume, the introduction of Abigail Brand, and the whole Kree conflict being thrown into the mix. It's a fun episode to watch, but definitely feels like it lacks something.
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