Secret Invasion premiere: Nick Fury has changed…but has he really?
Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury is back with his own Disney Plus show, but he might not be ready to stop an entire invasion alone
TV Reviews Nick Fury
The last time Nick Fury did anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was hitting a button on his pager to call Captain Marvel before being turned to dust at the end of Avengers: Infinity War (a movie that came out five years ago). He attended Tony Stark’s funeral after coming back to life, but Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed that Fury has been vacationing on a space station called S.A.B.E.R. since then and that any Nick Furys seen on Earth where actually Talos, Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrull refugee from Captain Marvel, in disguise.
So, when Nick Fury comes back from S.A.B.E.R. here, in the first episode of his very own solo superhero story, and everyone insists that there’s something different about him—that he’s not as far ahead of everyone as he used to be, that he’s lost his proverbial fastball—it should carry some weight. We haven’t seen Nick Fury be Nick Fury in a long time, technically! And the trailers for Secret Invasion were so melodramatic!
And yet…he still just seems like the old Nick Fury to me. That’s not really a criticism, as Samuel L. Jackson seems to be having as much fun as ever in this premiere episode (the conversation he has with Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill about a certain old euphemism for a spy that is also a racial slur felt like peak Fury banter), so it felt phony when every character kept saying, “You’ve changed, man.” If the idea is that this is part of the “who can you trust?” theme of the show, then he should’ve been more different. Quieter, meeker, slower on the uptake.
But before Fury got there, the episode started with Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross from the Black Panther movies and Civil War meeting up with a paranoid agent (S.H.I.E.L.D.? Something else?) in Moscow who is convinced that a rogue faction of Skrulls is behind a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks around the world. He is, of course, completely correct, and after Ross shoots him and runs away, Ross gets chased by Talos and splats on some pavement. When he dies, he’s turns out to have been one of the rebel Skrulls…but since nobody really acknowledges Ross again, it’s not clear how much this is supposed to matter. In other words, has Ross been a Skrull in other MCU appearances, or did a Skrull turn into him immediately before this and the Ross from Wakanda Forever is still out there?
Talos asks Hill to call Fury down from space and he offers some exposition: It’s been decades since Fury and Captain Marvel promised to find the Skrulls a new home, and some of them—especially younger Skrulls—are sick of waiting. They’ve decided to wipe out humanity and take over the Earth from the shadows through a…secret invasion. Talos also notes that his wife has died since Fury was last on Earth and that his daughter G’iah has gone missing, and he points out that Fury has been off since coming back to life after the “Blip” (a term that still sucks—call it The Snap).
Fury goes for a walk and gets kidnapped by Olivia Colman’s Sonya, an MI6 big-shot who knew Fury in the old Cold War days, and if she’s not a Skrull then I’ll eat my hat (or admit it in a later recap). She knows he and Talos are tracking the rebel Skrulls, which means everyone seems to know this is happening, which makes it weird that the guy in the first scene couldn’t trust anyone with his knowledge of the secret invasion. Fury secretly plants a bug and leaves, but not before Sonya joins the list of people telling him he’s different now. She theorizes that Thanos’ snap broke his brain because it proved that there will always be someone more powerful than he is.
Using a tip they gleaned from the bug, Fury, Hill, and Talos track down an art gallery owner/bomb maker who handed off some bombs to Emilia Clarke’s character. Hill tails her through the streets of Moscow and gets bopped on the nose right as Talos shows up to help, and when he sees who he’s chasing, he realizes that she’s his daughter, G’iah. They have a heart-to-heart and he tries to convince her not to be a terrorist, and it doesn’t seem to work, but then we later see that it did work and they meet up at night to talk about whether it’s bad to be a terrorist.
She won’t back down, but she tells Talos that they’re planning to bomb a big event the next day and that she’ll mark the bombs with infrared spray so he can hopefully at least stop them. Fury and Hill hang out at a bar and have a heart-to-heart of their own, because—get this—she thinks Nick Fury has changed in the last few years. She says he used to be three steps ahead of everyone else but clearly isn’t anymore, so maybe it’s time for him to pack it in. This is the one moment where that stuff feels a little more real, since we’ve been following Hill and Fury since The Avengers a decade ago and Smulders—even as the eternally icy Maria Hill—does seem genuinely hurt that Fury abandoned her for a few years.
