This is a recap of Secret Invasion on Disney+. Do not read ahead unless you have seen episodes one to six …
We picked up in the aftermath of Priscilla (Charlyane Woodard) and G’iah’s (Emilia Clarke) bloodbath. As Scilla inspected dead bodies, her phone rang and it was Fury (Samuel L Jackson). Presumably sensing that he was heading to Russia to meet his death, he wanted to call his (estranged?) wife one last time – the old romantic – still sweet on his wife despite the fact she revealed that their entire marriage had been an undercover Skrull op. The next we saw of him, he was rolling an empty car at the gates of New Skrullos and killing a couple of goons. Fury by name, ice-cold killer by nature. Roll weird AI credits.
From Russia with love
Rhodey (Don Cheadle) was at the bedside of President Ritson (a wildly underused Dermot Mulroney) doing his best to convince him that it was in fact the Russians who orchestrated the attack on his motorcade, despite what the Russian president and the US security adviser were saying. She said false flag, Rhodey said all-out assault on the American republic. Prepare a military response!
Over at New Skrullos, Fury’s Geiger counter was doing overtime as he staggered around, coughing and spluttering, and saw all the soldiers Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) had killed. Falsworth (Olivia Colman), meanwhile, was on decoy duty, telling Rhodey that Fury was coming for the president and that he must be moved.
When Fury and Gravik finally came face to face, in the Super-Skrull machine, they exchanged barbs, and then the penny dropped – that wasn’t Fury at all, but G’iah in disguise; there’s no way the real Fury would sacrifice another planet just to save Earth. It made a lot more sense when you consider that Fury’s plan was to hand over the Harvest to Gravik and then presumably drop dead from radiation poisoning. Better to have two superpowered monsters, one good, one bad, than just one evil one. They then had a superpowered scrap, which I don’t feel outstayed its welcome – CGI punch-ups are an occupational hazard, but this stopped some way short of being overblown.
Back at the hospital, the switcheroo now complete, we realised that Falsworth hadn’t been lying at all – Fury and his dart gun were coming for Rhodey. He also had some truth bombs for Ritson, filling him in on the fact that Skrulls had been impersonating a host of world leaders and superheroes, and that the real people were in suspended animation beneath the Skrull compound Ritson was proposing to destroy with a nuclear missile. It all came together just in the nick (Nick?) of time, with G’iah killing Gravik, Fury killing Skrhodey and Ritson calling off the nuclear strike in perfect order.
G’iah helped release the people trapped in the Skrull bunker, including a very worse-for-wear Rhodey – is the intimation that he’s been held hostage longest out of all of them? And just how long ago did that happen? Ritson then issued a rather ill-advised message that all aliens will now be considered enemy combatants and killed on sight – good luck with that one, especially as one of them now has all the superpowers contained in that vial. I don’t think several armies could take her down now. His words were enough to inspire vigilantes all over the world, though, with some deceptive Skrulls (goodbye Shooter McGavin) and innocent humans, such as the UK prime minister Pamela Lawton (Anna Madeley), killed by gunmen and Shirley Sagar (Seeta Indrani) attacked by masked men. And, looking at the way Ritson’s driver was kept out of shot, Skrulls could be a bit closer than he thinks.
Finally, Falsworth and G’iah discovered another stack of hibernating humans. And then, in a scene reminiscent of the ET finale, Fury summoned a spaceship and escaped to his Saber space station, with Priscilla, now Varra, in her Skrull form, in tow. They’re going to live happily among the stars, negotiating peace between Skrulls, the Kree and humans. I never had Fury down as a forgive-and-forget kind of guy. We’ll see what he does next when The Marvels comes out in November, which will apparently pick up things right after the events of this series.
Overall
I must say I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this finale after the rather limp penultimate episode. If I wasn’t writing these recaps, I can’t guarantee I would have tuned in for it. Actually, who am I kidding? I will watch anything Marvel releases, the second it’s released, normally in an expensive cinema. Which makes me part of the problem, I suppose. But then how are you supposed to be thoroughly disappointed by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania if you don’t pay £22 plus pick n mix to go to the Imax to see it? Marvel wins either way, and a knock-on effect is a will-this-do? attitude seeping through everything else it produces.
Back to the Secret Invasion finale, then. Better than last week’s, for sure – but by this point, there’s not a lot it could have done to make me care about the characters. President Ritson barely had a line in the show before this episode, so I didn’t really feel much jeopardy when he was lying in that hospital bed, and I am surprised there was no big reveal of a Skrull in hiding before the credits rolled. I was fully expecting Ritson to have been in on it all along.
As one commenter suggested last week, this felt like a 12-part series, crammed into six episodes, and while I am tempted to agree that it all felt rushed in parts and the pacing was way off after episode three, I’m not sure I could have endured another six instalments of this.
There were some good things to take away – namely the two-handed scenes I’ve talked about before. Give the likes of Samuel L Jackson, Olivia Colman, Ben Mendelsohn, Emilia Clarke and Kingsley Ben-Adir something to chew on and they will deliver. But a series cannot live on acting talent alone – the heart this show needed was sorely lacking. Plus I can’t – and won’t – forgive killing off Maria Hill like that.
Notes and observations
The DNA contained in the Harvest that we saw on the computer monitor were: Ghost, Captain America, Corvus Glaive, Thanos, Outrider, Proxima Midnight, Captain Marvel, Abomination, Mantis, Cull Obsidian, Drax, Korg, Ebnony Maw, Frost Beast, Hulk, Chitauri, Valkryie, Thor, Gamora, Flora Colossus and Winter Soldier. Of course, it would have been impossible to collect Ebony Maw’s DNA from the aftermath of the Endgame battle because the Maw was killed after being ejected from Thanos’s ship by Iron Man while saving Doctor Strange. Perhaps that DNA came from somewhere else? I don’t recall Ghost and Abomination being in Endgame’s final battle, either.
Nice use of the various powers in Gravik and G’iah’s fight. A Drax arm here, a Hulk punch there, Ghost phasing, Captain Marvel energy, Ebony Maw magic, some Groot, Cull Obsidian and crucially, some Mantis when it mattered … The original comic-book Super-Skrull only had enhanced versions of the Fantastic Four’s powers; G’iah’s version is way more powerful.
Good to see the real Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), Rhodey, the arms/art dealer (Uriel Emil), Dr Rosa Wilton Dalton (Katie Finneran), Pamela Lawton and whichever military officer Pagon (Killian Scott) had been impersonating, among others, in the New Skrullos basement.
If the radiation was so strong at New Skrullos, will all the real versions of the people we’ve seen impersonated by Skrulls throughout the series be sick from it? Just how good are those iodine pills?
What now for Emilia Clarke’s Super-Skrull G’iah? If great responsibility comes with great power, how much responsibility comes with having ALL the powers? Too much responsibility, as David St Hubbins nearly said. We see her enter into a deal with Falsworth just as her dad, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), had done with Fury, but with the caveat that they’ll leave love and friendship out of it and do the best for their respective people. I will believe that when I see it.
What did you think? Redemption for a middling series? Proof the MCU is in trouble? Have your say below …
