A New Villain Has Entered The MCU, With A Little Help From Iron Man 3

Trust nobody except this spoiler warning tag, as the following article discusses events from the latest episode of "Secret Invasion."

While Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) raced against the clock to prevent the onset of World War 3 throughout the third episode of "Secret Invasion" (check out my recap of the hour here), Kingsley Ben-Adir's villainous Skrull Gravik was busy setting his sights even higher. What could possibly be more important to his agenda to take over the world than kickstarting a nuclear holocaust? Well, it has to do with putting the "super" in "Super Skrulls."

We previously wrote about the various bits of evidence provided in the last episode that pointed towards Gravik's rebellious Skrulls taking certain abilities from characters featured in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in years past and grafting them onto themselves. Emilia Clarke's G'iah discovered this secret plan on her own, snooping around a computer terminal and seeing DNA collected from creatures such as the Frost Beast, Cull Obsidian, and even Groot. But one other key element ended up manifesting for all of us to see in episode 3, titled "Betrayal." When an exceptionally angry Talos meets with Gravik to parley over the fate of his daughter G'iah, Talos is pushed too far and ends up stabbing his foe in the hand with a knife. Gravik, cool and calm as ever, simply (and painfully) slides his hand out from under the sharp weapon and watches in quiet amusement as it heals itself — with a telltale reddish glow that's surely familiar to anyone who's watched "Iron Man 3."

Yes, it appears Gravik has injected himself with a version of the Extremis virus, introduced in Shane Black's 2013 "Iron Man" threequel. The implications of this development hint at much greater things to come.

Everybody wants to rule the world, as the famous Tears for Fears song goes, but not everyone does it the same way. While previous MCU entries have featured villains whose schemes involve killing the Avengers in one form or another, Gravik and the Skrulls under his sway seem to have a very different approach. Why do things the hard way when you can simply match their powers with ones of your own? Though this has been hinted at in the previous two episodes, episode 3 finally name-drops the classic comic book concept of Super Skrulls and confirms that there will be plenty more to come in the second half of the season.

But just how far does Gravik intend to go? Well, that sinister-looking cage that Gravik silently observes at their headquarters early on definitely evokes similar devices in franchise history — the helicarrier cage used to contain Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief Loki (and originally designed to hold a Hulk) and the prison cell that Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) was held in during "She-Hulk" — that could keep super-powered individuals down for the count. When his attempts to provoke nuclear war inevitably results in the Avengers swooping in to save the day, Gravik explains that the answer "...is to become super ourselves." And since the Skrulls' usual method of holding regular humans in stasis while they pilfer their memories and appearances obviously wouldn't be feasible for enhanced individuals, well, that's likely where this formidable-looking structure comes into play.

Marvel Studios

In any case, of course Fury foresaw this exact scenario when he shot down the idea of calling in the Avengers in the last episode. We'll see if he manages to prevent this worst-case scenario when "Secret Invasion" returns next week.