At the big bomb event the next day, Hill and Talos track a couple of the tagged bombs while Fury is distracted by a Skrull that seems to be…distracting him, and just when Fury realizes the Skrull he’s chasing is Gravik, the rogue Skrull leader, Talos and Hill realize their bombs were decoys and the real bombs go off. In the ensuing panic, Gravik—as Fury—runs up to Hill and shoots her, then runs off. The real Fury holds Hill as she dies. Credits roll. Just wait until he lays his vengeance upon thee, rebel Skrulls.
Stray observations
- Howdy everyone, I’m a Skrull impersonating Sam Barsanti and I’ll be guiding you through Secret Invasion. If you ever see a mistake, like if I get confused by MCU continuity or I just say something stupid, know that it’s because I’m a Skrull. Also, this applies to everything else I write. And everything I’ve written previously.
- Fury’s flashback to getting snapped specifically just showing him saying “motherf…” was cute.
- Fury does a big exaggerated limp when he first arrives from space and someone comments on him no longer being a physical threat… is that a trick? I’m banking on Fury actually being three steps ahead and this was all to catch secret Skrulls off-guard, but I don’t know.
- Dermot Mulroney shows up for one second as the President, with Rhodey appearing for two seconds to tell him that Talos and Fury went off the grid. God, I hope Don Cheadle gets an Emmy nomination for that.
- What are the odds the average Disney+ viewer/MCU fan clocks the joke about Sonya figuring a Black man walking around Moscow is either Nick Fury or Paul Robeson? I had to look it up, but I’m a Skrull.
- I don’t love the Secret Invasion event in the comics, for the record. I have nothing but nice things to say about that New Avengers team, but also The Hood is in Secret Invasion and I hate The Hood. And that’s the real Sam’s opinion, not Skrull Sam.
116 Comments
Do you ever wonder if maybe you’re not cut out for writing “funny” material?
Clearly he hasn’t.
God, the AI-Generated opening credits are terrible, both ethically and in their quality.
Amazing what you enjoy in life when you hit “skip intro” a lot.
We gave it a couple seconds then skipped it.
I didn’t know they were AI generated when I saw them, but my impression was they looked like an animation studio had 2 days to put them together, so that makes sense.
Quality, yes. Ethically — I’ve been having that discussion all day. Eight humans are credited for the opening sequence. That’s more than are credited for She-Hulk’s court room sketch closing credit sequences.
Calling this a “review” is stretching it when to me it read more of a lazy breakdown of each beat from the episode.
He completely skipped most of the non-Fury stuff, especially the Skrulls at their base, discussing how they live, duplicating someone’s form *and* memories, etc.
Recaps are a poor substitute for reviews.
The letter grade is there! I sift these for moments I missed not insight into the quality (sarcasm).
I don’t know if I entirely buy the Hill death, yet. Fury made the same play in Winter Soldier with Hill assisting him. I would wager after their talk at the bar, Fury laid out a plan that’ll pay off in the finale. Maybe positioning Hill to run SHIELD, now that Fury is on the SABER.
If Maria Hill is dead again I am going to be pissed off. AgainShe should have been running SHIELD already since she was Fury’s #2 before the civil war. Frankly Coulson was in my view a usurper
You must have served with Bobbi and Mac under Commander Gonzales.
It sucks that Hill maybe sidelined forever now, but I actually hope it’s not a ruse. As you note, it’s a ruse that’s been used already and it would come off as less of a callback to Winter Soldier and more of a lack of creativity. Also, I can’t see how Fury and Hill could’ve pulled of such a plan in this case. In Winter Soldier Fury decided to fake his death after he was shot. Letting the bad guy shoot Hill on purpose isn’t a plan. The camera also lingered on her after she died specifically to show she wasn’t a skrull. No, I think everything ending in disaster was to drive home (the oft mentioned notion in the episode) that Fury is very much off his game currently. He and Talos weren’t able to pick up on that G’iah was playing them.
I’d love for there to be some sort of quadruple cross that Fury and Hill were planning… but her look of betrayal looked pretty convincing, even for her.
Although, I know you can still get severe life-threatening injuries wearing a bullet-proof vest… in a universe where Hill would have access to some Stark tech, wouldn’t she have been wearing something bulletproof while going into the scene of a potential terrorist attack?
I think the best way to undo her death would be to have Hill — the real Hill — work for the terrorists… Or have Fury make a deal with Mephisto…. the big question is… how are there so many Skrulls who feel abandoned on Earth, when …
…. Captain Marvel took them away across the galaxy?!!?!!!
