Secret Invasion premiere: Nick Fury has changed…but has he really?

The last time Nick Fury did anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was hitting a button on his pager to call Captain Marvel before being turned to dust at the end of Avengers: Infinity War (a movie that came out five years ago). He attended Tony Stark’s funeral after coming back to life, but Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed that Fury has been vacationing on a space station called S.A.B.E.R. since then and that any Nick Furys seen on Earth where actually Talos, Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrull refugee from Captain Marvel, in disguise.

So, when Nick Fury comes back from S.A.B.E.R. here, in the first episode of his very own solo superhero story, and everyone insists that there’s something different about him—that he’s not as far ahead of everyone as he used to be, that he’s lost his proverbial fastball—it should carry some weight. We haven’t seen Nick Fury be Nick Fury in a long time, technically! And the trailers for Secret Invasion were so melodramatic!

And yet…he still just seems like the old Nick Fury to me. That’s not really a criticism, as Samuel L. Jackson seems to be having as much fun as ever in this premiere episode (the conversation he has with Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill about a certain old euphemism for a spy that is also a racial slur felt like peak Fury banter), so it felt phony when every character kept saying, “You’ve changed, man.” If the idea is that this is part of the “who can you trust?” theme of the show, then he should’ve been more different. Quieter, meeker, slower on the uptake.

But before Fury got there, the episode started with Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross from the Black Panther movies and Civil War meeting up with a paranoid agent (S.H.I.E.L.D.? Something else?) in Moscow who is convinced that a rogue faction of Skrulls is behind a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks around the world. He is, of course, completely correct, and after Ross shoots him and runs away, Ross gets chased by Talos and splats on some pavement. When he dies, he’s turns out to have been one of the rebel Skrulls…but since nobody really acknowledges Ross again, it’s not clear how much this is supposed to matter. In other words, has Ross been a Skrull in other MCU appearances, or did a Skrull turn into him immediately before this and the Ross from Wakanda Forever is still out there?

Talos asks Hill to call Fury down from space and he offers some exposition: It’s been decades since Fury and Captain Marvel promised to find the Skrulls a new home, and some of them—especially younger Skrulls—are sick of waiting. They’ve decided to wipe out humanity and take over the Earth from the shadows through a…secret invasion. Talos also notes that his wife has died since Fury was last on Earth and that his daughter G’iah has gone missing, and he points out that Fury has been off since coming back to life after the “Blip” (a term that still sucks—call it The Snap).

Fury goes for a walk and gets kidnapped by Olivia Colman’s Sonya, an MI6 big-shot who knew Fury in the old Cold War days, and if she’s not a Skrull then I’ll eat my hat (or admit it in a later recap). She knows he and Talos are tracking the rebel Skrulls, which means everyone seems to know this is happening, which makes it weird that the guy in the first scene couldn’t trust anyone with his knowledge of the secret invasion. Fury secretly plants a bug and leaves, but not before Sonya joins the list of people telling him he’s different now. She theorizes that Thanos’ snap broke his brain because it proved that there will always be someone more powerful than he is.

Using a tip they gleaned from the bug, Fury, Hill, and Talos track down an art gallery owner/bomb maker who handed off some bombs to Emilia Clarke’s character. Hill tails her through the streets of Moscow and gets bopped on the nose right as Talos shows up to help, and when he sees who he’s chasing, he realizes that she’s his daughter, G’iah. They have a heart-to-heart and he tries to convince her not to be a terrorist, and it doesn’t seem to work, but then we later see that it did work and they meet up at night to talk about whether it’s bad to be a terrorist.

She won’t back down, but she tells Talos that they’re planning to bomb a big event the next day and that she’ll mark the bombs with infrared spray so he can hopefully at least stop them. Fury and Hill hang out at a bar and have a heart-to-heart of their own, because—get this—she thinks Nick Fury has changed in the last few years. She says he used to be three steps ahead of everyone else but clearly isn’t anymore, so maybe it’s time for him to pack it in. This is the one moment where that stuff feels a little more real, since we’ve been following Hill and Fury since The Avengers a decade ago and Smulders—even as the eternally icy Maria Hill—does seem genuinely hurt that Fury abandoned her for a few years.

At the big bomb event the next day, Hill and Talos track a couple of the tagged bombs while Fury is distracted by a Skrull that seems to be…distracting him, and just when Fury realizes the Skrull he’s chasing is Gravik, the rogue Skrull leader, Talos and Hill realize their bombs were decoys and the real bombs go off. In the ensuing panic, Gravik—as Fury—runs up to Hill and shoots her, then runs off. The real Fury holds Hill as she dies. Credits roll. Just wait until he lays his vengeance upon thee, rebel Skrulls.

Stray observations

• Howdy everyone, I’m a Skrull impersonating Sam Barsanti and I’ll be guiding you through Secret Invasion. If you ever see a mistake, like if I get confused by MCU continuity or I just say something stupid, know that it’s because I’m a Skrull. Also, this applies to everything else I write. And everything I’ve written previously.
• Fury’s flashback to getting snapped specifically just showing him saying “motherf…” was cute.
• Fury does a big exaggerated limp when he first arrives from space and someone comments on him no longer being a physical threat… is that a trick? I’m banking on Fury actually being three steps ahead and this was all to catch secret Skrulls off-guard, but I don’t know.
• Dermot Mulroney shows up for one second as the President, with Rhodey appearing for two seconds to tell him that Talos and Fury went off the grid. God, I hope Don Cheadle gets an Emmy nomination for that.
• What are the odds the average Disney+ viewer/MCU fan clocks the joke about Sonya figuring a Black man walking around Moscow is either Nick Fury or Paul Robeson? I had to look it up, but I’m a Skrull.
• I don’t love the Secret Invasion event in the comics, for the record. I have nothing but nice things to say about that New Avengers team, but also The Hood is in Secret Invasion and I hate The Hood. And that’s the real Sam’s opinion, not Skrull Sam.