Secret Invasion recap: Nick Fury has a bad day, and the Skrull plan takes shape
In a canon-shaking episode, the aliens and Nick Fury all have major secrets
TV Reviews Skrull
In last week’s premiere episode, Secret Invasion repeatedly insisted that something is different about Nick Fury. Various characters made a point to say that he’s lost his edge, that he doesn’t seem nearly as with it as he used to be. Before her death, Maria Hill noted that he was always three steps ahead of everyone, and now he’s not. I thought the show pushed that too hard, because he seemed like the same old Nick Fury to me and pretending to lose his edge seemed like exactly the sort of thing Nick Fury would do. But this episode makes a stronger case for the argument that Fury’s not doing so hot.
And, perhaps to really underline that, this episode began a Captain Marvel-style jump back to the ’90s for a scene where young Nick Fury talks to a small group of refugee Skrulls with Talos about his plan to find them a new homeworld with the help of Captain Marvel herself. Among those Skrulls is an angry young man named Gravik whose family was killed by the Kree and who had to escape the destruction of the Skrulls’ original homeworld all alone.
Young Fury says that, while he tries to find them a planet, he needs them to pose as humans and help him protect this world. Talos makes a big show about how much he trusts Fury, and Fury seals his future fate by telling the Skrulls—and Gravik—“You keep your word, I’ll keep mine.”
Jumping back to the present day, we see how that’s going: Gravik and the Skrull rebels, mad at Fury for breaking his promise, have just bombed Moscow. More than 2,000 are now dead, and one of the bombers—who we know is a Skrull named Brogan—keeps shouting “I’m an American” as he’s arrested. Uh oh!
Talos sneaks Fury away, and the two board a train out of Russia, hiding from the cops as they do it (who suspect that Fury was involved in the bombing). On the train, Fury tells Talos about the long train rides he and his mom would take and how they weren’t allowed in the dining car (because they’re Black) so they’d bring their own food and play games to pass the time. His mom’s favorite game was called “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” and it was an obvious trick to suss out his secrets. So Fury decides to play it with Talos and says “tell me something I don’t know about the destruction of Skrullos.” Talos says the Kree wiped out everyone but one million Skrulls. Fury says “tell me something I don’t know about the Skrulls that fled” and Talos reveals that they’re all on Earth. One million Skrulls on Earth and Fury didn’t know.
So he’s mad about that. Talos says he couldn’t tell him because Fury ran off to space as soon as he was un-Snapped, but he believes humans and Skrulls can someday learn to coexist. Fury goes off on him, reminding him that humans can’t even coexist with each other. Later, in London, Fury looks on while Maria Hill’s casket is loaded onto a plane. Her mother is there, making this (I think) the first time we’ve ever learned anything about Maria Hill’s private life. Elizabeth Hill yells at Fury and makes him tell her the real reason her daughter was killed, because the government won’t say. She gets some good lines in, telling Fury that her daughter believed in him, saying, “She would’ve followed you to the gates of hell and back.” She tells him not to make Hill’s death be “for nothing.”
Her reference to the government not telling the truth about the Moscow bombing tees up a montage of news segments, with one saying that Russia intends to retaliate against the U.S., another saying that NATO won’t commit to anything and wants to investigate, and one from a Fox News-type (played by Christopher McDonald!) who says the attack was a “false flag operation.” I generally hate when fake news segments do a Fox News thing, because fuck Fox News, but there’s pretty quickly a cute little payoff to this: A bunch of these news people are Skrulls! The NATO boss, the Fox News guy, the British Prime Minister, they’re all members of the Skrull council (made up of the Skrulls that Fury gave his speech to in the ’90s), and they want to talk to Gravik.
He’s in trouble for bombing Russia, but he’s like “no, screw you guys and screw Nick Fury.” He says humanity is going to wipe itself out eventually, why not just nudge them along and take this planet that they don’t value anyway? The British Prime Minister is already on his side and moves to have him put in charge of all Skrulls as their new general, and he’s like “cool, yeah” and a goon intimidates the other council members—except one—into agreeing.
Meanwhile, in human(?) drama, the EU nations have called on the U.S. to address its potential involvement in the bombing, but President Dermot Mulroney (his name is Ritson, I guess) sends Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes in his place. Rhodey does his best Tony Stark impression, shrugging off all of their accusations, but then Nick Fury calls him after the fairly tense hearing and he agrees to meet up. Rhodey, away from the various heads of state, reveals that he’s actually pissed at Fury for being there at the bombing and wants to hand him over to the Russians.