I don’t know if it really matters or even accurate all of the time, but IMDB lists Smulders as being in all six episodes of the series. Also, could be flashbacks or a Skrull taking her place as the show goes on(?)
I do myself the favour of not going sniffing for things like that. Ah the joys of my youth when I saw the trailer for Dead Man’s Chest in theatres yet had no idea it was even in production yet. Sigh. Curse you internet.
Yeah could be. I just feel like it’ll be an old-school Fury plan coming together at the end. Even at the end of Winter Soldier he an Natasha duped everyone by having Natasha wear a mask. It would be a text-book Fury plan and poetic justice to fool a Skrull with a disguise.
The end credits of the episode had Smulders listed as “special guest star.” Could be a misdirect, but my bet is that she’s dead.
Do we take IMDB credits seriously? If so, Smulders is listed as being in all six eps. Of course, it could just be Talos or another Skrull pretending to be Hill to keep up appearances. Speaking of which, are there other Skrulls on Talos’ side? It seems more like that he’s the rebel against every other Skrull.
I was kinda surprised they made the “spook” joke. Figured that term was so far out of use it’d sail right past their target demos.
The BBC spy show Spooks with Matthew Macfadyen kind of brought it back into vogue I think
Wasn’t it called MI6 in the US?
No. MI-5
That show was awesome. I really must track it down an rewatch it at some point.
It just seemed so odd for Disney. I had to pause it to think about the line to make sure that’s what they meant. I was a bit stunned. But it was nothing compared to the awkward silence my theatre experienced when Star-Lord said “get in the fucking car”
Man audiences are so unpredictable. That line got a HUGE laugh at the theater I was in.
Fury does seem different, and part of that is because Sam Jackson feels different. It’s sort of amazing that he was already 60 in Iron Man, and now he’s well into his 70s. He doesn’t move the same. Fury limping and generally giving an appearance of being a shell of his old self is definitely still a ruse, but he’s also not operating at a “I secretly put my blind eye in the database so I can retain clearance after my partner betrays me and deletes my first file” level. That line in Far From Home, where he says that he used to know everything but now he knows nothing was probably Talos parroting something Fury actually told him. He’s definitely changed. The stakes in this are already pretty intense. I’m not sure how I feel about that death, both in that I don’t necessarily trust it, and that I can’t believe they’re still sidelining Hill after all these years. Even if she comes back, she’s bound to be out of commission until like the last two episodes. The special guest star credit to both her and Martin Freeman pretty heavily implies we may not even get that though.I expect this will be elaborated on, but I’m not quite sure why the natural solution of Skrulls occupying radioactive land that’s uninhabitable for humans anyway doesn’t seem to be an option. It’s been awhile since I watched Captain Marvel, so maybe there’s some reason why Earth can’t be a haven for Skrulls like it is for the Asgardians, but I thought that was just because in the 90s aliens living on Earth was still a pretty outrageous idea. Seems quite par for the course these days, though.
Probably because the very existence of Skrulls makes everything, everywhere completely shaken. How can you trust… anything knowing that a shape shifting race exists and is living on the planet? Did you really just hand the important paperwork to the trusted employee or some Skrull? Is your husband acting strangely because he had a bad day at work or did you accidentally cut a Skrull off in traffic one day and they are making it their lifes mission to just screw with you?Asgardians, for whatever else they might do and be are just… immigrants at the end. Stronger, longer living ones but nothing that immediately provokes suspicion. Skrulls… are a paranoid hallucination of a race.
That’s true of course, and it’s not quite enough that Skrulls just promise to be good, but even so, that was basically the premise we were given at the end of Captain Marvel. These Skrulls are not conquerors or evil. They’re refugees. And though Fury and Danvers offered to find them a home, only one of them is in any way equipped to do so. It makes more sense for them to be granted some safe haven status on Earth while a long term plan for a new home is established. They can be protected and guarded against at the same time, and their existence doesn’t have to be publicized in any way. They’re even long lived, so if it take 200 years, most of that first generation might still be around to see it.This might just be needless nitpicking, but even though Skrulls’ shapeshifting is an inherent existential threat, there’s no specific reason why they can’t just mind their business. They already founded New Skrullos on their own apparently. They’re growing their own food there, are self isolating, and should have no problems keeping humans from messing with their settlements. It seems to be going just fine.
