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...

Secret Invasion S01E05 Review: Gravik Goes Nuts

Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 5: Harvest

Okay, yeah. We're one episode away from closing up this season and... I really don't want to say that I didn't enjoy at least some parts of it, because the performances of some of the actors were pretty fun. It's just that... I don't know. I was kind of promised a show about secret spy networks but with shapeshifting aliens on top, or perhaps something more akin to the comic-book inspiration... but the show hasn't really delivered on any of those fronts. It's not even a particularly good character focus on Nick Fury and Talos, honestly. 

Again, this episode has its moments. I do like that everything is traced back to a 'for the greater good' choice that Nick Fury made, making him just a bit more morally grey (though nowhere approaching what made him interesting in the comics) with the titular 'Harvest' -- a sample of the DNAs of all the superheroes that fought in Endgame. Fury had a bunch of Skrulls collect it in secret, and now Gravik wants it as his price for not escalating World War III. 

And on paper, there is a lot of exciting stuff in this episode. Gravik finally shows a bit more emotion beyond being a scheming twit. G'iah gets to send off Talos, and to bond with Priscilla/Vaara. Fury gets a confrontation with Skrull-Rhodey a bit, and then hangs out with the hammy Sonya Falsworth. A lot of these should either be emotional or exciting, but I truthfully only really felt "really, that's it?" in regards to the Talos stuff. Gravik is also reduced to honestly kind of a generic villain that starts killing his minions (recurring characters Pagon and Beto, who I knew existed but I didn't really care to comment about while doing these reviews) and his ultimate plan becomes unambiguously evil as he basically holds his own refugees in New Skrullos hostage for Nick Fury.

And I'm really not sure what would've worked here. More screentime? Less screentime? Just better plotting and more of a focus on what Fury feels instead of constant references to how Endgame changed him? It also really doesn't help that for all of the talks that Priscilla has with G'iah, her 'bond' with Fury really isn't explored properly beyond maybe half an episode's worth of screentime in this show. It'd be one thing if we saw their bond explored in the show, but the best I could say is that shootout scene last episode. 

Speaking of G'iah, this episode does follow her a lot and I also think she's a character that didn't really work out all that well. We do finally peel back the layers behind her a bit here, showing how conflicted she is between the drive for her people and her love for her father, but... I don't know. it just kind of rings flat. 

There are a couple of additional action scenes in this episode, but they all really felt like 'it happened'. Sonya Falsworth follows up on the lead she got from torturing that one Skrull and catches up with the doctor couple, and drops a bunch of fun one-liners. G'iah and Priscilla, after burying Talos, get into a talk about Fury and Priscilla's relationship before they are thrust into a firefight/ There's the aforementioned rebellion as Gravik uses his Groot-arm to stab -googles- Pagon, and later on Beto (the guy that G'iah recruited in episode 1) tries to rebel against Gravik, but he just kills everyone. And ultimately, the episode ends with Nick Fury flying to Finland (and we do get some MCU nods with Rick Mason reappearing to do really nothing) and then teaming up with Sonya to take the Harvest, and then Nick Fury puts on a leather jacket and his eyepatch again. 

....and I don't know. This episode just feels exhausting to watch. I don't really think it's the quality of the show's writing/pacing/characterization that puts me off, but the sheer amount of wasted potential that a plotline like this has, and the squandering of the talents of Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn and Cobie Smulders -- in a very underwhelming exit from the MCU for the latter two. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Skrull Rhodey's name is revealed to be Raava, another adaptation-in-name-only from a comics character. Comics Raava is a Skrull pirate! ...and out of all the Skrulls, could they not have chosen 'Raava' and 'Varra', literally the same syllables swapped, as the two major recurring ones? 
• Groot's species name, 'Flora Colossus', is name-dropped by G'iah. 
• The guy that brings Fury on the plane is Rick Mason, a.k.a. The Agent, previously debuting in the MCU in Black Widow. Yeah, no, even I had to look it up. It'd be nice to have a name-drop, y'know? 
• The Widow's Veil return, was first seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and would appear in other pieces of MCU-related media like Agents of SHIELD and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Secret Invasion S01E04 Review: The Peace Machine

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. 

Secret Invasion S01E03 Review: Obvious Traitor is Obvious

Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 3: Betrayed

If I've been slacking in reviewing Secret Invasion, that's because I am... mostly because the episodes take so long for me to honestly trudge through. And that's not a word you really want to use for a superhero show. But I don't know... I just feel like there's just such a dearth of characters for me to care or get excited about. It's not just because the majority of the side-cast are brand-new faces either, which was also something that was true for shows like Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, and I liked those shows just fine. But I honestly find it hard to care for anyone other than Nick Fury and maybe Talos most of the time in this show. 

