Secret Invasion finale: A waste of time and talent

Nick Fury got a happy ending, but at what cost? His friend Talos is dead. Countless other Skrulls are dead. President Mulroney has signed racism into law and emboldened however many J6-types to execute anyone they suspect of being an alien. Not just a Skrull. Any alien. Or hell, any person born off Earth, since that was his exact wording. You know who’s an alien? Groot. Drax. Nebula. Thor. Valkyrie. Korg. Forget the giant hand reaching out of the planet from Eternals that nobody talks about; will the MCU ever acknowledge that the United States effectively just declared war on a quiet fishing village full of refugees from Asgard?

I’d be more inclined to give Secret Invasion some props for going so hard, but I have zero confidence in the MCU to ever really do anything with this again. Nick Fury has potentially doomed an entire race of aliens, one that he vowed to protect, and he’s just going off to space again? Oh, the Kree are open to peace talks with the Skrulls? The same Kree who made them refugees in the first place? Out of the frying pan and into a very similar frying pan.

So yeah, I don’t think this was a particularly good finale, which means this wasn’t a particularly good series as a whole, but let’s go through the plot: Last week, Gravik told Skrull Rhodey to convince President Mulroney to bomb Russia as retaliation for the attack in the previous episode—but Gravik specifically wanted him to bomb the old power plant that he and the other refugees have been calling New Skrullos. The idea is that this would both start World War III and make Nick Fury mad since he supposedly cares about the lives of innocent Skrulls (though I am unconvinced of that now), but Gravik said he would call off the attack if Fury gave him The Harvest—a vial of liquid containing the DNA of everyone who was at the final battle in Endgame, which would give Gravik the powers of virtually every character in the MCU.

Fury shows up at New Skrullos and finds all of the dead Skrulls, and then he has a heart-to-heart with Gravik and admits that he failed the Skrulls. Except it’s not Fury; it’s G’iah in disguise, so the emotional beats of this scene—which are actually pretty good, as Kingsley Ben-Adir actually seems more alive here than ever before—are totally phony. We don’t know how Fury really feels about failing to keep his promise to the Skrulls, because this isn’t Fury, so why drag this out at all?

Anyway, Gravik uses The Harvest and tries to kill Fury with Super-Duper Skrull powers, only to realize that now Fury is actually G’iah and he has accidentally turned her into a Super-Duper Skrull as well. It’s tough to make a fight scene like this work, where both people have basically infinite super powers (because it will never be as imaginative as it could be), but I think it was at least pretty good. I liked the specificity of seeing them kick with a Hulk leg or punch with a Drax arm or do the Mantis “sleep” thing (I’m not going to bother questioning how G’iah knows that’s how Mantis’ power works), and the final wide shot of G’iah blasting Gravik in the stomach with a Captain Marvel beam was very Dragon Ball. Unfortunately, she’s now so incredibly powerful that we’ll probably never see her again.

As all of that is happening, the real Fury is going after Skrull Rhodey and President Mulroney with the help of Sonya, who is apparently just a straight-up good guy despite all of the mean stuff she seemed to be doing earlier. There’s a lot of “who are you gonna believe???” back-and-forth, but Fury eventually shoots Rhodey in the head and he turns into a Skrull, proving that Fury was right—and, apparently, instilling in President Mulroney a deep hatred of all other races. Good work, everyone.

And then it’s time to wrap everything up. The Skrull captives (including the real Rhodey and the real Everett Ross) are rescued and released. Sonya recruits G’iah in a “I’ll help you, you help me” scheme, with the two of them finding a completely unexplained warehouse full of people in hospital beds. Fury and Priscilla—now in Skrull form and insisting on using her real name, Varra—go back to space to work on those Skrull/Kree peace talks, but not before sharing a tender kiss (proving that Fury loves her even though she’s green).

And, of course, President Mulroney issues an address where he says he’ll pass a law identifying everyone not born on Earth as an enemy combatant, and there’s a montage of people with guns executing Skrulls and humans they thought were Skrulls in broad daylight and on live television. But hey, congratulations to Nick Fury on reconnecting with his wife even though he inadvertently encouraged the President Of The United States to launch a genocidal war against her people. So…a bit of a mixed bag here, in terms of successes.

Stray observations

• For the last time, I am dropping this episode down a letter grade over the A.I. intro. I think at this point I’ve made my thoughts on the use of A.I. in this context (and, ahem, some other notable contexts) pretty clear, and while I know this is a meaningless symbolic gesture, I think the symbol of that letter grade up there still says something.
• I’m already seeing some MCU fans claim that this episode revealed that Rhodey was replaced by a Skrull before Avengers: Endgame, but I saw absolutely zero proof of that. We know he was in the Skrull pod for “a long time,” but that could mean anything. So we don’t know when he and Ross were replaced, meaning we don’t know if they were Skrulls during any of their previous MCU appearances. I think that renders the whole thing kind of a waste.
• Specific MCU powers I noticed during the Super Skrull fight: Drax arms, Ebony Maw telekinesis, Hulk kick, Korg punch, Mantis antenna, Cull Obsidian punch, Captain Marvel blasts, Ghost invisibility (Ghost wasn’t at the Endgame battle, but whatever), and probably some more I didn’t recognize. A lot of these guys just have big monster arms. (Like I said, it’s hard to be as imaginative as a fight like this could be.)
• I said in my recap of the premiere that I would eat my hat if Sonya didn’t turn out to be a Skrull, and I was indeed wrong, so just…trust that I’m doing that right now? Mmm, yum. Hat.
• And that’s a wrap on Secret Invasion. I think, as a whole, the series was a waste of time, a waste of Nick Fury, and a waste of good performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Emilia Clarke, Cobie Smulders (even if she was barely here), and Olivia Colman. There was some good action, but the story just didn’t hold up. It felt less like there were things Marvel wanted to say or do and more like Marvel was sitting on the original Secret Invasion storyline and figured it should do something with it after introducing the Skrulls in Captain Marvel. But thanks for reading! The real Sam Barsanti will now be released from his Skrull pod with no memory of ever watching or reviewing Secret Invasion. Lucky!