Marvel's Secret Invasion, Episode 1: Resurrection
So this happened! I have always been of the opinion that a show like Agents of SHIELD would've been so much better if characters like Nick Fury and Maria Hill were a bit more involved in it... but obviously scheduling and actor problems ended up making it not quite as well-received as it could've probably been.
And... as it is, I really did feel like the character of Nick Fury, while a great crowd-pleaser whenever he shows up, ends up being kind of a waste after gathering the Avengers in The Avengers and Captain America: Winter Soldier. Nick Fury always has some kind of presence in subsequent movies as a mentor or as an ally, but his two most prominent post-Winter-Soldier scenes are in a prequel as a younger self (Captain Marvel) or it's revealed that he's being impersonated by Talos (Spider-Man: Far From Home). The real Nick Fury, as this show points out... really hasn't done anything since the Infinity War/Endgame two-parter. He didn't do anything in Infinity War, and he doesn't even show up in the big climactic ending in Endgame.
And... I really did wish that we get to see what Nick Fury has been doing. We saw that he's on a big giant spaceship on Earth's orbit at the end of Far From Home, but... it's not the most exciting thing to do. And so we've got this series, based on the Secret Invasion arc of the same name... except without the big shocking parts of the Skrulls having infiltrated and copied members of the superhero community.
Here, we seem to have basically a rather generic spy/alien-invasion storyline, with our main hero Nick Fury teaming up with some MCU characters like Maria Hill and Talos the Skrull as they dismantle a group of evil renegade Skrulls. Turns out that after the Blip in Endgame, and the fact that despite all of her superpowers Captain Marvel hasn't been able to find a new planet for the Skrulls, they are still homeworld-less, and have begun infiltrating the humans in a bid to cause the extinction of humanity and take Earth as New Skrullos.
It's... it's kind of a clunky opening, I'll admit. As a spy show with a 'invasion of the body snatchers' twist, it works just fine. The Everett Ross cameo is also much appreciated. But with how the Skrulls have been depicted in the MCU, as well as the general obviousness of 'oh, these are bad Skrulls, and Talos's daughter is the one good Skrull that is in deep with the bad Skrulls', the pilot is nowhere as bombastic or exciting as the other Disney+ shows. And don't get me wrong, the setup sounds amazing... but the actual execution just somehow... doesn't work? I'm really not sure.
Perhaps it's the fact that practically everyone other than these three guys (and Fake Everett Ross) are all new characters, so I just am not really invested in 'who's secretly a Skrull'. Like, we're introduced to a lot of brand-new characters, or people that might as well be brand-new characters (like Talos's daughter G'iah). And... out of the new 'humans', we've got sassy MI6 spy Sonya Falsworth, and the President of the USA, Ritson... and whether they are Skrulls or not, it's not particularly interesting. The one 'canon' character that is revealed to be a Skrull is Everett Ross in the cold open, but it's less of a 'big shocker' moment because it's not even clear if this Skrull just took advantage of Ross's disappearance post-Wakanda-Forever and ran around with his face, or if the Ross we've been seeing in the Black Panther movies is actually a Skrull that just died an inglorious death (which is very likely not the case).
Also, for a bunch of shape-shifting aliens, it's rather silly that characters like Talos and G'iah just default into the same-looking humans all the time. I get that it's because we need to associate the actors with them, but it does strain a bit of believability that they don't abuse the ability to swap faces all the time. There's also the fact that the show tries to play up the Skrulls both as a sinister shapeshifting faction that's infiltrating our society, but also focuses on them as a refugee camp. I get what they're going for, that Gravik is using a lot of these desperate, disillusioned Skrull youth as his terrorists, but I really do feel that for a first episdoe they probably should've hammered home the villainousness part first.
Nick Fury himself lands on Earth and Maria, Talos and Sonya all try and point out how Nick Fury has 'changed' and 'is not the same', but... he's still Samuel L. Jackson being a badass. As usual, Samuel L. Jackson is always a treat to watch, but other than bits of him brooding in-between missions, as well as the end of the episode where he fails to catch the bomber, he honestly already seems to be firing on all cylinders.
We also have Talos and Ben Mendelsohn's wit is still welcome to have, but his wife Soren has been 'fridged' since Spider-Man: Far From Home, having been killed in an unspecified interaction with main villain Gravik... which Talos just refuses to explain to his bratty teenage daughter G'iah, who we last saw as a wee bab in Captain Marvel and is now played by Emilia Clarke.
After a couple of investigating, including them beating up a Russian art dealer (who we also meet for the first time) that turns out to be a Skrull, our heroes follow a lead. G'iah seems to be helping Talos with marking the bomb-bags, but whether G'iah played her father like a fiddle or if she's actually duped by Gravik's goons, the bombs blow up as our heroes are distracted with the marked bags. In the chaos, Gravik disguises himself as a Skrull and seems to shoot Maria Hill dead, and... man, kind of a waste of a character, huh, if she actually does die here?
If I don't sound particularly enthused about the plotline of this episode, that's because I really am not. The setup is a lot more boring than what a 'Secret Invasion' should be. There are a bunch of way too many new characters that I don't particularly find interesting or memorable (Sonya's a typical sassy spy, Gravik's a reluctant resistance leader, his second-in-command is the fanatic type, there's another young earnest Skrull recruit that G'iah befriends) and while this is admittedly just the first episode, it really does feel like the Skrull rebels are going to fall into 'they are all basically the same people' problem that made the Flag-Smashers so boring in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
The best part of this episode, of course, if you realize that the forms that Gravik takes throughout the final sequence are all random background characters that Nick Fury has met all throughout the episode in Moscow, showing that Gravik is the one that's "three steps ahead". That's easily the best part of the episode that really makes the greatest use of the Skrulls abusing their transformation!
Of course, the show itself does promise to have something more interesting, if they manage to do things properly. It's just the opening episode, and we're already promised the involvement of War Machine. It is basically what the show's premise is all about, but considering how fun and interesting most of the Disney+ shows have been (yes, even though I don't like She-Hulk, but at least its pilot episode had energy) this one feels a bit too repetitive and formulaic.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Secret Invasion is based on the comic book run of the same name, although the Skrulls impersonated actual superheroes instead of spies.
- The events of Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel are all brought up. Nick Fury taking charge of S.A.B.E.R. was briefly seen in the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
- Nick Fury was last seen taking a holiday in space in Spider-Man: Far From Home. The Nick Fury and the Maria Hill that appeared in that movie are revealed to be Talos and his wife Soren in disguise. Everett Ross (presumably the real one) last appeared in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever being broken out of CIA arrest by Okoye. The real Maria Hill last appeared in the funeral scene in Avengers: Endgame.
- Gravik's second-in-command is Pagon, who in the comics' version of Secret Invasion was the Skrull that replaced Elektra.
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