Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E07 Review: Secret Invasion

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 7: Who Do You Trust

We're finally going to continue the Skrull invasion storyline, and a lot of ground gets covered in this episode. The first scene is Director Maria Hill getting attacked by Mockingbird and Nick Fury, who ends up actually trying to catch Hill up to the existence of the Skrulls, noting ominously that "everyone is compromised". Again, as Fury notes himself, there's no real way to know if Hill herself is a Skrull, but on the chance that she isn't, well... he needs allies. The thing about the Skrulls is that unlike the Kree, who are happy to show up in their huge warships and wave around giant hammers and demand that the silly Earthlings surrender, the Skrulls' infiltration is actually depicted pretty damn well, with the paranoia truly setting in and executed damn well for a show with kiddie censors. 

And it's really such a shame on the Avengers' part, because this episode starts off with the team being all-too-happy. We get a funny moment with Hulk and Black Panther, while the battle against the flashy beast-man supervillain Griffin (one of the villains that broke out in the show premiere) is played up like a fun hazing session for the Avengers to throw on poor Ms. Marvel. Carol doesn't really have enough chances to really shine, honestly, and it's nice to see some of the few times that she's allowed to show off her personality. Of course, Griffin's entire attack was engineered by one of Nick Fury's agents, the newly-introduced Quake (yay Skye!), just to distract the Avengers so Black Widow can kidnap Tony Stark, and Nick Fury can tell Stark all about the Skrulls.

The thing is, Stark himself is a pretty paranoid and confrontational person by nature, so when shown the evidence from Nick Fury, his first instinct is definitely not to keep it hush-hush,  but to confront everyone. Perhaps worse is the fact that Fury's little resistance cell gives evidence that someone from within the Avengers Mansion is in contact with the Skrull Madame Viper, and that Fury none-too-subtly implies that Hawkeye is a prime suspect due to his involvement during the whole Viper business... but also notes that this whole deal is more of a warning instead of accusing Hawkeye. "How do I know you are not a Skrull?" "Now you're getting it."

And the mood whiplash as Iron Man stalks out of the shadows, genuinely unsure of who the traitor is, while trying to talk this through... the thing is, Hawkeye has been falsely accused as a traitor throughout a huge chunk of season one, and having him be immediately defensive isn't out of the question for Hawkeye, but instead ends up looking like defensiveness for Iron Man on the off chance that Hawkeye is a Skrull Impostor. Sides are quickly chosen by the heroes, with Hulk always being anti-authoritarian and being Hawkeye's buddy; Wasp always willing to give people a chance... while Ms. Marvel, as an agent of SWORD, can't take the chance that it might be right. Black Panther is also a man that's always ruled more by logic than emotion, and, yes, of course the logical option is to scan Hawkeye regardless of hurt feelings. This little "Civil War" ends up erupting, and the entire Avengers ends up fracturing. Iron Man can't stand being in a team that he has no control on since he's not sure who to trust; Black Panther enacts to just return to Wakanda, disgusted by the behaviours of everyone; Ms. Marvel leaves to rejoin SWORD.

(Also, Thor is still MIA, trapped in Asgard, while Hank Pym's retired, to make things even worsre)

We're in an interesting pickle, of course, in the fact that as the audience, we've known who the Skrull Impostor is for a long time -- Captain America -- and unless the show's going to throw us for a loop and reveal a second impostor, it both sort of deflates the conflict when we know an answer, but also highlights the real tragedy when we know that all these guys are just doing what they think is best. Even Nick Fury, who's just observing with his little Charlie's Angels spy squad deal to just try and get the Skrull to be in a position where he'd be forced to reveal himself... and all that it manages to do, other than fracturing the Avengers, is to confirm that at least Tony Stark is reliable. Is the price that the Avengers spent too high, though?

Skrull-Cap, meanwhile, actually takes the best stance an infiltrator would in that situation, which is try to make use of the conflict to raise his own credibility in the team. He tries to defuse both Hawkeye and Iron Man during the early stages of the conflict, and ends up giving a token inspirational speech to get Hulk, Hawkeye and Wasp to remain Avengers, playing on Hawkeye's anger and refusal to be guilt-tripped to dance to his tunes. Of course, the show has another huge revelation at the end... that Fury's oh-so-secure little private spy-cell has already been infiltrated, with Mockingbird being revealed not just as a mere Skrull, but the Queen of Skrulls. 

Overall, a pretty damn great episode! Normally in these 'our heroes fall apart due to a conflict' moment they tend to needlessly villify one or two members in the party, but the arguments given here are definitely in character and very sympathetic for the audience. Good episode, for sure, and I think one of the stronger ones in this season.