Secret Invasion’s opening course lacked a key ingredient: context. Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ series draws heavily on the events of 2019’s Captain Marvel, which was set in the 1990s, but last week’s pilot didn’t take the time to show or explain what had happened to the Skrulls in the intervening decades. “Resurrection” opened the six-episode season by abruptly thrusting the audience into a story with roots that extend deep into the MCU’s past. The second installment, “Promises,” provides further background information on the Skrulls and sets up the birth of a new breed of Marvel villain, but that added exposition prevents Secret Invasion from picking up the pace. Through its first two weeks, the series is struggling to generate the intrigue expected of a slow-burn spy thriller, and anticlimactic cappers to each episode haven’t helped.
“Promises” starts in 1997, positioning its opening scene a couple of years after the conclusion of Captain Marvel. The movie’s de-aged Samuel L. Jackson returns as a younger Nick Fury meets a young Gravik in Brixton, London. Gravik is introduced to the agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. soon after the death of Gravik’s parents, who were both killed in the Skrulls’ last stand against the Kree. Despite his youth, Gravik is deemed a worthy candidate for a team of Skrulls that Fury and Talos have formed for a mission. During a short speech to introduce Fury, Talos sums up the Skrulls’ ongoing troubles.
“We went looking for a home, found nothing but violence—and hate,” Talos explains. “All of us have lost someone, or everyone. And our entire species is scattered across the galaxy.”
Talos claims that all of the Skrulls standing before him made the difficult journey to Earth in hopes of help from one man: Nick Fury. And Fury is requesting that the guests on his home planet give him something in return for his services. “The world is facing a serious threat, and I could use your help,” Fury says. “It would mean putting on a new face, and keeping it. This is the promise: While you work to keep my home safe, Carol Danvers and I will find you a new one. … You keep your word, I’ll keep mine.”
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As we know, the Skrulls kept their end of the bargain, whereas Fury gave them no more than empty promises. While it would be nice to get some additional detail on the so-called serious threat that Earth was facing in 1997, or some specifics about what happened to the Skrulls who left with Fury and Danvers to find a new home at the end of Captain Marvel, the flashback at least establishes the extent to which Fury has failed the Skrulls—including Gravik. It seems somewhat cheap to circumvent or delay any explanation about a mission that would require the help of shape-shifting aliens, but it’s certainly one way for Marvel to justify the Skrulls’ limited presence in the MCU since the events of Captain Marvel.
The opening flashback isn’t the episode’s only source of important information about the Skrulls. Following one of Nick’s classic Fury family anecdotes designed to disguise a deeper lesson, Talos reveals that Earth’s Skrull population is far larger than Fury realized. Although the Skrulls were previously “scattered across the galaxy,” there are now a million Skrulls walking among the humans on Earth. Fury doesn’t handle this news very well:
In these two scenes, Secret Invasion provides some of the much-needed context that was missing from the premiere. Given the Skrulls’ sheer numbers, along with Gravik’s previous terrorist attack in Moscow, we now have a better understanding of why the imminent threat of this invasion is so dire. And we also understand why Skrulls like Gravik have a personal stake in this war against the humans and Fury.
Gravik, in particular, gets a lot more screen time in “Promises,” including a chance for the Skrull extremist to flex his fighting prowess in the episode’s lone action sequence, as he leads a rescue mission to save Brogan, the Skrull who has taken the fall for the bombing in Moscow. When Gravik realizes that Brogan has failed to preserve their secrets while in captivity, though, Gravik wastes little time having him killed. The second installment demonstrates how ruthless a leader he is, even with other Skrulls; it’s how he earns a promotion to general after he manipulates the Skrull council into appointing him to a position that grants him “total and unchecked’’ power over the Skrulls’ forces. (The Skrull council was merely mentioned in the premiere, but the members of the committee are properly introduced in this episode as well. And one of them happens to be Shooter McGavin.)
Olivia Colman’s Sonya Falsworth likewise gets more screen time as she, too, displays how far she’s willing to go to get what she wants. Secret Invasion has yet to provide any backstory for her character, but “Promises” gives us a prime example of her own ruthlessness as she interrogates the captured Brogan. As she seems to take pleasure in cutting off one of his fingers and injecting him with a chemical that makes his insides begin to boil, Colman makes a damn good case for becoming a Bond villain. Between Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik and Colman’s Falsworth, Secret Invasion boasts a fearsome pair of antagonists who have no qualms about crossing moral lines to protect their people’s interests. Outside of the rescue and interrogation scenes, the 51-minute episode drags a bit as it builds on the many narrative threads introduced in the premiere. After appearing in a brief scene alongside the American president last week, Colonel James Rhodes returns to show off his new life as a politician—and he may want to get his old job back. As delightful as it is to see Don Cheadle and Jackson finally share the screen in the MCU after all these years, the show’s dialogue leaves a lot to be desired at times. (Cheadle’s straight-faced delivery of a vivid line about “mopping up a globe-sized bucket of steaming hot caca” should get this man an Emmy.)