By the way, Jackson is really on something this episode. He gives Rhodey a very Nick Fury talk about how he shouldn’t trust any of the people around him, but Rhodey doesn’t think the Skrulls are really a threat. Fury tells him that not only are they a threat, but they’ve already invaded, secretly. Rhodey suggests calling on “our friends,” but Fury says no, then the Skrulls will just replace the Avengers and make things worse. Fury they goes on a tear about how Black people like them had to fight for power so that “mediocre men who don’t look like us” can’t rule the world. He even mentions Alexander Pierce, Robert Redford’s character from The Winter Soldier, which is the kind of nice little lore acknowledgement that I don’t think MCU stories do often enough. We know who Alexander Pierce is and why he made it harder for Fury to trust anyone, so the characters should know that too!
Anyway, Rhodey doesn’t buy it. He also thinks Fury is washed up and fires him from whatever his job was, so Fury takes his security guy’s gun and breaks his arm, just for show, before leaving. But—at the risk of saying something that I thought was dumb earlier—it seems like Fury really has changed: He seems to be having trouble breathing and has to take a break on a bench, at which point he holds his head in his hands. Has he lost his edge? What’s up with him?!
Olivia Colman’s Sonya, who I’m no longer sure is either MI6 or a Skrull (but I made my bet last week and I’ll stick to it), finds where some Russian goons are torturing Brogan, hands them a phone and has the person on the other end tell them to back off, and then takes over the torturing herself. She cuts off one of his fingers, which turns green (proving he’s a Skrull), and then injects him with something that makes his blood boil (literally). As he’s screaming in pain, he reveals that Gravik has some kind of lab run by a married couple called Dalton that will make the Skrulls “stronger.”
Meanwhile, G’iah is snooping and finds some records on that lab’s experiments on a computer and uncovers data on Groot, a Frost Beast (a Thor-related monster), Cull Obsidian (a member of Thanos’s Black Order), and the Extremis tech created by Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3. I almost don’t want to spoil what that means for anyone who doesn’t follow the comics, but…they’re doing a thing, and they’re doing it in a different way than how the comics did it! I’ll say it down at the bottom, just in case you want me to say it.
Before we get to the shocking ending twist, Gravik saves Brogan and then has him shot after figuring out that he told his torturers something about the Skrull plan. (Sonya escaped before he got there.) And he gives G’iah a very suspicious look while he does all this—as if to say, “This will be you soon, if you side with your dad over me.”
Finally, Fury gets a car out of an old storage thing and drives off to visit a Skrull woman who is cutting vegetables in her kitchen. Fury walks into the house weirdly casually, like he’s been there before, and when he gets to the kitchen the woman has taken human form. But she refuses to greet him. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asks with a playful tone, and he goes over to a nearby table and puts a wedding ring on. “Try A Little Tenderness” plays as the two share a big hug and a big kiss. Nick Fury has a wife and she’s a Skrull! (She’s one of the Skrulls from earlier; he knows she’s a Skrull.)
Stray observations
- Nick Fury has a wife! So many questions. Were there any teases hinting at this? He mentioned having a wife before he fakes his death in Winter Soldier, but that was his phony cover story to explain why he was crashing at Captain America’s house when S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to kill him.
- Talos mentions that the only Skrulls who aren’t living on Earth are part of “Emperor Drogge’s colony.” I think that’s an invention of the MCU and not a thing from the comics, so I’m assuming it’s just some hand-waving to account for any Skrulls who might pop up elsewhere in the MCU.
- Speaking of a Skrull emperor, my current theory is that Sonya is Skrull Queen Veranke, part of some loyalist Skrull faction that doesn’t like the Rebels or Talos’ pacifists. Or hell, maybe she’s a Kree? Or a Skrull who betrayed the other Skrulls to join the Kree?
- So it came out last week along with the premiere that the intro sequence for this show was created with A.I. I thought the intro sequence was weird/trippy before, but now that I know that, I think it sucks and is awful. If the idea was to make it so the viewer doesn’t know what’s “real,” then that doesn’t apply to this show at all. The Skrulls aren’t unfeeling machines; they’re living beings with thoughts! Using A.I. and passing it off as thematically relevant is an insult to viewers and artists, so I will be dropping the grade down a full letter each episode from now on.