And again, Nick Fury and Samuel L. Jackson's delivery of his lines are always welcome to see, but even then it's kind of wearing thin. Just like, honestly, the plotline going on in this episode. Oh, sure, lots of stuff are happening, but it really does feel like we're retreading the 'who is G'iah loyal to' plotline from the first two episodes and it's just so... repetitive. Even the action scene as Fury and Talos charge into General (?) Fairbanks' house and threaten his kid, and eventually force G'iah to break cover to find out the password... that just feels like a very basic spy stuff that ends up being kind of underwhelming.

It doesn't help that Gravik really doesn't do much beyond being a regular sneering villain. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I really wished we got more out of him. We get him boasting and promising about 'Super-Skrulls', a meeting with Talos and a cat-and-mouse game with whether G'iah is the traitor... and really nothing much beyond that. Turns out that, oh, G'iah is in contact with Papa Talos, she finds Gravik a bit too much now, and her obvious treachery ends up being found out and she's seemingly shot dead by Gravik at the end of this episode.

It's also honestly rather frustrating that this is supposed to be a show that makes me pay attention and figure out who's duping who, who's a secret Skrull, and which Skrull has a secret motivation... but Talos, Gravik and G'iah are all such obvious character archetypes that going through 40 minutes of reaching the conclusion already telegraphed in the first 10 minutes really isn't all too engaging. And I'm not sure why. I guess maybe none of the huge 'twists' are actually 'twists', and is telegraphed to us from the get-go? Like how Gravik is obviously already on to G'iah, and how G'iah's loyalty is obviously to Talos at this point, and there's not really much in terms of excitement as they go through the motions. 

Talos is also a character that's been rather... bland. Ben Mendelsohn delivers his line fantastically, but it really does feel like he's just here as the token good Skrull, and while I can get that he becomes a bit more emotional whenever his daughter is concerned, it feels like rather overwrought character exaggeration from "no, wait, damn it Fury, you're triggerhappy" when he was interrogating the art-dealer Skrull last episode to him freaking out when they were interrogating Fake-Fairbanks and shooting him just because he said some mean words about his daughter. 

There is some superhero intrigue with Gravik mentioning Super-Skrulls, and seemingly actually having perfected it by showcasing some super-regeneration when he rips his hand through Talos's knife. Presumably that's Extremis from Iron Man 3? But when Fury and Talos mentions the possibility of Avengers fighting and I know we're not going to get any more than a couple, it really does dampen the stakes of this show by a fair bit. 

Sonya Falsworth also shows up a bit to give Nick Fury some intel, I guess, and I thought that bit with the owl statute and putting an eyepatch on him was kinda cute, but otherwise... eh?

Oh, and I actually almost forgot to talk about Priscilla Davis, Nick Fury's wife, who is also a Skrull called Varra. And... the actress is pretty good, and she has a good dynamic with Samuel L. Jackson, but the conflict here is her being angry that Fury's left her and basically everyone else to hide away on SWORD after the Blip, and it's, again, all rather repetitive. Turns out, though, that Varra's at least been in contact with Gravik, which... again, is another huge obvious-'plot-twist'-is-obvious moment because... well, we've only met Varra this episode, so just like G'iah in the pilot there really isn't any emotional stake to me when she gets outed as a possible traitor. 

Again, this is still episode 3 of... 6, I think? Allegedly, the show gets better in the next episode or the one after that, but for a show about Nick Fury -- a character I desperately wanted more of in the MCU -- this hasn't really been a show that's firing on all cylinders. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The term 'Super-Skrull' is a reference to Fantastic Four's recurring villain Super-Skrull, or Kl'rt, who has the power of all four members of the Fantastic Four -- namely stretching abilities, flame manipulation, invisibility and a rock body. 
• Varra is a in-name-only adaptation of a Skrull/Kree hybrid character that otherwise has no relation to Nick Fury in the comics. 
• Fury and Varra name-drop General Dreykov, who was the primary antagonist of Black Widow. 
• Fury is able to catch on to the fake Fairbanks impersonating Talos because he calls him 'Nick'. The line about how everyone calls Nick Fury 'Fury', even his mother, came from Captain Marvel. 

Secret Invasion S01E02 Review: Burning Blood

Marvel's Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 2: Promises

A little bit more interesting than the previous episode, I would say, though I am also a bit slower in watching and subsequently reviewing Secret Invasion because... the plot does feel a bit more predictable. I do wonder if my opinions would change if I had the option to watch multiple episodes in bulk, like the Netflix shows? 

