Everything You Need To Remember To Watch Marvel's Secret Invasion

After years of coaching wayward superheroes, it's finally time for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to step into the spotlight. That's not a comfortable place for a man who doesn't trust anyone and loves keeping his secrets secret. 

The six-episode Disney+ series "Secret Invasion" is primarily a sequel to "Captain Marvel," though it also leads on from the post-credits scene for "Spider-Man: Far From Home." The show focuses on Fury's relationship with an alien race known as the Skrulls, who have the ability to shapeshift (also known as "simming") into the form of anyone from any species. This ability is particularly useful to the Skrulls, since their modus operandi is secretly infiltrating planets and hiding out there.

Why do they need to secretly invade? Because the Skrulls' planet, Skrullos, was destroyed in a great galactic war with the Kree, a race of blue-skinned aliens first encountered by Marvel Cinematic Universe fans in 2014's "Guardians of the Galaxy." That movie featured a Kree villain, Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) — a religious zealot who was still pretty bitter about the Kree Empire making peace with the Nova Empire and bringing an end to the war. But now that the war is over and Ronan himself has been blasted into lots of little pieces by the Guardians, the Skrulls are free to find a new planet to settle on without having to worry about any Accusers hunting them down.

In fact, it's been almost 30 years since Nick Fury first promised to help his Skrull friend, General Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), find a new home for his people. He still hasn't managed it (the planetary real estate market is tough), so radical Skrull faction leader Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) has taken matters into his own hands and set his sights on the ideal home: Earth.

Not only has Nick Fury has been part of the MCU from the very start — first appearing in a post-credits scene for "Iron Man" to talk to Tony Stark about something called the Avengers Initiative — he's also been in more MCU movies than any other character. By now you'd think we know him pretty well, but "Secret Invasion" will reveal just how much we don't know.

"Sam Jackson would say we knew the working part of Nick Fury, but we never knew anything about his personal life," director Ali Selim said in an interview with SFX. "We never knew what his demons were. We never knew what his home life secrets were."

Much that has been held back will come to light in "Secret Invasion." This continues on from the revelations in "Captain Marvel," which was set in 1995 and featured a younger, greener, and less guarded Nick Fury. That movie also shed light on why Agent Fury became so paranoid: his first ever encounter with extraterrestrial life was with a race of aliens who can make themselves look like anyone.

Despite the Skrulls' natural gift for duplicity, Talos and Fury have become close friends in the decades since "Captain Marvel." A trailer for "Secret Invasion" showed the two of them embracing and pressing their foreheads together in a traditional Skrull greeting. As revealed in the credits scene for "Spider-Man: Far From Home," Talos knows Fury well enough that he's been able to fill in for him back on Earth while the real Fury is with the Skrulls in space. Mendelsohn told Empire magazine that Talos and Fury "share an affection, a bonhomie," but that because of their close bond "they also really have the ability to profoundly disappoint each other."

The premise of "Secret Invasion" — that Skrulls have secretly embedded themselves on Earth with the intention of taking over the planet — is a bit of a head-spin. After all, the big plot twist in "Captain Marvel" was that the Skrulls were refugees, not invaders: the victims of an unjust war of conquest by the Kree Empire. Talos himself wasn't a villain, but simply a man (well, a reptilian humanoid) searching for his wife and daughter. They'd been given shelter by the Kree scientist Mar-Vell (Annette Bening) and were hiding in her laboratory in Earth's orbit when she was killed. Since Talos had instructed them not to attempt contact, for fear of alerting the Kree to their location, he spent six years searching for them before he met Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who had the location of the laboratory locked away in her lost memories,

Talos' wife, Soren (Sharon Blynn), appeared alongside him in the "Spider-Man: Far From Home" credits scene, having been posing as Nick Fury's former S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague and longtime ally, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders, who also returns in "Secret Invasion"). Talos' daughter, G'iah, was only a little girl in "Captain Marvel," but in "Secret Invasion" she's an adult and is played by "Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke.