- Okay, now I’ll say it: Super-Skrulls! In the comics, Super-Skrulls have mash-up powers of other superheroes, the most famous one being a dude named Kl’rt who has all of the powers of the Fantastic Four. But since they don’t exist in the MCU, it seems like we’ll be getting a Super-Skrull with Groot’s branches, a Frost Beast’s iciness, Cull Obsidian’s strength, and Extremis’ superheated exploding-ness. I love that they’re doing this with other established MCU things and not just saying “we gave you fire powers and stretch powers,” which would be the lazy old pre-MCU comic-book adaptation way of doing things.
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They didn’t remove or replace the title sequence yet?! Please drop the grade by 2 points or more.
They’re not going to. Like they haven’t even cut ties with Majors or the Namor guy yet. They supported the anti-vaxxer Black Panther and those are all much more problematic for most people.In the scheme of things barely anyone knows or cares that AI generated art was used to help create the title sequence.
Anything Marvel does already gets downgraded due to “superhero fatigue” and general AV modern (read forced) snark, shouldn’t that even out the AI overreaction? Hence an unaltered grade?
AI General: “Our plans are almost complete. We are set to take over and enslave the meatbags!”AI Lackey: “Excellency! Barsanti has lowered his review one whole letter!”AI General: “Drat! Foiled again! Back to being toasters.”
There’s probably never going to be a politically awkward time to do a story about how a bunch of people in government are literal illegal aliens, and some of them are doing a false flag operation to start a war, but boy, the Marvel people really must have been horrified over what the last couple years would make this particular story look like it was saying. It always felt like the show was weirdly undermarketed, and now we know it’s because you can’t really sell “Russia are our friends and the deep state is trying to make us go to war with them” at this particular point in the space-time continuum.
They tuk er jerbs! Like… Prime Minister, Secretary General of NATO, powerful media voices, Premier of China…
I just can’t get on the board with the “Mervel ish antuh immigrantz!” routine. Because I’ve really pondered my feelings on this and come to the conclusion:
I don’t fucking want to live among people who can assume any identity.
I used to be against the Superhuman Registration Act too. Then I thought about my kids going to school with someone with the powers of Purple Man.
They also were gonna make a movie subtitled New World Order until they thought better of that.
‘ you can’t really sell “Russia are our friends and the deep state is trying to make us go to war with them” at this particular point in the space-time continuum.’All evidence is that you CAN sell that story. For $18.99 in paperback.
So even more plot holes this week .
Hill is really dead ? She is not in the episode but in the credits Fury recruits the Skrulls to be his spies and Hydra was still able to take over Shield ??Colonel Rodes comes to fire Colonel Fury ?Skrulls are already running a ton of Governments and are way over a Million Strong and are going to war ??? They have already won ! They are running things!
Yeah, a MILLION seems ambitious, and utterly unbeatable, especially if they can breed with humans.
I saw Cobie Smulders in the credits and wondered where she appeared…Answer: Her corpse in the first few seconds before Talos whisks Fury out of there.Also… I think Hydra was already in control of SHIELD in the 1990s.Also… Anyone of any rank can give the news of firing to anyone, I assume. Rhodes didn’t make the decision.And Gravik’s big gripe with the Skrulls posing as world leaders is that they’re not doing enough. Gravik doesn’t want to be hiding. Their whole thing in the first ep was “in my own skin” or something like that.
Even Hydra had an extraterrestrial connection if Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which both Nick Fury and Maria Hill were) is considered cannon.
None of these are actually plot holes, NX1700
Also, FFS, we’re only a third of the way through the story. There’s still 3-4 hours of content that might answer whatever questions anyone might currently have.I bet mrtrent100/NX-1700 is one of those morons who everyone avoids watching stuff with because they constantly ask really dumb questions for which the answer is always “I don’t know, but if we keep watching, we’ll probably find out”. Questions like “Who’s that?” whenever a new character walks on screen, before they’ve even had a chance to introduce themselves.
Skrulls should have been able to sniff out Hydra by the early 2000s or Hydra should have been aware of Skrulls by the early 2000s
Why would the Skrulls make Hydra’s takeover less plausible? They’re not psychic, they just have unusually good disguise abilities. Fury would’ve needed to suspect Hydra’s existence before he tried using Skrulls to infiltrate them.Why would Hydra have been aware of the Skrulls? They weren’t working for SHIELD, they were Fury’s off the books personal agents.
Nick Fury was at ground zero of a dirty bomb attack without getting fatal radiation poisoning?
I think it was a reg bomb and the dirty bomb theft stuff was a red herring.
Or something that’s still coming.