Again, as usual, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn and (for his short role here) Don Cheadle do very great work with the script they're given. Special credit goes to the epic showdown between Nick Fury and James "War Machine" Rhodes near the end of the episode, which is a real treat to watch as Nick tries his cowboy cop of 'my way or the highway', and normally we would root for the maverick hero trying to change the world on his own when the institution is against him... while Rhodes is being perfectly reasonable in saying that Fury's claims that he alone can fix the problem is very short-sighted, particularly since Fury just indirectly caused Maria Hill's death. There's a great line delivered by Rhodes about how they can't just replace 'mediocrity that don't look like us with mediocrity that do look like us'. War Machine has been a character that always felt like he needed some spotlight, but ever since the solo Iron Man movies ended, he really never got the chance to shine. There's some interesting character to break down there, as he's basically taken the role of the faceless, nameless World Government people that he essentially flipped off in Infinity War, but the loss of Tony Stark and Maria Hill has caused Rhodes to get a bit harder. 

Of course, though, Rhodes and Fury's conversation is only a small part of this episode, and... and the rest of the episode is rather... again, it's not bad, but it's pretty by-the-books. We get a flashback to Captain-Marvel-era Nick Fury befriending the young Gravik. We learn that he's born out of a more war-torn circumstance, having survived the Kree/Skrull war in their homeworld, and he's always a bit more of a hardcase even as a child. Gravik himself is significantly more interesting than Flag-Smasher, at least, when he walks into that Skrull High Council or whatever and basically shows off his badass revolutionary/villain charm, essentially installing himself as the Skrull General on Earth. 

We also have the frankly rather random revelation from Talos that there are millions of Skrulls that he summoned to Earth during the time-skip of Infinity War and Endgame, which I felt really should've been one of the big revelations in the first episode. I also felt like so many world leaders being Skrulls should've been given a bit more oomph? There is the nice bit that they're all the people being interviewed in the little montage after the bombing, but otherwise... eh?

Anyway, we get the seeming confirmation that Maria Hill did die at the end of the first episode.  I am still kind of suspicious about this because it really does seem to be some kind of a red herring in a show all about shapeshifting aliens, but I do still feel like it's not the best death for poor Maria Hill. Admittedly she hasn't really done much, but for such a long-time presence in the MCU I felt like she deserved more. 

At least, for his part, I do think that the episode shows Nick Fury 'slipping' a lot better than the first episode, with his arguments with Talos in the train, and Talos pointing out just how utterly inaccessible and enigmatic Fury has been after his trauma with the Snap. Hearing people like Rhodes and Maria Hill's mother say to Fury that he's "different" is also a lot more poignant after a big failure, though I do realize that it's the whole point of the first episode's cliffhanger. 

There's also a bit of a running theme about how humans hate each other and will wipe each other out -- a speech given by Fury to Talos about how 'humans can't stand each other, let alone another species' in the train when he's ranting; and later on Gravik rants to the council about how humanity's going to wipe itself and the planet out. Again, pretty simple and honestly rather trite stuff in superhero material, but at least there's a neat little theme that runs through this episode. 

The final sequence of the episode is an action-packed one. 'Brogan', the Skrull infiltrator that allowed himself to be captured by the police in Moscow while yelling "I am American!", is being tortured by Sonya Falsworth, who uses some kind of boiling blood thing to torture him. Brogan gives out something about a lab ran by a couple, but then Gravik and his Skrull goons come in and rescue him. Realizing that he's betrayed them, they shoot him dead in the forest, though the scene is portrayed as being rather sympathetic. Prior to all of this going on, G'iah is snooping around the Skrulls' lab experiments, and I'm assuming that this is all leading to the Skrulls creating the MCU's version of the Super-Skrull(s). Gravik clearly suspects G'iah, and him killing Brogan seems to be basically a thinly-veiled warning against G'iah. 

The episode ends with Fury visiting a Skrull woman in a kitchen, who transforms into her human form. Fury then puts on his wedding ring, and we get the revelation that... Nick Fury has a Skrull wife. It's really not that huge of a revelation to me, to be honest, not in the way that the episode probably thinks this is, but it's an interesting (if frankly rather random) development for the character.

Again, the promises of Super-Skrulls and Skrull councils infiltrating the global human governments are all fun and well and good, but I do feel like the show's moving a bit too slowly? Again, it's a lot more exciting compared to the previous episode, but maybe it's just my own expectations on what this show's going to be, and what it actually is. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Nick Fury name-drops Alexander Pierce from Captain America: The Winter Soldier dismissively.
• Nick Fury previously casually name-drops that he has a wife in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though he frames it in a way that it sounds like a cover story. 
• G'iah looks at a bunch of DNA samples of other aliens, specifically Groot (who went to Earth in Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame); Cull Obsidian's hand (dismembered by Wong in Avengers: Infinity War), a Jotunheim Frost Beast (presumably the one in the post-credits of Thor: The Dark World), and, while not an alien, a sample of a human with Extremis (Iron Man 3).

Secret Invasion S01E01 Review: Aliens Among Us

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.