The story of Skrulls growing impatient with Fury and deciding to seize Earth for themselves promises to be more complex than a simple hero/villain narrative, and tackles some thorny issues. "Especially here in the States, it's easy to say we're the good guys and they're the terrorists," Selim said to Empire. "The interesting thing for me is to ask: how did we as a nation state influence the environment these people come from? Gravik is not just a bad guy with a bomb. His story and how he came to this grievance is clearly explored here."

"The first conversations I had [with Marvel] were, 'Nobody flies in the air in the show," director Ali Selim told Total Film, referring to the show's cast of (mostly) human characters. The only Avenger who will appear in "Secret Invasion" is James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Don Cheadle), aka War Machine, aka the Iron Patriot. But he won't have his fancy suit of armor this time; he's taken a desk job working for U.S. President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney), so right now he's just Rhodey.

Like Nick Fury, Rhodey has been around since the very first "Iron Man" movie, where he was played by Terrence Howard (Cheadle took over the role in "Iron Man 2"). Despite being friends with the roguish Tony Stark, Rhodey has always had very close ties to the U.S. military; even his rebranding as "Iron Patriot" (complete with a red, white, and blue paint job) was the result of focus testing. He did, however, disobey a direct order in "Avengers: Endgame" — cutting off a call with Thaddeus Ross when he was ordered to arrest his fellow Avengers, and casually remarking, "That's a court martial." 

Rhodey has really been through the wringer. The big superhero-on-superhero battle in "Captain America: Civil War" left his legs paralyzed (though he's still able to walk thanks to some Stark Industries leg braces), and his best friend was killed in the final battle of "Avengers: Endgame." Cheadle told Empire that Rhodey and Fury will be "locking horns" in "Secret Invasion," and that his character will be forced to tangle with a dilemma: "Is he going to stay within the confines of being a military man following the chain of command, or is he going outside the box?" 

Whatever he decides, Rhodey's storyline in "Secret Invasion" will kick off his own upcoming movie, "Armor Wars." 

"Secret Invasion" sees the return of another recurring MCU side character, Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman). First introduced in "Captain America: Civil War" as a deputy task force commander for the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre, an organization set up to enforce the now-defunct Sokovia Accords, Ross returned as a CIA agent in "Black Panther" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," ultimately becoming an important ally to the Wakandans. 

The second movie revealed that Ross was once married to Contessa Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his ex-wife had him arrested for treason after he infiltrated the NSA to steal intel for Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett). The last time we saw Ross, he was being busted out of his prison transport by Okoye (Danai Gurira), and he's currently a fugitive from the law.

This is evident in a preview clip for "Secret Invasion," which finds Ross sneaking around in civilian clothes (complete with an adorable little hat, pictured above) to meet an old CIA colleague who has pieced together the Skrull conspiracy. Only ... it might not really be Ross. The clip ends with Agent Prescod (Richard Dormer) attacking Ross, apparently believing him to be a Skrull in disguise. 

Nick Fury has some prior experience dealing with secret sabotage from the inside. He was first introduced as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the organization was revealed in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" to be absolutely riddled with Hydra operatives, who tried to assassinate Fury (twice). The second time, he faked his death in order to spend some time under the radar, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was officially dissolved after "The Winter Soldier" (though it lived on in the canonical gray area that is "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.").

That wasn't the end of organizations with tortured acronyms in the MCU, however. "WandaVision" revealed that, following the events of "Captain Marvel," Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) founded the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division (aka S.W.O.R.D.). We also now have S.A.B.E.R., an intergalactic organization based out of a space station orbiting Earth. The full name hasn't yet been revealed, but it doesn't really matter what the acronym stands for. To borrow a line from "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," whatever the letters might spell out, ultimately they just mean that "someone really wanted our initials to spell out [S.A.B.E.R.]."

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" revealed that Nick Fury had been off-world for a year, which will be two years by the time "Secret Invasion" takes place. Though she may have had a Skrull double covering for her in "Far From Home," Maria Hill hasn't been up there with him the whole time. Cobie Smulders told Empire that Hill has been trying to hold Earth together during Fury's space vacation: "He's been off-planet for a while, so she's been busy putting out fires everywhere."

Now, it's time for Nick Fury to come crashing back down to Earth. "Secret Invasion" premieres June 21, 2023, on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.