Talos does indicate that the Blip might have been the inciting cause, and I can believe that. Combine a universal genocide event with perhaps a few young and resentful individuals with a bit of charisma and the seeming abandonment of your main Earth allies, and the conditions are set. I just think that part of the story needs fleshing out.
A gilded cage is still a cage. Note that our main rebels like Gravik and G’iah were only children when they came to earth or were born here. They have no connection to pre-Earth Skrull culture but they also have never assimilated to human culture on Earth. This is a classic environment for radicalization among immigrants.
Especially given that Asgardians are aliens.
“the “Blip” (a term that still sucks—call it The Snap).”The Snap is when Thanos did it. The Blip is when Bruce did it. It’s really not that complicated.
Thank you. Was scrolling down to say that calling two seperate, opposite events that took place five years apart the same thing is an incredibly stupid suggestion.
“The Snap” was the the moment that Thanos removed half the population of the universe (probably including the Avengers conflict in Wakanda surrounding the event). “The Blip” was the five year period between Thanos’ Snap and Bruces Snap that returned the missing population.
Or, another way:
The “Snap” is something that survivors of Thanos’ action say about people who disappeared.The “Blip” is something that people who Banner returned say about themselves.
Fury and Hill were among those returned.
Or yet another way:
The AV Club gets fucking worse by the second.
What was it called when Tony did it?
“Wiping out Thanos & his army specifically.”
The Clit.
The Blap.
Fucking awesome, that’s what
But how many people (or sentient beings anywhere) outside the Avengers’ circle know what the Snap was, or even know who Thanos was? Forgive me if there’s an actual canon answer to this.
This show has one very difficult task ahead of it, in NOT feeling like it’s giving the message “Immigrant refugees are evil and will try to steal your country, no matter how sympathetic they might seem at first.” And so far it seems the major counter to that is having Talos as a token “one of the good ones,” which really won’t cut it for the whole show.
I think there is still room for Gravik or Giah or someone else to have a “Fuck, do they have a point?” speech.
This isn’t immigrants come and tuk er jerbs.
This is “refugees were told by the powers that be they would be placed somewhere else and this was just a holding station and then they are pretty much abandoned and the second generation gets radicalized.”
“Fury goes for a walk…” Maybe instead of scene by scene regurgitation, maybe you could – I don’t know – analyze, or just review the show? Y’all have to have picked up some of these skills over the years.
Having seen the AI opening titles, I am out
I can’t tell if this a joke but that’s the saddest part.
Bye.
So brave
I came across three zoomers recently who repeatedly referred to CGI as “AI” and it occurred to me that AI is such a buzz term right now that some people might not understand it means artificial intelligence and therefore not everything computer generated is AI. It’s really cute and adorable because these zoomers were like “you dummy’s that’s an AI image!” ohhh zoomers and they’re thinking they’re one step ahead of us geezers.
Dammit, Sam, I knew you were a Skrull. Don’t you know impersonating other people is no way to get ahead in life?Anyway, this is Bam Sarbanti, signing out.
So last time we saw Fury he was in space with the Skrulls ,but now they were on earth the whole time ? He says he was with Saber but it was implied they were off looking for new Skrull landia .So these shape sifting skrulls ….shouldn’t they fight more like a T-1000 ?A little off with the clothes changing too ,In Captain Boring , I thought it was alien clothes that morphed with them. Here apparently not ,and if the clothes are part of them should they not be naked when killed ?Hill knows they are tracking Shape Shifters and is not careful when Fury approaches? Good time for a code word ?So the Main Bad guy Gravik is gonna be Fury’s kid right ?Fury needs to call …
Calling in Coulson would actually be brilliant. He’s a robot now, so the Skrulls might not be able to mimic him.
Def higher than a c+ for me. This felt very Americans with a slow, well slower than Marvel standards, burn.
Also I’m guessing the Skrulls used Ross’s “vacation” in Wakanda as a slip to get their agent in.
THANK YOU for saying that the term “The Blip” sucks. I have hated that phrase since I first heard it. If half the Earth’s population disappeared (even if they reappeared) it would be traumatic on an unprecedented scale. Nobody would EVER call it a blip.
what would you call it?
Good thing The Blip isn’t when half the population disappeared then. It’s when half the population came back.
