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Secret Invasion – Home review S1 E6

Jeffrey Lyles , , , , , , ,

As a longtime comic book it’s become necessary for my sanity to ignore hack writers trashing decades of carefully constructed continuity for the sake of some uninspired goofy storyline that won’t matter in the long run. Secret Invasion ultimately ended up making me feel the same way — the first of the Disney+ MCU series that’s best left ignored and forgotten entirely.

Sure, there’s that pesky matter of Maria Hill getting killed, but I’m just gonna have to pretend she’s sitting just off camera on the space station with Fury in The Marvels or hanging out with her mother. In the end, that was the only thing of real consequence from a series that should have been so, so much better.

It wasn’t a good sign that the episode set the new record for shortest installment clocking in just under 30 minutes.

Fury is at the Skrull compound searching for Gravik rocking a purple cap. This was insultingly obvious it wasn’t Nick because the dude despises color in any of his outfits. Of course, given how Secret Invasion basically ignored any previous characterization of Nick Fury why would this be any different?

“Fury” finds most of the Skrulls dead and a poisonous substance unleashed that seemingly wiped them all out. Fury is coughing a bit too much as he arrives in Gravik’s Super Skrull chamber. 

The biggest crime of this entire series has been it wholeheartedly wasted Kingsley Ben-Adir’s performance. He’s had to overcome some lousy writing and still managed to make Gravik a compelling villain until the last two episodes. 

“Fury” says he felt relief as The Blip hit, which is an outright lie as he was paging Captain Marvel — the formerly strongest Avenger of ALL TIME!! — to come save the day Mighty Mouse style. Maybe this assumes erroneously that the Secret Invasion writers actually watched Infinity War…

Fury has an offer for Gravik. He’ll hand over the DNA of Carol Danvers along with her Avenging sidekicks if Gravik takes his people off Earth. Gravik doesn’t want to deal, but will happily take the Harvest. This plan isn’t great. 

Oh-ho! In a twist no one saw coming, it wasn’t Fury but G’iah instead. Mind. Blown!

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The only noteworthy development from G’iah being in the chamber to receive the Harvest along with Gravik is that now Captain Marvel is only the second most powerful character in the MCU. At least Carol had her own movie before being awkwardly inserted as The Bestest! 

Despite the work done all series long showing that Gravik was this ultra level assassin, he is overmatched and unable to master the abilities of all the Avengers as quickly as G’iah. Maybe if the writers put in some actual work showing that G’iah was a competent fighter this would ring true. Instead, this just came off like G’iah has to win for reasons. The biggest being the writers realized they needed someone super powered to defeat Gravik.

This flies all up in the face of Fury’s big statement of not needed the Avengers to come swoop down to save the day when in fact he did need someone with powers to swoop in and save the day. Maybe the writers don’t understand irony?

Back at the hospital, Skrull Rhodey is pressuring President Ritson to launch the attack to trigger World War III. Sonya calls Rhodey to freak him out as his guys get taken out by Sonya and… the real Fury. Actually, Fury’s actions in this series have been so unquestionably out of character it would have made more sense for him to have been a Skrull all this time. 

We get a lot of back and forth as Fury tries to convince Ritson that Rhodey is…a…traitor as I have Revenge of the Sith flashbacks. Or possibly just yearning to watch something better than whatever happened to Secret Invasion. Fury shoots Skrull Rhodey and Ritson now understands the country has been infiltrated. Gee, if only there were a space station that was keeping tabs on this kind of alien incursion that would be really helpful right now. 

G’iah frees the Skrull captives including Rhodey and Ross. Rhodey is in a hospital gown suggesting he was nabbed right around Captain America: Civil War. Taking just a moment to consider this “twist” doesn’t line up very well with what’s happened in Infinity War, Endgame and The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. This is that “let’s just ignore the retcon” moment. 

Naturally, Ritson declares war on the Skrulls and all non-Earth borne individuals. This seems like the obvious conclusion that somehow Fury didn’t account for with his big reveal. This also calls into question why Fury just didn’t shoot Skrull Rhodey a long time ago if that was the plan all along?

Ritson’s war rally leads to people randomly targeting Skrulls. How they would get this intel makes zero sense. It’s supposed to be a shocking moment, but doesn’t pass the smell test at all. This definitely doesn’t seem like what Talos wanted…

Sonya wants G’iah to be the leader of the Skrulls and promises a partnership that will be better than Talos and Fury. Yeah… I can’t see too many MCU fans demanding this spin-off no matter how great Olvia Colman has been in the series.

Fury asks Ritson to call off the war, but Ritson says if you truly cared about the Skrulls to get ‘em off my planet. This whole illegal actual aliens storyline and subplot could have landed so much stronger if it was allowed to play out over movies and Disney+ shows instead of six episodes. 

With his damage done, Fury is ready to leave the planet in time for The Marvels. Cilla decides to come with him but only if he accepts her Skrull self. Again, a subplot that was rushed through doesn’t have the same impact as one that was carefully developed and given time to breathe. 

The Kree are open to peace talk with the Skrulls so Fury is off to help make that happen after affirming that he loves Varra for who she is — a nice message of inclusion that conveniently ignores the fact that Fury has inadvertently launched a war he’s not sticking around to clean up.

Heck, I don’t mind you Nick. The faster we can all act like Secret Invasion didn’t happen the better. As a testament to how poorly the show has been received, this Disney+ exclusive is now available on basic Hulu in hopes of getting more eyeballs on it. If you haven’t, keep this secret under wraps and don’t feel the need to check this one out.

Rating: 2 out of 10

Photo Credit: Disney

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