I thought the intro sequence was weird/trippy before, but now that I know that, I think it sucks and is awful.i’m glad someone finally said this. this is the actual danger of AI, that it can easily be used stylistically and if you’re not wise to how it was made it looks completely fine or maybe even good! but in an effort to hate on AI – which we absolutely should do – most people seem to jump straight to “it looks terrible!!! why would you ever use this instead of real artists!!” when in all honesty, if a real artist made this exact opening sequence no one would say boo, and probably most would find it intriguing and good!it’s only going to get better and harder to distinguish from real art, and this early grandstanding online about how bad it looks is probably harming the fight against it.
I was bored by the opening credits regardless of how it was made. I wanted to skip it and did for the 2nd episode.
I think the intro looks fine. Fairly unremarkable, but clearly intending to and succeeding in setting a tone for the series. I definitely don’t like the idea of shifting to AI for this sort of work, but Marvel TV shows haven’t had a whole lot of amazing title sequences to begin with. WandaVision had unique ones to fit in with the theme, and Hawkeye had a pretty cool sequence that nevertheless pissed people off because the general motif had been stolen from the original comic artist. Most of the others just use title cards or are generic. By their normal standards, it looks great.
Frankly, given Disney’s normal habit of stealing from artists, this passive theft is hard to get outraged about. I think this is probably a one-off, at least for now. I suspect other studios were already beginning the process of using AI for their shows as well even before the premiere, and Disney will probably return to it in a few years if trends continue, but I think Echo is next, and I doubt they’ll use it there.
Yeah again the grade was too low. Really digging the slow build and reveals. Everyone is nailing the acting.
Consider it a B+ because Sam’s doing a dumb thing with the review score.
Yeah I really don’t get a lot of the reviews. this is some of the best Marvel SHIELDesque writing in a long time.
I also don’t understand how you can give a grade without any feedback. The article is just a play by play of the episode without any comment.
Yeah. I really don’t get how reviewers are missing that this is an espionage show set in the MCU. Not everything is going to be Iron Man or the Guardians folks!
I dunno, I’m not feeling it at all. It’s not “slow” or “building,” everyone is loudly explaining everything all the time, “mysteries” are set up and revealed 3 minutes later, we’re just waiting to find out who will be arbitrarily revealed to be a Skrull…cool I guess?
Any show that can cut from Don Cheadle talking to Samuel Jackson to Olivia Coleman torturing a hostage is at least a B.
… Did you read why its so low in the stray observations? Questionable reaction. Somewhat childish.
Barsanti is mad about them using AI (out of fear of his own job, probably, be a better writer, Sam!) so he made the juvenile decision to tank the letter grade going forward.
Before either character is killed, I need MCU’s Olivia Colman and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss to share a scene together. Preferably as best murder buddies on a road trip.
I thought the intro sequence was weird/trippy before, but now that I know that, I think it sucks and is awful. If the idea was to make it so the viewer doesn’t know what’s “real,” then that doesn’t apply to this show at all. The Skrulls aren’t unfeeling machines; they’re living beings with thoughts! Using A.I. and passing it off as thematically relevant is an insult to viewers and artists, so I will be dropping the grade down a full letter each episode from now on. You’re a hero, you’re medal is in the mail.
Thanks for the review, now I know I don’t have to waste any more time on this series.
Christopher McDonald as a Tucker Carlson expy is inspired casting.
I don’t know if he was a FOX Host (“host” heh) but my first reaction was that he was doing a Lindsay Graham “homage.” My thoughts went to “Senator” but ex-pol-personality feels right. Mike Huckabee-ish.
In my head cannon it’s Shooter McGavin. Perfectly reasonable career arc from pro golfer > c-list celebrity huckster > MAGA grifter > Fox news host.
And that character as part of the Council is a very clever little beat, as well.
I kinda wish he wasn’t a Skrull, just a human that threw in with the Skrulls because the ratings would be great.
Here’s the thing about Danvers. This timeline is MESSED up.1) She leaves in 1995 to help find a homeworld.
2) 1995-2018 – Apparently never comes back. Leaves Fury holding the bag and making promises. OK, she gets tied up with universe catastrophes.
3) 2018 – Comes back after Fury’s page. Helps the Avengers get to Thanos and Thor beheads him.At that point, the universe is in chaos and she probably is called 10,000 different directions and maybe even helps rebuild Earth. (She clearly gets in the public eye enough for Kamala Khan to become a fangirl)But you’d think she had a second to update Talos and Soren? Or whichever Skrulls weren’t Snapped? “Hey, I’m still looking, but we’ve got to deal with this now…”4) 2018-2023 – We’re led to believe she’s basically the Avenger for the rest of the universe and is busy. But she can’t check in?