No, it’s the five year gap between half the population disappearing and the subsequently reappearing. From their perspective, they didn’t experience that time at all, so 2018 – 2023 passed by in a blip, they Blipped, and now that period is know as The Blip.It was a passing joke in Far From Home that for some reason has become universal common parlance. I’m not saying ‘The Snap’ would be a more appropriate description, but it does at least have a more serious tone.
Nothing more serious than snapping your fingers…
No… The Snap is when Thanos used the stones in 2018 and The Blip is when Bruce used the stones in 2023. That’s it. That’s what those proper nouns refer to in the MCU.
You’re wrong. “The Snap” is how real-world audiences (at least initially) referred to Thanos using the stones, because that’s what he did — he snapped his fingers. “The Blip” is the in-universe name for the whole event. Several of the post-Blip entries have had characters say some variation of “I was blipped” when referring specifically to their 5 years of not existing (i.e. not just to the point at which they returned).
Oh Far From Home….. at the time it was super catharctic given it’s placement immediately after Endgame and constantly cracking jokes to break the serious overtones of that film but whewwwwwfff. I’m sorry has anyone re-watched it?
Spider-Man: Far From Home is, IMHO, the worst MCU film. It’s ridiculous.
That subplot about a kid in class who didn’t Blip being older and hunkier yet still in their class was the cringiest thing. These were not real struggles of highschool kids on screen. The MacGuffin is Tony Stark’s glasses, here I found a straw you guys forgot to grasp on.
Remember the evil surveillance program in The Winter Soldier that Cap and Fury brought down SHIELD to stop?In Far From Home, Tony Stark basically wills that program to a teenager. With no oversight.
“The Void” works on multiple levels including slightly humourous…but is probably a bit too dark.
Just like no one would refer to the largest terrorist attack on US soil by its date? People compartmentalize as a way to cope with trauma.
Disney wants to call it a Blip so we’ll forget about it sooner because they wanted to have the cake of having Morgan being raised by Tony and eating their cake too. They massively flipped the bird to every incoming director and writers by not resetting the timeline back 5 years at the end of Endgame.
It is not discussed often what a huge dick move this was to filmmakers in the MCU going forward that now they must pay lip-service to The Blip in every project going forward. It’s exhausting as hell. Cuz yah they were basically like “we want this massive global traumatic event to stick but we don’t want to dissect the implications of it what-so-ever”.
It’s pretty ridiculous. Even as a fan going forward for the MCU not to break in your head you gotta think of “The Blip” loosely as an event. It’s insanely dumb.
Fuck. Where is Seide?
19 comments? shit is DOA even if it’s good.
You overestimate how much audience this site has retained through its gradual dismantling over the past many months.
*raises hand in shame*
I’m going to run for president on a single-issue platform: banning the use of the word “clocked” to mean “noticed”
You have the support of my organization, CAPOTS, Citizens Against Pissed-On Toilet Seats
Maybe I missed something but I’m confused about the bomb maker a being a skrull. He would have to replace the actual bomb maker in the, about ten minutes, between G’iah getting the bombs from him and Talos and Fury arriving. If he was always a skrull this was all a massive ruse to draw out Talos and Fury, which would be blatantly obvious to Fury (even if he is “not the person he used to be”) so that G’iah could meet up with Talos and end up fooling them both once again. It would also be obvious Sonya is a skrull, knew Fury bugged her office, and fed them the info about the bomb maker. I know Fury is supposedly off his game but he’d have to be supremely stupid to not put that together. At the same time, the bomb maker being replaced by a skrull at the last minute doesn’t make any sense either because, well, it reveals all the above. If he was just a human then Fury would have no reason to think this was all a setup. It really come off as, “we’ve gone too long without an action sequence in the episode so this guy is a skrull.”
I really hate clumsy exposition, the Disney± shows are loaded with it.
I wasn’t crazy about the story in the comics either; it came on the heels of Battlestar Galactica, and by the time all this shit was over I was really sick of “who amongst us is a totally undetectable non-human impostor? It could be somebody you’ve been taking for granted as human for YEARS!” stories, and I’ve never really wanted another one since. Even the shapeshifters subplot in Fringe annoyed me a little, and I fucking loved that show.I don’t know if that’s where they’re going here, but it would annoy me deeply if they pulled that “they’ve actually been a Skrull the whole time!” shit with a character I actually gave a shit about.
