Julia Delbel
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Marvel is back with — perhaps — the most somber Disney+ series to date.
Secret Invasion sees the return of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, along with new cast members like Olivia Colman and Emilia Clarke. The series sheds light on the Skrulls, a shapeshifting alien race introduced 2019’s Captain Marvel.
Comic fans may notice Secret Invasion is a departure from the story of the same name. That tale also dealt with Skrulls covertly spying on Earthlings by taking the form of humans and working to overtake the planet. However, it was a bigger and much flashier event which featured pretty much every Avenger on the roster.
The Disney+ series still appears to have those world-ending (or at least world-changing) stakes, but is a comparatively more personal and grounded story. Unless you count Talos with his shapeshifting abilities and James Rhodes sans War Machine suit, there’s nary a superhero in sight in the show’s first two episodes.
Nick Fury gets the focus in Secret Invasion
Nick Fury has been noticeably absent from the Multiverse Saga thus far. Other projects like Captain Marvel gave audiences some insight in depth into the character, but Secret Invasion takes it even further. After the blip, Fury is a shell of his former self. He has more doubts and fears than we’ve ever seen from the stoic leader. The series centers his struggle to overcome his trauma — and to keep the lid on a Skrull insurgency before it’s too late.
Secret Invasion bears on commonality with its source material: the ongoing hook of “who is a Skrull?”. Viewers are kept on their toes and suspicious of everyone. Things have changed since the ending of Captain Marvel, which saw Skrulls arrive on earth and integrate into human society. While refugee Skrulls saw Earth as a place of hope and possibility, promises from Fury still haven’t come to fruition decades later.
Despite this explanation, it’s admittedly jarring and disappointing to see the Skrulls – subverted as innocent refugees and not the expected villains in Captain Marvel – changed to be more combative for the sake of comic accuracy. Some fans might have wanted this, but Marvel Studios plays fast and loose with which elements of the comic continuity they stick with anyway. Because of that, it’s hard to tell who they’re trying to make happy here.
A few disappointments so far
It’s also surprising Marvel Studios went the mini-series route for such a major comics event. Surely, this could have been fertile ground for a full film. Yes, the concept of this show works for a series, and the writers manage to end the first two episodes in an interesting place. Still, Secret Invasion comes across as a picture stretched to five episodes versus a realized series.
Secret Invasion also makes a tired, predictable writing choice in the opening episode. Without giving it away, it’s a cheap “twist” that serves as the catalyst for some subsequent events within the series. This could – and should – have had more groundwork laid in advance to make it feel less hackneyed. As it stands, it just feels lazy.
Secret Invasion delivers things some Marvel fans have wanted for a while. It’s gritty, dark, and (mostly) devoid of quips. The issue so far is the first two episodes don’t provide a strong hook to rope audiences in beyond the initial concept. I’m intrigued, but not particularly invested. That’s a problem for a project that expects viewers to tune into week after week.
Disclosure: Disney has provided media with the first two episodes of Secret Invasion, and therefore this review is based entirely on the first third of this six-episode series and is therefore not meant to be taken as representative of the show as a whole.