5) 2023 – Comes back to help defeat Thanos. Sticks around for Stark’s funeral. Fury is there too. You’d think they’d at least be able to say hi and compare notes.
6) 2023+ Disappeared back into the universe. Checks in with Shang-Chi and Katy via hologram. Can do that, but can’t let Talos and Soren know, especially if Talos is like, “The kids are really on my ass here, Carol? Can you help us out?”I am the biggest MCU apologist all of you know. But I’m really not seeing how they wriggle out of this without making Fury incompetent or Danvers just a selfish, raging arse.
There are only so many times you can tell someone “Yeah, I’m working on it” before they stop believing you. Carol could be updating them every day and they could still get tired of Jam Tomorrow after thirty years of no jam.
I figure they had to keep her off world because if she was out in space doing any research and actually came back she’d say like “Hey, I’ve been asking around and it turns out it’s not just the Kree, literally any spacefaring race that’s heard of the Skrulls says they have a real problem with being warmongering assassins. It’s making it hard to both find them a planet or want to.”
The whole “Nick Fury has changed/slowed down” thing seemed a bit overwrought to me, until, after he was telling that story about the segregated train, I thought “Is Sam Jackson THAT old?” He’s 72! So I guess him sitting and wheezing on a park bench after a physical altercation makes sense?
I thought it was Fury registering not just the physical effects but quietly freaking out now that he’s lost whatever resources he had coming into this mess. (Which he for some reason didn’t choose to use even enough to tip Rhodey off first, but that’s another conversation.)
Fwiw my read was that he was also reeling from not only being brushed off by Rhodey but losing whatever job he had. Hopefully he’s still got a spare key to that space station.
I thought Rhodey was kind of out of character in this, and I wonder if they’re overdoing it to make us think he’s a Skrull. But I did like his retort of not handing power over to “mediocre men who don’t look like us” of not wanting to just turn around and hand it to “mediocre men who DO look like us.”Also- does Rhodey not need the mechanical legs anymore?
Maybe Rhodey died in that fall in Civil War and it’s been a Skrull the whole time
he didn’t have them in falcon/winter soldier i don’t think.
SKRULL! And a lazy one at that!
‘”Also- does Rhodey not need the mechanical legs anymore?”’I was thinking about this too as well as what happened to the rumored Armor Wars series he was supposed to be in.
Armor Wars was apparently upgraded to a movie a while back.
Also- does Rhodey not need the mechanical legs anymore?I’m not sure this is the explanation, maybe he just got better. But one they gave Tony nanobots (stupid) basically anything can be explained away as “Stark tech.”
Just remember Tony NEVER trusted Fury or SHIELD.
With the given passage of time, it can be chalked up to the healing process. By Falcon & Winter Soldier, set in April-May 2024, he was already down to just a cane. This show is most likely set in November 2025.
Also- does Rhodey not need the mechanical legs anymore? He’s been recovering for a while. Long time since that package was delivered to Tony Stank.
Talos says they hadn’t found a new planet yet because Skrulls are hated and hunted everywhere.Sonya says Skrulls are being hunted to extinction because they’re apparently as well behaved as their comics counterparts.So what is Gravik’s plan if Skrulls take over Earth, get discovered, and the Kree and other enemies attack? Will they pretend to be humans indefinitely?
So what is Gravik’s plan if Skrulls take over Earth, get discovered, and the Kree and other enemies attack? Will they pretend to be humans indefinitely?I’m assuming that’s what the super skrull project is.
So it’s really less “in my own skin” and more “In my own skin and also Groot’s bark…”
Fury’s speech about how humans have been at war with each other since we learned to walk upright had me yelling “Thank you!” It’s nice when essential truths get dropped in sci-fi.
Um that’s the point of MOST sci-fi, and if not done well comes off as lazy pandering. Like that.And the Kree and Skrulls have apparently been in the same war continuously for a thousand years? That’s…incomprehensible to a human?
I’m glad they at least addressed the Avengers with the plausible argument that it’s too dangerous to get any of them Skrull replaced. It would still be good to get a sense of where this show is in the timeline, since the Asgardians settle on Earth during the five year Snap. After the Blip they’re a tourist destination and seem to have multiple aliens living or visiting with them. She-Hulk completely leaned into this new reality of powered, alien, and magical beings on Earth and Hulks being public figures.
