Fortunately for all of us, Marvel's Secret Invasion has finally wrapped after six episodes. There's a lot of grumbling among the MCU fanbase today about this series, and deservedly so--this series was completely incoherent, and as has been the case so often in the MCU since Avengers: Endgame, it's hard to tell if there was any point in watching it.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers about the finale episode of Marvel's Secret Invasion.
Recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the MCU is having a bit of a downturn because all these movies and TV shows "diluted focus and attention." While that is true, the real rot is deeper: Almost every MCU show and movie since Endgame has felt like it had its part of the MCU's overall plot removed during post-production, and the result is a franchise with no story that anybody can see.
Secret Invasion might be the single most egregious example of this yet. This series told us that Nick Fury had been using the shapeshifting Skrulls to do all sorts of clandestine missions since the 1990s, and yet it couldn't manage to retroactively place them in any past movie. Secret Invasion ends with a cliffhanger that might never be addressed, and we learned nothing new about Nick Fury except that he has a secret Skrull wife--Fury certainly didn't learn any lessons or change in any way, and he wasn't developed as a character any further than he had been in movies.
So what's going on here? I don't know, and like many of you I ended up with far more questions than answers from the Secret Invasion finale. So let's get to asking.
1. Is Emilia Clarke in The Marvels?
In a particularly egregious part of the finale, Fury and Gravik finally have their big heart-to-heart when Fury brings the Harvest vial to New Skrullos. But then Gravik fires up his superpower machine with Fury inside it with him, and that emotional moment is completely undercut by the reveal that Fury was actually Gi'ah in disguise, and now she has the power of all the Avengers and Carol Danvers. Meaning she's one of those Marvels now.
But there's been no indication that Clarke is in The Marvels or any other future MCU project, meaning it's not likely that she would have a major role in the film even if she manages a cameo or gets some scenes in reshoots. The Marvels was delayed earlier this year from summer to fall, so reshoots are possible. But we also just got the first trailer and she wasn't in it, so there's no reason to expect her to appear--which is funny, because Gi'ah would seem to be the most powerful being in the universe right now.
2. What was Secret Invasion setting up?
With Fury ending Secret Invasion in the same place he started it--in space with the Skrulls--and with no indication that Clarke will be in The Marvels, there's no reason to think this story will matter in that film. We'll probably just get a single offhanded mention from Fury about what he was up to on Earth, akin to Doctor Strange's single offhand reference to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Since there's no perceivable overall MCU plot right now, it's hard to tell what the follow-up will be. But the two most obvious candidates aside from The Marvels are Armor Wars and the fourth Captain America film. Armor Wars will star Don Cheadle as War Machine after that character spent Secret Invasion in Skrull captivity, and it would be difficult not to address this whole thing after a Skrull spent this show doing high treason while wearing his face.
Captain America: Brave New World is also a candidate just for subject matter reasons--Secret Invasion ended with the president of the United States declaring war on all aliens living on Earth, and that seems like a thing that would come up in a Captain America movie that's coming out next summer. It would certainly be weird to ignore it, anyway. But it wouldn't be surprising if it did, because creating new dangling plot threads is the only thing the MCU has done the past four years.
3. Is America about to bomb Norway?
Let us not forget there's a prominent settlement of Asgardians who have been living on Earth in Norway since Thanos snapped his fingers. They haven't been living in secret. Instead, New Asgard has become a tourist attraction, per Thor: Love & Thunder. But the president declared war on all aliens living on Earth, and that would include these guys. That's probably not the wisest fight to pick.
4. Is Gravik actually dead?
I'll admit I don't really have any idea how exactly the Super Skrull machine works, and so it's hard to gauge exactly how much of a boost Gravik and Gi'ah got from it. For example: Do they have the full power of those whose DNA they're borrowing, or just a portion of it? Did it dilute the process to have them both in the machine at the same time? If it's the full power, then that means that Gi'ah and Gravik were two of the most powerful beings in the universe when they fought. And when you consider that potential context, he went down pretty easily.
Sure, a large hole in the torso was exactly how Iron Man killed one of the Extremis guys in Iron Man 3--that's likely the reason they went with that method of death--but Gravik had just gained the powers of more than a dozen other super-folks. He was a lot more than just an Extremis guy at that point. Considering Secret Invasion already pretended to kill Gi'ah herself a couple episodes ago, it makes this ending a little bit difficult to buy.
5. How long was Rhodey a Skrull?
Colonel James Rhodes aka War Machine has apparently, according to the end of Secret Invasion, secretly been a Skrull operative for a long time while the real Rhodey was a captive of the Skrull rebels. But we don't know how long it's been. It would be outrageous to suggest that the War Machine who went on the Avengers: Endgame time heist was actually a villainous Skrull, so it has to have happened after that. But even though they managed to make a character actually ask out loud how long he was held captive, the show didn't tell us the answer.
6. What is Sonya's deal?
Olivia Colman was delightful as the scene-stealing Sonya Falsworth, but we never end up learning a single thing about her as a person, and Sonya never demonstrates that she can play any notes except for the one that she's stuck on for the entirety of Secret Invasion. And no, having her like rap music is not character development.
Sonya is a fascinating piece of this series because nothing about her makes sense. She knows about both the Skrulls generally and the rebel Skrulls specifically at the start of the series and no one ever explains why, and she manages to remain a protagonist character despite gleefully violating the Geneva Conventions multiple times (torture is bad). But since we know zero things about her beyond her job and her cheerful demeanor, she ends up being inscrutable.
7. Where did all the other rebel Skrulls go?
When Gi'ah, disguised as Nick Fury, arrives at New Skrullos to confront Gravik, she sees a few murdered Skrulls and no one else around. And when she actually meets Gravik, he says the others are "locked away." But then Gi'ah kills Gravik, and we never see any of the other rebels or hear about them at any other point during this episode. Did Gravik kill them all? Nobody cares, I guess.
8. Was this show supposed to have mysteries?
One of the hallmarks of spy thrillers is you don't know what's going on until everything comes together at the end. Secret Invasion didn't bother going this route for some reason--we know who the good guys and bad guys are from the start, and there are no meaningful story twists or secret betrayals or any of the kind of stuff that people like in spy stories. It's so bizarre that I have a hard time imagining it was always like this--was there a previous version of this show, maybe one where the episodes were longer than those of a sitcom, where it was actually a thriller?
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