Secret Invasion Drops A Bombshell That Reshapes The MCU

This post contains spoilers for "Secret Invasion" episodes 1 and 2.

"Secret Invasion" is here, and it's one of the best things Marvel Studios has done in the past year. Despite the awful use of AI for the opening sequence, it is a good adaptation of the famous comic book storyline, adapting the essence of the "Secret Invasion" comics arc for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show also gives Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury the time in the spotlight he deserves, delivering a tense espionage thriller that finds the world's greatest spy feeling tired as hell.

As Josh Spiegel wrote in his review for /Film, "Those opening episodes are indeed encouraging, presenting a moody spy thriller with potential large-scale ramifications to the greater MCU." 

After the first episode delivered a thrilling and paranoid story devoid of Avengers while still giving us some big revelations about the larger world, episode 2 doubles down on this and drops a huge reveal that reshapes the MCU as we know it.

In episode 2, Nick Fury learns a lesson similar to the one Leto Atreides does in "Dune: Part One" — that there are way more Skrulls on the planet than he initially thought. Turns out, there are about a million of them, transforming "Secret Invasion" from a contained story about a group of other-worldly refugees to something closer to "Men in Black" (without the sick intro from the cartoon series spinoff).

This means that not only did Fury's Skrull buddy Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) — whom audiences first met back in "Captain Marvel" — lie to him, but there are huge implications for the MCU going forward. As we see later in the episode, many of the world's leaders (the same ones who hold Fury accountable for potentially triggering a global war by failing to prevent the shocking Skrull attack on Russia in episode 1) are actually Skrulls in disguise working for Kingsley Ben-Adir's Skrull terrorist Gravik. This group includes a prime minister, a cable news personality, and the Commander of NATO — you know, people who wield quite a lot of power.

This is huge, and it brings the show closer to the original "Secret Invasion" comic arc by making the characters and the audience paranoid that anyone could secretly be a Skrull ... because, as it turns out, they easily could be. The remaining Avengers? Any one of them could be a Skrull. The government folks that occasionally aid Earth's Mightiest Heroes? We already know Gravik's followers have been masquerading as at least one of them.

However, as thrilling and fascinating as the situation is, this whole "anyone could be a Skrull" situation risks becoming a huge yet familiar problem for the MCU down the line.

The MCU started off as a very simple character-driven story that struck a chord with audiences and grew into the biggest franchise of the 21st century (if not all-time). Since then, however, the MCU has become just as big and epic yet otherwise convoluted and inaccessible to casual fans as the comics that inspired them.

That's because the MCU's movies have created their own corner of the franchise with world-ending stakes, while also adding to the overall shared mythology. At first, when the MCU's Phase One movies came out and started connecting to one another, this was cool. Each movie was an event and watching them felt like more than just disposable entertainment because they were all building up to something bigger. But now, over 30 movies (plus many TV shows) and 15 years in, the MCU's size and success are working against it.

When every MCU entry has to have big stakes that threaten the world yet remain somewhat standalone, you run into a problem of unresolved world-changing events. Things like the Celestial coming out of the ocean at the end of "Eternals," or the fact that people around the world saw another Celestial in the sky looking down on the planet in that film, have since been all but completely ignored. Now, "Secret Invasion" is walking that same line, serving up another world-changing reveal that may or may not be forgotten by the time the next MCU title rolls around.

"Secret Invasion" is streaming exclusively on Disney+.