The other issue with comics arc was that it ran for almost an entire year including the delays, and almost all of Marvel’s line was taken up by it (much as 2006-early 2007 was all soaked up by Civil War and its delays).The only one of those events/status quos which really worked during the mid-2000s-mid-2010s period was Dark Reign because it always had a clear end-point that it was working towards rather than just kind of flopping about.
It helps that Dark Reign was fucking awesome
Shapeshifting seems like an easy way out for lazy writers.
I liked the first episode. The tone is definitely more like Winter Soldier. I am really hoping they stick with the spy thriller theme. I think the Skrulls being immune to radiation is going to be very important.I’m guessing they’re trying to start a global nuclear war. The humans will be wiped out but the Skrulls will be fine if the earth gets irradiated.The immunity to radiation could be a way to detect them. They’d have to give someone radiation poisoning to make sure they’re not a Skrull, but it is a way to confirm a person’s identity. But it also means the Skrulls might not be able to impersonate someone who has cancer, and possibly other illnesses.
lol at the SERIOUSNESS of this show. you know you’re not watching the usual baby brain marvel stuff. this is aimed at 15 year olds!
signed up for a ring-a-ring of an ocean’s eleven romp did you?
So what are the chances Gravik ends up being Fury’s half alien son?
I “clocked” the Robeson joke, but I am 57 years old and studied that period of history in college(and wrote a 15 page paper on music and radical politics). I imagine it sailed over the head of most people under retirement age. I imagine the “spook” joke did also, since that is both an archaic slur, and archaic term for a spy.Not in love with the killing of Maria Hill, but it seems like they never figured out what to do with her. It’s been a while, so I had also forgotten how good Cobie Smulders is at glowering at people. She had a perma-frown the whole episode.
“spook” was the part I got. I would have also accepted “spade” as well. These terms aren’t as ancient as you think (32 years old currently).
When he said “spook” my jaw low-key dropped that this was an MCU show.
I bet Sam Jackson was responsible for that joke. He’s been racially trolling the easily offended since at least Jackie Brown, where he ad-libbed a whole bunch of N-words just to annoy Spike Lee. He loves doing that shit.
Out of curiousity, where are you from? Maybe it’s kind of regional. The last time I remember that word in pop culture was 80-something Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.My dad had a black boss back in the day who liked to troll also. He had a sign on his office door that read H.N.I.C. This was way back, too, late 60’s or so, at a computer programming job, so you know that guy had to be a rock star programmer to be in that position.
It might be I didn’t clock the spook joke thing at first either, until he added the I can say it you can’t. I think slurs especially “older” one vary by region. While everyone is likely familiar with the N word there are a lot of old ones younger folks might now know. This is “funny” but was playing an online game with my buddy against to dudes from NYC, they started arguing with each other and I swear I haven’t heard so many old timey slurs probably ever.
I was involved in a Winter Olympic sport for over 40 years, that until recent years in the U.S. was dominated by east European Ethnics. I remember as recently as the 1990’s hearing “Cheap Jew” and “Dumb Polack” jabs being tossed between longtime friends from the dais at the annual convention. I believe an influx of African Americans and Asian Americans made that behavior untenable around the year 2000.
I definitely heard spook and spade among other terms in my youth. Kids used to call the owner of the convenience store a “zipperhead”. Weren’t the 90’s the best (actually anyone at the time would have told you “it was gay”!)
Petty sure I recall a line about them finding the real Ross dead, so.
I don’t, & that really wouldn’t speak well of Okoye if it’s true.
So the scratch from Goose gave Fury they ability to see Skrulls, right? I’m hoping Jackson’s performance reflects that to some degree. I didn’t catch that some bombs were real and some were distractions. I thought Hill, Talos, and Fury just lost track of them. They seemed almost comically out matched. Their plan was to … ? wrestle the bombs away from several Skrulls (who can handily beat the shit out two of them) grab the bombs before they blow up, and do what? Say “Gottcha?” “Quick, cut the blue wire, not the red wire!” … ? Maybe Fury has lost a steps because that whole caper felt half-asses.If that was the end of Ross, it feels like a thread from Wakanda Forever isn’t getting closed. And if that’s the end of Hill, it was a little ‘meh.’ Thus seems like either 50% a fake out and/or 50% fridge for Fury’s FURY.
G’iah lied about the marked bags having bombs. THAT is the dumb part: they never suspected that G’iah was lying.
Just give SLJ a purple light saber and be done with it already.
