Here we are, the end of Secret Invasion. Marvel’s Disney+ shows have been known to, on occasion, fumble the ending with all-too-sudden conclusions and messages handled more poorly than intended, so it’s time to see if this show does any better or if its ending leaves much to be desired.
Naturally, there will be spoilers.
1. Fury and Gravik
Naturally, the episode all comes down to Fury, his past mistakes, and the impact he’s had on the Skrulls who trusted him—particularly Gravik. As the two meet for their final confrontation, a clearly weak and radiation-poisoned Nick Fury struggles to stand while Gravik gives a very angry monologue about how he used the Skrulls, turned them into murderers, and all the usual “I’m going to kill all the humans and it’s all your fault” we’ve come to expect from him.
As for Fury, we get what seems like an actual admission of weakness and failure, as he confesses that there aren’t any other planets out there the Skrull can go to, and it was easier to keep them all in hiding than it would be to make people accept them. He even admits to feeling relief when he was dusted during the blip. It’s a vulnerable side to Nick Fury that we would otherwise never get to see.
Of course, it was all an act from G’iah, so none of this actually impacts his character, and is likely entirely made up.
2. Skrull vs Skrull
At last, Gravik gets his hands on the Harvest, containing DNA from pretty much everyone: Captain America, Captain Marvel, Korg (how does a rock have DNA?), Mantis, Black Panther (does the heart-shaped herb impact his DNA?), and even Thanos. Also Winter Soldier for some reason. None of the entirely non-powered characters, like Hawkeye or Iron Man, were included, of course. No Spider-Man, either, and naturally, characters who weren’t introduced until after Endgame aren’t included (also no Inhumans, because it’s best to not think about anything from that as canon).
So with all that DNA, Gravik manages to make himself a Super Skrull with all the powers of Captain Marvel, the strength of Thanos and Hulk combined, and an assortment of psychic powers to go with it. And because he left “Fury” in the middle of the machine when he turned it on, G’iah gets the powers too.
Well, their fight is a CGI-filled super-powered beatdown, mostly involving growing very muscular arms to punch each other. In fact, they had such a wide selection of characters with super strength in that mix, it got pretty redundant. Who needs to be both Abomination and the Hulk at the same time?
There are some clever uses of other abilities, though, like Ebony Maw’s telekinesis or Ghost’s ability to phase through things, and I did like how they often had to shapeshift to access certain powers. But the way they knew about and were able to use all these powers pretty much the second they got them, no training required, was noticeable.
The shapeshifting was also used to give Gravik mismatched arms to better mirror the comic book Super Skrull, even if he didn’t have any Fantastic Four powers. There were enough similar powers in there that he could use a near-identical power set, as we’ve seen him do with Extremis for fire and Groot’s arms for stretchy limbs, but that’s as close as it got.
At any rate, of course G’iah wins the battle, getting revenge for both her parents (though a “My name is Inigo Montoya” moment for her would have been nice). This means that… G’iah is now literally the most powerful character in the MCU, with the power to have all the powers. Again, she has the might of Thanos, all of Captain Marvel’s powers, telepathy, telekinesis, and pretty much everything else.
Now the next question is: what will Marvel do with a character who breaks every single power level?
3. How Long Has it Been?
As the real Nick Fury and Sonya rescue the President, they reveal that Rhodey is a Skrull by shooting him. In fact, it’s a little surprising Sonya didn’t shoot him the second she had the gun on him. So what happened to the real Rhodes? Well, he’s down in the Skrull basement, along with other government officials from around the world, and Everett Ross.
Continued belowWhen G’iah rescues them, the first thing Ross asks Rhodey is how long he’s been down there. We don’t get a specific answer, just that it’s been “a very long time,” but we’re also given a few contextual clues, since he’s wearing a hospital gown and he needs other people to bring him to safety, since he can’t walk himself.
What this seems to suggest is that he was replaced by Skrulls after his spine was broken during Civil War, and the Rhodey we’ve followed ever since then has been a Skrull. It’s also possible that he was captured and replaced some time after that, although at the very least it was likely before Infinity War. If so, this would mean that the Skrull Rhodes was the one to fight alongside the Avengers in the final battle against Thanos—wouldn’t that make the Skrull the actual hero? Can we give Rhodey credit for things his doppelgänger did?