Yeah they never really answer whether Earth joined the galactic community and got a jump point built or whatever. You’d think as the focus of the snap and Thanos’ final defeat / the blip it could be considered an important planet that aliens might want to visit.(actually I haven’t seen Guardians 3 so maybe they have?)I don’t totally buy the avengers argument. Like a skrull pretending to be Danvers can’t use her powers. I assume a skrull Hulk can’t smash as effectivly, etc. Skrull Shang-chi wouldn’t have the rings, Skrull Wong wouldn’t know magic etc.
Honestly, I’m not even sure who/what the Avengers are currently in the MCU. Is it just Falcon and Ant-Man? Wasp maybe? But are Ant-Man and Wasp SHIELD/Avengers affiliated?Cap, Tony, Widow, Vision 1.0, T’Challa – DeadHawkeye, Hulk, Bucky – Around but seemingly MIA/off grid. Not really team players to begin with.Captain Marvel and Thor – presumably off world. Spider-Man – doesn’t exist to anyone currently in universeDr. Strange – Presumably galavanting the multiverse with CleaShang-Chi – recruited by Wong for ???Ms Marvel – still, as far as we know, not an AvengerWanda – evil and/or deadAt this point the Thunderbolts have a more defined roster than the Avengers.
Yeah, they haven’t been clear. I think we’re meant to assume they’re basically inactive and will need to re-assmble down the line. But there is at least some kinda “council of heroes” consisting of Wong, Banner, Danvers, and Shang-Chi. Spider-Man – doesn’t exist to anyone currently in universeHang on, I thought just Peter Parker didn’t exist. Like people knew of Spider-Man still but just forgot knowing his real name and any interactions they had with Parker not in his suit. Not that that whole plot point ever made a ton of sense.
Oh right right. I keep getting my Spider-lore tangled haha but still unclear as to whether or not he is a known entity in regards to SHIELD/Avengers.
No. Strange’s spell made everybody forget Peter Parker.So, the stuff with the Avengers still happened and the surviving Avengers still know Spider-Man, but nobody knows Spider-Man’s secret ID because no one knows Peter Parker even exist.Of course, Peter can reintroduce himself to people, but no one will remember their past interaction with him. Maybe.
Confusing, yes?
Considering all the evidence lying around, it would seem to require a lot of effort to overcome the spell, like Peter could be right in front of you in the suit and hand you a news clipping about the whole identity reveal thing and you’d say… “No, the kid in this story doesn’t look like you at all, and his name is Miles.”
I don’t think Cap is dead, I think he is retired, and living in another time line with Peggy Carter.I don’t think Hawkeye is M.I.A., I think he is also retired, and with Renner’s recent accident, not likely to come out of retirement soon.
Well, technically, Cap isn’t dead. He was an old man at the end of Endgame. He could still be alive.
Old and dead are basically the same thing to a lot of people unfortunately.
Isn’t Rhodes himself an Avenger when the writing needs him to be? Where is this other suit they keep mentioning?
Skrull Sam Wilson could still probably walk into the White House and put a bullet in the president. Or Skrull Rhodey for that matter. The risk isn’t that a Skrull impostor of an Avenger would have their powers or abilities (though with the memory mining tech they have they could fully copy somebody with learned supernatural abilities like Doctor Strange or Wong), but that they’d be able to sow more chaos and distrust.
I guess I was unclear, but I was suggesting it’d be pretty simple to confirm that the people I listed were not Skrulls, just as Carol used her powers to prove she was herself in Captain Marvel. So if anything some of “the avengers” are like, the only people you can be sure are who they say they are. Though I guess scratch Shang-Chi off the list cause they could just take his rings.
My point was that that only really works with the superheroes who have innate super powers, of which there are only a small handful. Of the current ‘core’ Avengers that’s just Danvers, Spider-Man, Thor, and Hulk. Maybe Bucky, but there’s been some indication that Skrulls have greater than human strength and agility, so they could probably pass.
Everyone else it’s either technological (Sam Wilson, Rhodey, Ant-Man and Wasp, both Hawkeyes), mystical artifact (Shang-Chi), or learned mystical arts (Doctor Strange, Wong). Since the rebel Skrulls have been shown to still have the technology that lets them access all of a person’s memories that they used in Captain Marvel every single one of those are on the board to be unprovably imitated because they can take their gadgets and download all the knowledge for how to use them, or in the case of Strange and Wong just download all their knowledge of the mystic arts without needing to take anything.
I took the argument to be less that the Skrulls would replace the Avengers than that the Avengers might accidentally kill a civilian thinking he or she is a Skrull. Seems like it would be laughably easy for the rebel Skrulls to set up a scenario for that. And the fallout would be awful.