Why else would Disney buy both Star Wars and Marvel?
C+ seems a little too harsh. It wasn’t excellent but it wasn’t bland or
bad either. Something like a B grade feel about right. It was a
compelling enough first episode that got right into things without
feeling too rushed or confusing.
Excited to see where this goes, I think the constraints of the MCU vs the comics has the potential to make this into a more interesting story. I like that they’re getting back into having some different flavors again
Maria Hill was a skrull (my answer to everything while watching this TV show).
Also Skrull Barsanti asked us to correct him so, in the stray observations he mentioned The Snap “motherf…”, it sounds like Barsanti has maybe forgotten that that’s exactly how it played in Infinity War too. The swear was always clipped off.
The Black man in Moscow joke caught me so offguard and got the laugh it deserved.
Oh I stand corrected, the opening credits were generated by an AI…. that’s actually pretty gross considering how recently VFX artists came forward to bad-mouth Marvel suddenly their next project they’ve cut out the paid artists and replaced them with machines…. well I don’t support that, but also those opening credits kinda suck. They set a mode yes but they definitey were tedious, we fast-forwarded.
Yeah ummmm why isn’t this getting more coverage here….
AI generated opening credits = Marvel taking deliberate steps to flip the bird to VFX artists by not offering out paid work… that’s like…. whoa.
The AI generated credits is actually….. this is an outright reason to boycott this show guys… They’re denying labour to artists. This is a fuck you to the writers strike AND the VFX artists who were brave enough to speak up.
This right here is the forefront of “AI taking jobs away from people”…. this needs to be discussed more they are trying to slide this under the radar.
Like this is straightup Disney bullying the industry. Gross.
Wait–are credits written? As in some writer that has to be with the WGA has to manually write how the credits are presented?
The Secret Invasion title sequence has more credited humans (8) than She-Hulk, that were done entirely by humans.
Dermot Mulruney plays the president of the US here and Harrison Ford plays the president of the US in Cap 4…. hmmm… wonder if Mulruney is a skrull.
I believe Harrison Ford plays General Ross in Cap 4, taking over for William Hurt.
I thought I heard that it had been announced in the last week or two that Ford was playing *President* Ross in Cap4.
“…has Ross been a Skrull in other MCU appearances, or did a Skrull turn into him immediately before this and the Ross from Wakanda Forever is still out there?”I had the exact same thought, but I’m assuming it was a Skrull who temporarily was masked as Ross. They wouldn’t so unceremoniously kill off that character right?? Right?!
He’s definitely going to turn up in one of the cages in the back room getting his mind read at some point.
I’ve read a lot of comics over the years including the whole Secret Invasion story and it’s many sub-stories, but I have to admit I’ve never entirely understood Skrulls. Can they shape shift into other Skrulls? Can that fool other Skrulls? Also, when a race can change shapes like that what’s their ‘original shape’? Can babies do it? Or does it develop like a mutant power? (The shapeshifters ‘fluid’ form in Star Trek makes marginally more sense to my brain). I’m sure I’m overthinking all of this though.I will say as fas as the comic story to show goes, it’s a much better idea to make it a spy show than a ‘shapeshifters can mimic heroes powers now!’ show, as the Skrulls really should be the ultimate spies–you know, depending on how the powers actually work–do they automatically mimic fingerprints accurately? …sorry there I go again. Anyway this definitely has promise, though I do have the over/under on remaining times Fury is told ‘he’s changed’ at 6.
-So I guess skrulls can’t shape shift into something that can fly or jump across two buildings, but they’re immune to radiation and can rip chains off like they’re made of paper.-Assuming Maria really did die, then we know she’s not a skrull since they revert back to their true forms when they die.
Having a narrative device that allows anyone to at any point turn out to be an alien in a cinematic universe that is at this point, multiverse and all, in dire need of real stakes and real grounding (physically as well as emotionally) seems like the worst idea, if not for the fact that, to anyone remotely paying attention, the creative well has long since dried up. Feige & co. should have had recognized that a film enterprise is vastly different from a comics enterprise and that Endgame should have been the wrap-up for the MCU. Instead we’re stuck in this alternate reality where we’re getting fed the Marvel courtroom drama, the Marvel spy thriller, the Marvel Indiana Jones… I remember the X-Men comics of the 00s being like this: Nobody knew what to do with the franchise, but they we’re still getting paid to try.