Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ Is Not Working

After today’s fourth episode of Marvel’s Secret Invasion, we are two away from its finale. It’s a show I can’t say I look forward to every week, but one I watch out of obligation, which sometimes happens with MCU movies as well, most recently Quantumania. But even if this is the complete opposite of that movie’s goofball shenanigans, with Secret Invasion trying to be a Cold War-type thriller, it simply is not working.

There are individual good moments in the series. Some of the dialogue with the great Sam Jackson and his talented partners like Don Cheadle or Olivia Colman is good. But the series as a whole just does not add up to a coherent production. It feels like Secret Invasion was always meant to be something else.

The fact is that Secret Invasion, the comic run, was a much larger-scale event than this. It involves the Illuminati, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Namor, Black Bolt, Professor X and Doctor Strange confronting the Skrulls, who then retaliate by infiltrating earth’s superheroes and turning them on one another. Spider-Woman is a Skrull! Elektra is a Skrull! Black Bolt is a Skrull!

Nick Fury is involved, but is joined by his “commandos,” actual superheroes like Thor, Daredevil and entire teams like the Thunderbolts and the Young Avengers. Hawkeye shows up, Wasp, Norman Osburne. A Skrull steal the child of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

But…what is this? What is this version of Secret Invasion? It’s maybe 5% the scale of the original, held together only by Fury. It’s effectively a sequel to Captain Marvel without Captain Marvel showing up at all (if we’re lucky, we’ll get some sort of final cameo). It’s created a threat that quite literally no other major MCU character knows about outside of Fury, limiting its impact, hand-waving away reasons to get other superheroes involved. (spoilers follow)

It’s also confusing. I remain unclear about who is supposed to have been a Skrull this entire time, and who has been “replaced” at some point in the MCU timeline. Was the killed-in-the-opener Everett Ross replaced? I’m pretty sure he was since he’s supposed to be off doing Wakanda things. Is this newly revealed Skrull Colonel Rhodes a recent replacement and the real one is locked into a mind-prison somewhere? Or has he been undercover this whole time? I wasn’t even sure if Fury knew his own wife was a Skrull until this week when it was made clear he didn’t know (I thought maybe he fell in love with one during his time away? But this was always presented confusingly).

This just isn’t working. There are so many weird moments, like this week, when Gravik just executed an attack on an American convoy holding the president and told his team to make sure they made it seem like the Russians did it, then crushed a dude with a giant alien tentacle arm in front of everyone.

Recruiting good actors does not make for a good story arc, and the bizarre way this has been pared down to a complete non-event in the MCU makes me wonder why they even bothered at all, especially at a rumored budget of over $200 million. This feels like it should have either been the next actual Avengers movie, which would have saved us from a lot of multiverse nonsense. Or at the very least it should have been a full Captain Marvel sequel.

Despite some good acting, some good dialogue, this isn’t a very good show, and I don’t think the last two episodes will change that.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.