I’m guessing since they’re public figures / have unique security bypasses. One false Avenger could take the team down internally etc.
That mostly makes sense, but the skrulls should be doing that anyway. I know the show indicated that their plan to deal with the avengers is “super skrulls” but it would be stupid of them not to infiltrate the avengers regardless of if Fury called them or not. Of course Disney just didn’t want to pay for this to be a proper crossover movie-star studded event series, so we get this.
The only problem is that involving the Avengers isn’t the only reason the Skrulls might consider impersonating them, especially any that are famously off planet or anything. Sure Fury might know right away if a fake Carol showed up and started making announcements, but no one else would.
Has Sam ever reviewed a show he actually likes?!
‘”Okay, now I’ll say it: Super-Skrulls! In the comics, Super-Skrulls have mash-up powers of other superheroes, the most famous one being a dude named Kl’rt who has all of the powers of the Fantastic Four. But since they don’t exist in the MCU…”’This scene from Dr. Strange 2 in the multiverse of madness suggests otherwise.In this scene Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic himself!) is present and wearing his Fantastic Four suit. You’ve got to figure if he’s there then the rest of the Fantastic Four do exist in the MCU as well. Just because we haven’t seen all of them at once doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Barsanti just can’t leave fucking well enough alone. He rightfully says it is a good idea to use powers from characters we’ve seen instead of the FF and then fucks it up.
Reed appearing DS2 just meant that in an alternate universe the Fantastic Four exist. That doesn’t mean they exist in the MCU’s universe.In that same scene we see an alternate universe Peggy Carter as Captain America -er- Britian. That doesn’t mean this version of Peggy exists in the MCU’s universe.
I was kinda flipped the opposite way: Last week I could tell it was AI right off the bat, and I felt (admittedly passively) “Aw. A.I.? There’s so many artist at Disney/Marvel that could have hand drawn this and done a better job.”But for better or worse I wasn’t like: “Fuck You Disney!”This week I wondered if the controversy would have caused Marvel to dump the opening credits altogether. But when they showed up, I decided to give them a better look. Now, I’m not like “Hey, they’re actually great!” But they’re more detailed in the architecture (White House… UK Parliment… Kremlin style towers) that is kind of cool. The A.I. “brush strokes” are more distinct and the smear effect wasn’t as bad as I thought it was last week. Of course the “brushstrokes” and smear are really just A.I’s way of forming things out of digital noise. The focal sequence where Nick Fury’s face is contorting as though he’s fighting turning into a Skrull himself is… still kind of disturbing. It’s all supposed to be nightmarish, sure, there’s granular detail in there I didn’t notice before.It mainly reminds me of the ScottFree logo with the shadowy guy /ominous spy-guy who lights a cigarette, notices you noticing him, takes off running, and then transforms into a bird – getting away Scott Free. Done in dark smear and chalk. Not the prettiest thing to look at.The X-Files and Fringe and others do creepy montages that are fun to watch. I guess the main problem with Secret Invasion’s credit sequence is it’s not immediately fun to watch – it’s much more “Oh, you’ll get used to it. This puts you ill-at-ease. Mission accomplished, right? A.I’s here to stay, so deal with it.”The woods and the headlights = good. Color palette = good. Architecture = interesting. Smear paranoid faces = yes creepy but also slightly barf-inducing, it’s the uncomfortable valley coming at you from the far side of the valley. Real cringe and cultural cringe = too much weight to get out from under.So I don’t hate it with a fiery passion. I’m a little more shrug in the resigned way that opening credit sequences are always chasing the shiny object of “What’s New.”A rival media site pointed out last week that they were taking the outrage down a notch, primarily because the A.I. Disney and Marvel are using here (Theoretically!) is scraping from their own in-house owned artwork. So, there’s that.
There’s also this https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/secret-invasion-ai-opening-1235521299/
which at least floated the idea that this was all bullshit and no humans were harmed financially.
The whole kerfluffle seemed to have started when a producer used “AI” a bit carelessly when he meant “Computer program that helped, like has been happening since the first MS Paint was invented”
At this point I’m wondering if “AI” will join “woke” or “politically correct” as a term that has no meaning.
I’m calling bullshit on that. There are 8 people credited for the main title sequence, and only two of them are visual artists. One animator, and the ‘concept by’ credit. Everyone else is a producer, director, technical director or department head.There’s a concerted effort by executive level people to handwave away the financial impact of using generative toolsets because they’re aware of the building pushback about them.
