Secret Invasion recap: Nobody here is very good at being a spy

Since its premiere, Secret Invasion has been insisting that Nick Fury isn’t the man he used to be. That never landed in that first episode, because he still seemed like the same old Nick Fury who was 10 steps ahead of everyone in the MCU movies, but as time has gone on—especially after last week’s revelation that the ending of Captain Marvel was a big whiff and that not only did he fail to find the Skrulls a new home but they all just moved to Earth without him noticing—it has become more and more clear that, yeah, Fury has been kind of screwing up a lot. But maybe he deserves some slack from everyone, because he’s not the only one.

As it turns out, not one of the Good Guys seems to have any idea of what the hell they’re doing at any point in the day, which is how we get into situations where Nick Fury makes all of his friends hate him, where Talos can get triggered into making stupid mistakes as easily as calling Marty McFly a chicken, and G’iah is a trained covert operative who can’t see when someone is very obviously playing her.

I should say that I don’t necessarily think any of this is a failure of the writing or the acting. I don’t agree with how readily internet critics throw around terms like “plot hole” because something isn’t spoon-fed to viewers, but I do think it’s weird that everyone in Secret Invasion has been on a high-horse telling Nick Fury that he’s a bad spy or a bad friend or a bad husband(!) when not a single one of them has a perfect record in any of those categories.

Let’s start with Talos’ daughter G’iah, since her mistakes carry the whole episode: Gravik very much doesn’t trust her anymore and blames her for leaking some of their plans for the bombing in the premiere. She plays it off, poorly, but Gravik lets her think he buys it and tells her that she’s coming with him to a meeting with her father. The stuff happening in this scene isn’t super engaging, because we all know Gravik doesn’t trust her, but there was something about the lighting (or maybe some CG trickery) that gave her eyes a very Skrull-y pop. These Marvel shows don’t tend to have a lot of visual panache, so when they do, even if it’s maybe on accident, it’s relatively exciting.

On the way to the meeting, Gravik takes a phone call where he very clearly sets an obvious trap for G’iah, naming the time and place of his next terrorist scheme, and she stupidly takes the bait and hands off the info to her father. Talos and Fury figure out that Gravik is planning to use a British nuclear sub to attack a United Nations flight (which, somehow, will bring the Avengers into the fight and set off World War III), so the two of them track down the Royal Navy officer in charge of ordering nuclear strikes, who has been replaced with a Skrull, and try to get him to call off the attack.

Which means it’s time for Talos to be called in front of the class to have his flaws exposed: You’re in the middle of a secret invasion, guy. This is a covert, black-ops spy war, and your daughter is deeply involved. You can’t kill everyone who vaguely threatens her and depend on her to do dangerous spy stuff.

Talos first loses his cool on Gravik during their meeting, stabbing the new Skrull general in the hand when Gravik makes a snide comment about G’iah (prompting Gravik to just rip his hand out like the dude in John Wick: Chapter 4 before watching it heal with what may be Super Skrull powers), and then he almost lets World War III happen when he shoots the guy that he and Fury need to stop the submarine attack—again, because he made a snide comment about G’iah.

I’ll excuse a lot of Talos’ shenanigans, because Ben Mendelsohn seems to be having a lot of fun here in a way that Captain Marvel only briefly gave him the freedom to do (Talos being a little catty and flippant was a high point there just as it is here), but his plan to prevent the attack then moves to putting his daughter in danger to find out the abort code for the sub. But she never would have been in danger if he hadn’t killed the guy!

Well, actually she would, because the submarine attack was an obvious fake plan to expose her as a traitor to the other Skrull rebels…an obvious fake plan that resulted in a bunch of Skrulls getting killed and what would’ve been valuable assets in the British navy getting exposed. So Gravik’s not totally on the ball either, even if he does try to play it off like he was half-hoping that the submarine plan would work anyway. (That’s some Loki shit, Gravik, and you’re no Loki.) Either way, the plan behind the plan works, and G’iah is exposed as the traitor, so Gravik shoots her—and that, apparently, is a wrap on Emilia Clarke, who turns back into a Skrull as she’s laying on the ground, which is usually proof that a Skrull is dead.

Finally, we have Fury’s wife, played by Charlayne Woodard and going by Varra in Skrull form and Priscilla in human form. She’s justifiably angry at Fury, revealing in this episode that they haven’t seen each other in years and that she mourned his apparent death during the Snap and then had to mourn him again when he came back to life and immediately abandoned Earth for his space vacation.

So he’s not a great husband, but in his defense…she’s working with Gravik! His plan is to exterminate all of humanity! Married readers: How would you feel if your spouse was turned into dust for a few years and then came back and went on a years-long space vacation? Or how would you feel if you found out that your spouse was part of a plan to wipe out an entire species that you happened to be part of? Tsk tsk, Fury family. Tsk tsk.

Stray observations

• I am once again dropping the episode down a full letter grade over the A.I. intro. I know it’s an effectively meaningless and performative “punishment,” but replacing work that could be done by a person with an A.I. is a terrible, terrible trend, and if we allow it to continue then it’s just a matter of time before artists and writers start being replaced. If we value TV and movies at all, if we value thoughtful criticism of TV and movies at all, then we cannot allow it ever.
• This episode pointedly brings back the Captain Marvel plot point that anyone who knows Fury would never call him anything but Fury, which is how he clocks that a Skrull got the drop on Talos. But, as sharp-eared viewers noticed in the last episode, Rhodey called him “Nick” in the scene where he gets fired from whatever his job was. It could’ve been a flub, but keep an eye out for War Machine turning green at some point.
• Sonya putting a little eyepatch on the owl that Fury bugged was very cute. I hope that comes back for some reason. Also, I guess she is a bigshot at MI6? I still don’t know what to make of her.
• Seriously, Gravik lets so many Skrulls get killed over a fake plan. Wouldn’t it have been better if he lied about the whole thing and tricked Talos and Fury into thinking they were stopping a Skrull attack, when in fact there was no attack, making it look like they were terrorists? Remember when that was part of his scheme in the last episode? But whatever, everyone is intermittently a little stupid here. It’s fine.
• That being said, if it turns out that this is all part of Fury’s plan and nobody is being stupid at all, then I’ll take back everything about everyone being a little stupid. It would be just like Nick Fury to pull one over on us.