This raises a lot of questions and implications about his character, which may or may not be addressed in Armor Wars. We’ll have to see what Marvel does with this.
4. This Can’t Be Legal
So Fury revealed that a rebel subset of Skrulls were trying to spark an international incident, thus clearing his name and stopping a potential World War 3. Naturally, he also let the President know that this subset doesn’t represent the entire Skrull population, and many of them want to help better the world.
And how does President Ritson react? By immediately declaring all aliens as enemy combatants and creating hit squads to go and just outright murder them all. No arrests, no trial, just kill on sight for all Skrulls everywhere (and likely any other extraterrestrials as well).
Now, I’m no expert on war crimes, but I’m still fairly certain that’s incredibly illegal. Declaring an entire group as enemy combatants to be hunted down and shot on sight violates pretty much every civil right, whether or not they’re human, and basically spits on everything Talos sacrificed himself for.
Although considering “Thunderbolt” Ross will be President by the time we get Captain America: Brave New World, it’s clear that Ritson won’t be getting reelected any time soon. But even more baffling is that when Ritson refuses to reconsider, and tells Fury to get the Skrulls off the planet (and I feel it’s worth mentioning that he’s not the President of the Earth), Fury just… heads back to S.A.B.E.R.
Honestly, that’s a pretty disappointing turn after all the characters who’ve died and sacrifices they’ve made, in addition to the many, many legal issues it brings up. And while the finale did leave us some hooks for future plots (like G’iah and Sonya teaming up, and the geopolitical mess of violence and assassinations that followed Ritson’s declaration) it’s unclear if we’ll get to see this resolved any time soon.
5. Relationship Counseling
Ever since Priscilla/Varra was introduced, her relationship with Nick Fury has been a big focus of the series. Credit to the actors, they did a great job showing us both the love and tension between the characters, as well as the doubts and anxiety that Priscilla herself has about whether or not Fury would accept her in her normal Skrull form.
But as Fury heads back into space, Priscilla decides to go with him for at least a time, now going by her Skrull name of Varra (and frankly, she chose a good time to get off-planet, given point #4). And while Fury does say that the Kree are open to peace talks (apparently Varra is a great diplomat, though we haven’t seen any of that ourselves), and that they work better together, she’s going to have to go back to Earth eventually.
The way they parallel each other works nicely enough; he’s a human with work to do in space, while she’s a Skrull with work to do on Earth.
But at least the episode ends with the two confirming that they do love each other as they are.
Final Thoughts
Secret Invasion is a show with a lot of potential, but much of it went unrealized. There are many characters we didn’t get enough time with to really see them used to their full potential. Even Fury himself never really got his groove back, so to speak, in spite of every character telling him he was old and off his game; the climax of the story was just him talking to the President and shooting the fake Rhodey, while G’iah was off doing all the fighting and putting herself at risk. As much as I’d like to say G’iah and Varra are exciting new additions to the MCU, we need more out of them than what we got.
Continued belowPlenty of potential themes also went unexplored. For instance, there were a few times where it felt like the show was ready to start using Skrulls as a metaphor for race, especially when Fury began talking about his experience as a Black man in America, and a Black man in a position of power at that. But it danced on the edge of actually saying something, then ignored it completely.
And while there were a decent amount of surprises early on, it became increasingly predictable as the show progressed. Was anyone surprised when Rhodey turned out to be a Skrull? How about when it was G’iah in the final confrontation? The last twist that I actually didn’t see coming was the revelation that Fury is married, the rest were easy to see coming.
With that said, it did do a good job making the Skrull infiltration feel like an actual secret invasion, and managed to be its own Marvel story without the Avengers. It’s about as far off from the comic “Secret Invasion” as you can get, but considering the comic basically threw out the concept of “secret” once the characters started fighting Skrulls around the world, that’s to be expected.
Is it the worst Marvel show ever? Not by a long shot—I had to sit through both Marvel’s Inhumans and Helstrom, so I can honestly say I’d take another season of Secret Invasion over another episode of either of those shows without hesitation. But it’s certainly a far cry from the quality of shows like WandaVision or even Loki. It’s just mediocre, but it could have been so much better.