While Secret Invasion has kept its action light thus far, the second episode does lay the groundwork for Gravik to evolve into an even more powerful villain. As Brogan (whose name I will sorely miss writing) reveals to Falsworth, the Skrulls are developing a machine that could make them stronger, likely as Gravik’s contingency plan should any superheroes choose to intervene. Talos’s daughter G’iah, meanwhile, is conducting her own investigation into the machine as she continues to toe the line between participating in the rebellion and tearing it down from the inside. As she discovers, the device appears to be splicing together DNA samples from several MCU entities: Groot (!), Frost Beast (from Thor: The Dark World), Cull Obsidian (a member of Thanos’s Black Order in Avengers: Infinity War), and Extremis (from Iron Man 3).
Here we have the makings of the so-called Super-Skrulls, whose history in the comics dates back to the 1960s. In Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four no. 18, there was only one Super-Skrull, and he wielded the assorted powers of the Fantastic Four. However, in the many decades since that character’s debut, the number of Super-Skrulls has multiplied as the Skrull Empire began genetically modifying Skrulls to grant them extra abilities to take on the likes of the Avengers during their many (failed) invasions of Earth.
In Secret Invasion, these Super-Skrulls will be created using various species or forms of technology from the MCU’s past, and it sounds like the only thing Gravik’s team of scientists needs to complete the process is the “Harvest” (of DNA samples, presumably). Although any number of Skrulls may end up taking this evolutionary leap in the episodes to come, the trailer for the series has at least confirmed Gravik’s forthcoming transformation by showing off his massive Groot arms:
(Will Gravik also inherit Groot’s love for dancing? Doubtful, but we can’t rule it out.)
Not unlike the premiere closing with Hill’s death, “Promises” ends with a major moment that doesn’t quite land because it lacks a compelling setup. Although the pace this week slows down enough for “Promises” to fill in some of the narrative gaps left over from “Resurrection,” the new episode stumbles into the same pitfall of unleashing a sudden twist without building up to it in a way that gives it emotional weight. Instead of a death, this episode ends with the reveal that Fury secretly has a wife, who also happens to be a Skrull.
Fury has popped up in the MCU about a dozen times, but this is the first appearance of his wife, Priscilla (played by Charlayne Woodard), and really the first mention of her beyond a throwaway line in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which seemed like a lie at the time). It’s something of a shock that he has a wife, let alone one who’s a Skrull. The Skrull reveal itself isn’t so surprising, given that we weren’t aware the character existed at all before now.
It’s unclear whether Priscilla’s Skrull identity is actually known to Fury. But given that she relaxes in her natural green skin while she’s home alone but then quickly reverts back to her human form when her husband arrives, the show seems to be implying that Fury is in for quite a surprise in the near future.
Although Disney has released only two episodes of Secret Invasion, we’re already a third of the way through the limited series. For a show that’s said to be inspired by espionage thrillers, and that promised to keep the audience guessing about which characters we can trust, there hasn’t been much suspense thus far. Other than Rhodes, few of the supposed humans who’ve appeared to this point would make for surprising Skrull reveals. New characters played by prominent actors like Colman or Dermot Mulroney (President Ritson) appear to be prime secret Skrull suspects, but there are diminishing returns to repeating this same narrative trick—especially if it’s used to conclude each episode. The show’s slow-burn approach would work better if its twists were well earned and impactful, but as of now, Marvel Studios’ weekly release approach might not be working in this series’ favor.
The five-day viewership for the premiere was reportedly the second worst of any MCU TV series to date, behind only Ms. Marvel, and the series has taken nearly two hours of screen time to fully set up its main conflict. While viewership may continue to grow via word of mouth in the weeks to come, Secret Invasion’s mediocre reviews and audience scores likely aren’t doing it any favors. With four episodes (and almost four hours) to go, Secret Invasion has plenty of time left to stick a landing, but its takeoff hasn’t inspired much confidence.
