(This post talks about the first two episodes of Secret Invasion and could have things considered minor spoilers)
So after a month and a half or so, we have the start of a new chapter of the MCU in our midst. Secret Invasion, the new series starring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, is back, and this time it’s a connection to the Skrulls, who we met back in the prequel set film of Captain Marvel. Fury, who’s been in space overseeing the space station, teased last in Spider-Man: Far from Home has to return to Earth as new terrorist attacks are happening all over the Earth, and the cause may be connected to a group of Skrulls on Earth. So let’s backtrack a bit. Secret Invasion was a Marvel Comics event back in 2008 by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Lenil Francis Yu. It was very popular as it played with different Marvel heroes being sleeper agents and Skrulls trying to take over the Earth for the current homeless Skrull empire. It felt like playing with Night of the Living Body Snatchers or V and other alien replacement movies and shows. The hero of this story in the comics was Nick Fury, who created a special team to help him save the Earth from this Invasion as the many heroes and villains didn’t know who they could trust. The comic ended in a surprising way that worked like a season finale and season premiere for the comics at that time, as it completely shifted the overall story of the universe.
So I’ve watched the first two episodes of the new series, and it shares with the comics that Nick Fury is the hero trying to stop Skrulls from taking over the Earth. Here we, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), communicate with Fury, which causes him to return. He finds out that the rebel group has broken from the Skrulls on Earth and is causing terrorist attacks that look to be from different nations attacking each other to start a World War. Their leader Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), has issues with both Fury and Talos. The return of Fury to Earth throws the Intelligence world into a tizzy, leading to the President (Dermot Mulroney) to ask Rhodey (Don Cheadle) about it bringing him into play. Olivia Coleman plays Sonya Falsworth, an MI6 agent and old friend of Fury, and her current mission for the UK could have her at odds with Fury in his mission. (Also, her name connects her to two unseens in the MCU Marvel heroes). This episode gives some good character scenes to Smulders and Mendelsohn as they both worry about the current goings on and about Fury. Here, Jackson plays Fury as old and not at the top of his game. This is the first real-time we’ve seen him since the “Blip,” and everyone talks about how different he is. The effects of getting dusted might’ve done more to Fury than we’ve thought. The first episode ends on a pretty good cliffhanger as it really sets the series in motion and sets the tone, and I’ll get back to the tone later. (Episode 1 score: B+)
Episode 2 gives us more backstory on Skrulls in the time we’ve missed since the end of Captain Marvel and how Fury got so close to these refugees than we knew. This also gives us who Gravik and G’iah, played by Emilia Clarke, who is, Talos and Soren’s daughter. She was last seen as a child in Captain Marvel. Gravik and G’iah (pronounced like Gaia) are on the same side, which gives more of a reason why Talos is so focused on getting to Gravik. Gravik is focused, charismatic, and quite brutal in his actions to take over the Earth. Right now, it’s easy to say he’s one of the best antagonists/villains we’ve seen during the Multiverse Sage era of the MCU. After the events of the first episode, Fury is really down bad and must find his own way of dealing with this after a bad conversation with Rhodey. Fury also learns some things about just how many Skrulls are on Earth that shocks him and cause him actually to show fear. The show does a great job of showing that this could be the last mission of Fury, as everything is hard for him to do. The feeling of the show so far is very consistent, and the tone has the feeling of spy shows like 24 or Homeland with the MCU twist. The show has more on-screen violence than I’m used to. That’s not bad, but it does make its stakes much higher and the danger much more consequential. Even more so than whatever was in Hawkeye or Falcon and Winter Soldier. Those shows dealt with more down to Earth superhero stories, and this goes even further. While it’s not like the original series plot-wise, I can say it does have some tone similarities with Bendis’ comic writing work at Marvel than I expected. There are some nitpicks I can have with some parts of the show and how they use these characters and concepts that I don’t agree with, but right now, that doesn’t make it bad, and it is quite good at this point. (Episode 2 score: B)
Now for me, Phase 4 wasn’t that good, and Phase 5 has just been okay. Still, I’ve always felt the battle between the Kree and Skrulls with Earth and humanity stuck in the middle was always a much better and fertile ground for a super arc of the MCU than trying to juggle Kang and the multiverse leading into something wild like the Secret Wars. Just maybe this show can, in a way, counter-program their own super arc with something that can hit the right spot of something new for the MCU while also being familiar with characters people love.
RIOTUS 