Spoiler warning … the following article is for people who have been watching Secret Invasion on Disney+. Please don’t read on unless you have seen episodes one to three …
Have they learned nothing from Bond?
A tense scene to open with, with Pagon (Killian Scott) asking Beto (Samuel Adewunmi) and another Skrull, Virkus, if they’re all set for their mission to infiltrate the Royal Navy and hit a key UN target. We then saw Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and the members of the Skrull council surveying that fangled machine G’iah (Emilia Clarke) encountered last week.
“The heroes of Earth will react. The only way we can counter that and claim this planet as our own is to become super ourselves,” Gravik asserted, emphasis on the super, pricking up the ears of every Marvel fan who knows who Super-Skrull is.
“We no longer just change faces,” Gravik continued. “We change powers. We’re going to become uniquely programmed weapons of mass destruction. All of us. Super-Skrulls.”
Of course, if we learned anything from Bond films, it’s all well and good being cunning and outlining your plan in simple terms so the audience knows what’s coming, but spelled-out plans are rarely successful ones. That’s the problem with being a singularly focused, intense villain like Gravik – no time for a trip to the cinema.
Partially blind date
To New York in 1998, and the answer to last week’s cliffhanger question: just how long has Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) had a Skrull partner? And did he know she was a Skrull – a resounding yes to that one. “This new face of yours … Who is she?” he said, then laying out the rulebook about commanding officers and agents not getting romantically involved. Talk about presumptuous. Can’t a shapeshifting alien assume a form she knows her boss will find attractive without the boss assuming it’s solely for his benefit. Typical man.
And then skip forward to not-so blissful marriage, Fury trying to explain to Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard) about why he stayed away for so long and, crucially, what brought him back. “I retired,” he said, lying, but at least he was honest about what he plans to do with all his free time. “Revenge.” Of course, the big question now – apart from wondering if poached eggs actually do cook differently in space – is who was on the end of that call with Priscilla. “I don’t have that information to hand,” she told whoever it was. Could it be Rhodey? Talos? Or maybe it was one of those cold calls from Sky asking her if she’d like to reinstate the sports package for a discounted price?
Secrets and lies
From one uncomfortable conversation to another. This time, Gravik questioning G’iah about who gave the game away last week. As he says, there were only a handful of people who knew where they were going and, once they’d collected Brogan (Ben Peel), all of them were in that car, but she does a good job of deflecting and saying it was definitely Brogan while being tortured. “I’m a good liar,” she tolds Gravik, who responded by telling her she was joining him at his meeting with her dad, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn).
An owl with an eye patch
There’s been one excellent head-to-head in each episode so far, and this was no different; here, we got a parlay between Gravik and Talos. There’s heavyweight talent in this series – I’d watch Ben Mendelsohn in anything and Olivia Colman in everything (and she is in everything) – but Kingsley Ben-Adir has established himself as the series’ MVP. He’s intense, physically threatening and determined, and all delivered in a beautiful south Walian burr. He’s also one step ahead, as the cafe scene proved. Although he didn’t see that blade to the hand coming. “Until the end of time, my daughter’s name stays out of your mouth,” said Talos. Was that an Oscars 2022 reference?
And then we saw it – Extremis. Gravik’s hand healed itself thanks to this advanced genetic manipulation – think back to Iron Man 3, where it was invented by Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and Mike from Neighbours (Guy Pearce). It grants the ability to heal and regenerate from physical damages, such as a knife through the hand.
After a bit of fry-up flirting, Fury and Talos were on their way to try to stop the submarine attack and called Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Colman) for help. She’d discovered Fury’s bug, giving her desk owl a little eye patch to remember it by, and said she was dealing with her own bout of infiltration.
I enjoyed Talos laying out just how much he and the Skrulls helped Fury ascend the ranks at Shield (“Your life got a hell of a lot more charmed when I came into it”). Them storming the naval compound was excellent – an action sequence in an otherwise dialogue-heavy episode. Dialogue-heavy episodes are no problem, of course, as long as the writing is good (and I’d say this episode was solid on that score), but let’s not forget this is Marvel: I love Three Days of the Condor as much as the next person, but I come here with the expectation of mildly thrilling cartoonish violence.
The mission to blow up the submarine was aborted, thanks to G’iah’s sacrifice to get the code, and if I’ve come away from this episode learning anything, it’s that if I ever need to escape quietly, I won’t kick open a massive metal gate and then ride off on a motorbike while doing so. Farewell Emilia Clarke. I thought you’d hang around much longer, at least long enough for me to get some good Game of Thrones puns in these recaps. Or maybe she’s been given the Super-Skrull powers and isn’t dead? We’ll find out next week, and about whatever Gravik is planning as the main event since he confessed the submarine plot was merely a decoy.
And finally, to Scilla, opening her safety deposit box and taking a call from Rhodey (Don Cheadle), clearly a Skrull as many commenters predicted, and asking to speak to Gravik. Three things: let’s not jump to conclusions, Scilla could be playing them both. Fury suspected she was part of Gravik’s rebellion after she took that phonecall, so could be one step ahead of her. And does anyone ever keep anything in a safety deposit box that isn’t a gun, a wad of money or a selection of passports?
Overall
We’re gathering pace now. Three episodes in, three to go and we’ve caught a glimpse of Gravik’s master plan. It’s a shame we had to say goodbye to Emilia Clarke’s G’iah, especially on the back of Maria Hill’s exit, but her death will motivate Talos, who, despite becoming more ruthless – he killed a few Skrulls here, while he was squeamish before – is still regarded by Gravik as soft.
Notes and observations
This week’s episode title was Betrayal, while episodes one and two were called Resurrection and Promises, respectively. Is it me or do they sound like bands on the Download lineup? If next week’s instalment is called Demons or Terror, I’m on to something.
During the flashback scene in the diner, Varra/Priscilla mentioned intel on Dreykov’s men. Dreykov showed up in Black Widow, played by Ray Winstone – it’s the bombing of his Budapest office that Black Widow and Hawkeye regularly refer to.
When Priscilla answered her phone in the kitchen with Fury, she unplugged it from the charger. In all the countless hours of TV I’ve seen, I can’t recall someone charging their mobile without it being a huge plot point. Well done, Marvel. Finally!
That painting, Statesmen of World War I, is by the Scottish artist James Guthrie and was completed in 1930, shortly before his death. It now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Again with the sugar, Gravik? Talos looked on disapprovingly. Can Skrulls get type 2 diabetes?
I’d like to know where in central London you can get a full English and a pint of Coke for less than a tenner.
The file on Falsworth’s desk showed Derrik, played by Tony Curran, a Scottish actor with a packed CV. I now realise he was the person we saw talking to Falsworth over a blurry video call in episode one, and not, as I half-pondered, Richard Dormer’s Agent Prescod. Despite pausing these scene, I couldn’t quite work out who Derrik had been spotted talking to in those covert photos. Any thoughts?
In the Marvel comics, the first Super-Skrull was Kl’rt, who was given the powers of the Fantastic Four, and debuted in 1963. During the Secret Invasion arc of 2008, many more Skrulls were given the ability, with a host of diverse powers.
Samuel L Jackson will never escape his Pulp Fiction role as Jules Winnfield, and nor should he want to. As he stood over Commodore Bob with a pistol, barking for the code, I fully expected him to start talking about the “path of the righteous man” and double daring Bob to “say ‘what’ again”.
How did you feel about this week’s episode? Are you enjoying the series? What do you think Scilla is up to? Have your say below …
