Secret Invasion S01E06 Review: Best Left A Secret

Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 6: Home

That was a rather underwhelming ending to an underwhelming show. I really don't think Secret Invasion delivers at all at what it promises. It doesn't really give us any real in-depth storyline about Nick Fury, the MCU Skrull subplot from Captain Marvel is just left kind of floundering, and honestly, all the potential intrigue about Skrulls infiltrating the MCU's government/superhuman community felt really flat. More egregiously, this show also killed off Talos and Maria Hill, two relatively prominent characters from the movies, with very little fanfare. Hell, I really did hold out hope that Talos's underwhelming death in episode 4 would be a fake-out again, which would be terrible... but would it be less terrible than this being the end for Ben Mendelsohn's character?

Credit where credit is due, we get some great acting from Samuel L. Jackson and Kingsley Ben-Adir during their confrontation in the middle portion of this story. That speech as Gravik rants about how he's basically been used as Nick Fury's assassin, while Nick finally apologizes... that's actually extremely well-acted, as much as I've been rather apathetic about Gravik as a character throughout the entire season. It really does make Gravik end up feeling relatively one-note, as a very common 'I'm actually driven by revenge, revenge BAD' antagonist in these superhero material... but at least it's something. 

And while I do kind of like the wacky powers being showcased when the two Super-Skrulls start pulling characters like Ghost, Ebony Maw, Mantis and Korg out of the weird 'Harvest', it rather cheapens the moment because the Fury that acts his heart out... isn't the real Fury, but a shapeshifted G'iah. Again, a very strong moment that's honestly rather ruined by there not actually being a final one-on-one confrontation between Fury and Gravik. Which is where I said that there really isn't any real 'character focus' on Fury, since we have no idea whether the things that G'iah said are just things that would appeal to Gravik or something that the real Fury told her. And with how flat G'iah is as a character, I really can't say either way. 

(For what it's worth, I do find that G'iah!Fury pretending that chomping iodine pills will suddenly give you immunity to Chernobyl's radiation ending up not a case of 'writers didn't do their research' but a foreshadowing that 'Fury' is a Skrull is neat.)

In fact, Fury goes off to fight and eventually take out Rava, the Skrull that impersonates Colonel Rhodes. There's a bit of a 'who do you trust' as Falsworth and the real Nick Fury besiege Rhodes in front of Ritson. I really do find the whole thing stupid as we've already seen that kneecapping a shapeshifted Skrull would cause them to change back into their natural form. That storyline is resolved relatively quickly, with the real James Rhodes (and Everett Ross) being recovered by G'iah. 

I do actually enjoy the little twist at the end, as depressing as it was, that President Ritson decided to go full-on paranoia and condemn all the Skrulls for infiltrating the governments and basically make it carte blanche for humans to wipe them out. There is a rather chilling sequence where one of the world-leaders that's been replaced by a Skrull gets accidentally shot when they mistook the real person for her Skrull impersonator... but... other than Nick Fury being angry at Ritson, and then leaving Earth to broker a peace treaty with the Kree (who was never mentioned in the whole damn series) felt extremely unearned.

And that's not to mention that the Kree, in the MCU, have been pretty fucking horrible people all around, so having Fury and the Skrulls turn to them for their ultimate salvation feels less like an ass-pull but an even bigger idiocy than the naive plan that Talos suggested. Honestly, having New Asgard or the Guardians of the Galaxy swoop in and save the day and take in the Skrull refugees would be a similar level of deus ex machina, but it would at least make narrative sense. 

Speaking of which, though, the refugees are just... kinda forgotten? All the talks about Gravik and G'iah and all the other recurring Skrull subcommanders that Gravik killed last episode... all of those are just forgotten as Gravik apparently imprisoned all of them off-screen. What happened to them? Did they all get killed off-screen, did G'iah bring them along with her, did Fury and Vaara/Priscilla bring them along with them? For a show whose big point of conflict was that Fury didn't care about these civilians left behind, the show itself barely acknowledges what happened to the non-spy Skrulls. 

But all we find out about are the named Skrulls, which I really find it hard to say that I really care about them. The Super-Skrull fight between Gravik and G'iah is interesting enough, but I really find it hard to be invested since I don't really care about the two of them. There's a couple of fun visuals, but ultimately G'iah just blasts Gravik to death, and presumably still having the Super-Skrull power in her, enters into a deal with Sonya Falsworth into 'protecting both their interests'. Normally this tends to be an exciting 'wow, a character we've just gotten a taste of is going off on their own adventures!' but here it just feels rather hollow. 

Speaking of the other Skrull whose name we know, Priscilla, or rather, her real name, Varra, finally decides to hang out with Nick Fury and fly to the S.W.O.R.D. spaceship. And... again, this is also a relationship that feels honestly rather artificial, where we're told that these are two old lovers that are good for each other but Nick Fury sacrificed so much of his past and it cost them their relationship, but while the two actors are good, the way the relationship is built up has been very bland. There's very little focus on it beyond, I guess, that mutual missing-gunshot scene, and when Nick Fury turns out to be okay with Varra in her natural green form, all it earned from me is a shrug. 

And honestly, a shrug is all this series earns from me. This is easily the weakest Disney+ Marvel-related show from me, and I'm including She-Hulk in that ranking. I'm not the biggest fan of She-Hulk when it ran, but at least it was confident in the story that it told. It's just wasn't for me. But Secret Invasion had so much potential on so many different fronts, and it just... kind of didn't live up to any of its potential. Pacing-wise, tension-wise, plotting-wise... I don't know if the recent Russo-Ukrainian conflict caused a lot of the scripting to be gutted, but either way this show is probably one of the few MCU projects that I would tell people to fully skip. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Both Gravik and G'iah show off these powers in their fight, but the computer that reads through the Harvest also explicitly identifies the names of the super-powered beings that were harvested. Among them are Captain Marvel, Drax, Mantis, Hulk, Ghost, Abomination, Ebony Maw, Korg, Thanos, as well as the previously-mentioned Groot, Frost Beast, Cull Obsidian and Frost Beast. Other characters like Gamora and Winter Soldier are also mentioned.
• A glaring bit of error notes that the Harvest was explicitly harvested during the 'Battle for Earth', which is Avengers: Endgame... but neither Abomination nor Ghost are there, nor were there Frost Beasts. The Frost Beast DNA was already shown in episode 2 or 3 so it could be excused as not being part of the Harvest, but the only real explanation is Abomination and Ghost showed up but are off-screen the entirety of Endgame? We do know Wong and Abomination are buddies...