Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 4: Beloved
We get a bit more excitement in this one! I do find this episode to probably be the most fun of the four episodes of Secret Invasion that we've got so far, although it's not just because it features an action scene... which was appreciated, but seeing helicopters and soldiers with machineguns shooting at each other isn't exactly anything new in superhero material.
But a good chunk of this episode's intrigue is that... finally we've got some interesting confrontations that aren't just already transparent, which had been my big problem with the second and third episodes. Now the execution of the big plot twist is, in my opinion, not the best, but the fact that they went there was definitely much appreciated.
So to rip the plot twist off the band-aid, James "War Machine" Rhodes as we've seen in this series is a Skrull. Which has always been the biggest, most interesting part of the original comic version of 'Secret Invasion', where major characters that we know ends up being actually Skrull infiltrators. And unlike Everett Ross's random cameo in the pilot, we've actually seen this incarnation of Rhodey (Skrull!Rhodey, I guess) actually do stuff that looks convincing as something extreme that Rhodey might resort to.
And I do really like that what we've seen of Rhodey earlier this season has been questionable, but leans close enough to a natural -- if militant -- version of the familiar MCU character. I do think that this episode kind of drops the ball a little by portraying Skrull!Rhodey after the internal-reveal to the audience as being unnecessarily petty and being kind of a jerk, though, particularly to the president. I suppose him (her, technically) being drunk does explain some of her behaviour to the president prior to the attack.
That said, seeing Don Cheadle ham it up is pretty fun! I appreciate it
Skrull!Rhodey also confronts Priscilla/Varra, meeting her in a church and making it clear to the audience and to an eavesdropping Nick Fury that she's being basically blackmailed to kill Nick. The way that this was delivered to the audience is pretty cool, because it was a bit ambiguous in the beginning if Varra was going to be the villain in this encounter. Again, I do still have the problem that I'm highly uninvested in the Varra character. This episode does a much better job than the previous one at making me buy into their romance, with the poetry recital and the simultaneous 'I shoot you and miss you point-blank' confrontation with Nick Fury. It's a pretty nice moment, I suppose. I do still ultimately feel like Varra needs to do more other than to say the same old 'Nick Fury, I knew you all your life and you have changed' dialogue. It really does all seem rushed, and I wonder if the Nick/Varra story would've flowed much better if we've spent more time with her in the first couple of episodes.
In other parts of the Skrull world, G'iah used the Super Skrull procedure on herself, and recovers from the fatal shot with the same Extremis regeneration ability. She later meets up with Papa Talos, trying to ask Talos what his 'better plan' for the Skrulls are. Talos just wants to basically be a very child-like version of the 'model immigrant', just being super-optimistic that 'hey, we'll beat the bad guys and show the president that we're good guys, and they'll reward us'. It's... it's stupidly naïve, and considering that Talos has been preaching to Nick Fury about how poorly he failed the Skrulls, it's rather jarring. No wonder G'iah walked out on her.
By the way, since this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would be remiss to not point out that G'iah's big problem -- that the Skrulls would be forced to disguise themselves as humans forever -- is kind of already stupid in a setting that, as of Avengers: Endgame, features a whole town where the entire population of Asgard (plus a couple ersatz alien gladiators) is hanging out in, seemingly with no problem as long as no shadow-manipulating bald men comes to kidnap their kids.
After the Fury/Varra confrontation, Fury goes off to confront Skrull!Rhodey, and to the writers' credit, Skrull!Rhodey's acting here does still feel consistent with someone that just feels frustrated with all the bullshit and conspiracy theories that Fury keeps spouting. But then he basically pulls up the security footage of Fury shooting Maria Hill and doesn't even try to play it up as the real Rhodey trying to understand a situation and basically gloats at Fury. After she and Fury part ways, she meets with the President and basically hams things up a bit too much for my liking, and... yeah, I think this is a bit where the Skrull!Rhodey thing lost me. It's still miles better than most of the other Skrull stuff going on in the past three episodes, admittedly..
Fury and Talos trail the 'liquid tracker' or whatever that Fury slipped Skrull!Rhodey, and they come across as Gravik leads an army of his Skrull minions in attacking the president's convoy, masquerading as Russians. While the action scene really isn't anything special, it does harken back to the more 'simple' days of Phase 1 of the MCU, which I thought was a nice break from the sub-par CGI of the past couple of Disney+/MCU efforts.
And... Talos dies as he's trying to rescue the president, which I think didn't quite have the impact that the show thinks it does. Of course, it could be another fake-out (wouldn't be the first time) but I did feel like the scene of him trying to bash through the car's windows to drag on a bit. That's where the episode ends, with Gravik and his goons escaping after killing Talos. It really does feel like a rehash of the first episode with Maria Hill's death, and I really do think that while the Skrull!Rhodey twist was all right, the series is more than halfway through its runtime and the pacing and the over-reliance on shocking (not too shocking) cliffhangers has been hurting it quite a lot.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Last episode actually foreshadows James Rhodes being a Skrull, with Fury pointing out the gag from Captain Marvel -- no one who knows him calls him anything but 'Fury'. But Rhodes actually did call him 'Nick' when he fired him!
- The 2012 flashback with Fury and Varra takes place right after The Avengers, with the newspaper Fury takes showing the team's exploits.
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