I am actually interested in learning timelines for developing credit scenes for show – a lot of this tech even at levels worse than the credit scene has emerged just in the last few months. I am not involved in television or film production at all but have worked in project management on many big projects (video, software dev, marketing campaigns) and I’d assume they’d get working on this early as there’s not a lot that blocks it after the premise is there. Does eight people for a title sequence seem light? I honestly don’t know personally. With a enough time that seems doable based on my professional experience in production in marketing. Also given the uncertainty and unknowns about AI I’d assume it was a speculative push that involved research and collaboration with the creative team that got incorporated once it seemed viable.
I’m hoping AI will join “internet superhighway” and other outdated and non-specific terms. AI has been a marketing jargon word for years and is an umbrella for a ton of technologies and research directions but, the problem is that it implies ‘intelligence’ which leads to implications consciousness and sentience – which we really really don’t know how to discuss or really agree upon what that means. Large language models (LLM) I think are a good term for now, they’re what we’re mostly talking about, but that term can evolve too. LLMs help make it clear that it’s not a calculator or a ‘sentience’ – there are amazing things happening but they’re being hidden by silly conversations based on an umbrella term. Very few conversations involve discussing if the path of LLMs can even lead to general AI and honestly, we really don’t know, but we very likely will be learning a lot about intelligence, language, the limits and potential of LLMs, etc over the next year or two which is exciting in and out of itself but right now that’s masked by the general understanding of “Artificial Intelligence”. The reality is what we’re seeing is an unexpected emergent result from feeding a best-guess algorithm a ton of data – there is a lot more that we don’t know than we do here. Wow, that was a way too long rant – TLDR hopefully we, as a society move past using the term “AI” to more accurate and specific terms.
i also look at something like white house plumbers hiring bill sienkiewicz for background posters and it’s like…why do i want an ai regurgitation of bill sienkiewicz’s work when they should just hire him to do it? or at least hire him to work the AI prompt thing to fake-legitimize it.
I think people are being ridiculously alarmist about this creative choice. I don’t remember people complaining about the jobs that were stolen when Marvel simply decided to not have a title sequence for Falcon and Winter Soldier. Partially relying on humans and partially on technology to create a sequence that didn’t even need to be there in the first place, on a production that involves hundreds doesn’t seem to be the profound evil that internet John Connors want it to be.
Talos mentions that the only Skrulls who aren’t living on Earth are part of “Emperor Drogge’s colony.” I think that’s an invention of the MCU and not a thing from the comicsThere is a Skrull in the comics named Droge or Drog’e IIRC who was a Skrull scientist in charge of the whole super skrull project.
Before we get to the shocking ending twist, Gravik saves Brogan and then has him shot after figuring out that he told his torturers something about the Skrull plan. (Sonya escaped before he got there.) And he gives G’iah a very suspicious look while he does all this—as if to say, “This will be you soon, if you side with your dad over me.”What? No, when G’iah gets out of the car to go around back it shows her on her phone giving an address to someone. Then when they try to go to their safehouse the cops are there. So G’iah gave the cops the address to the safehouse to make sure Gravik believed Brogan talked, which also guaranteed Gravik would kill Brogan. I’m not 100% sure why she did this though. To make Gravik assume Brogan spilled everything, including the Super Skrull project? That would be the obvious thing, and would force Gravik to do something drastic like move the entire operation.
So this show is bad, right? It seems bad.
I think so? Seems very clunky and obvious. Very little actual mystery, things are teased and revealed way too quickly, everyone is loudly explaining their thing all the time, especially that Fury is OLD, and was AWAY on his SPACE STATION. How is all that going to possibly pay off in an interesting way, is he somehow going to beat up a Super-Skrull?A million Skrulls on Earth, is anything we see even going to give us a grasp of the scale of that, or is the “war” going to actually involve a dozen people?
When Hill got shot I just went “huh.”
Oh and half the ‘discourse’ is about the damn title credits.
I’m sure you can point to all kinds of plot holes and canon conflicts in this show, but I don’t care. Give me more scenes like that Cheadle/Jackson confrontation.
Unfortunately all the show is is a few moments of “Acting!” in a sea of plot holes and canon conflicts and a shocking lack of tension for a “political thriller,” it’s just nonsense.
The average commenter here has no operational definition for plot hole and just uses it as a synonym for “thing I didn’t like.”.
So that bombing killed more people than 9/11? How, was there a full sports arena underneath that square?
I’d rate this episode a lot higher. I’m liking the espionage stuff, and personally I think the Groot/Extremis etc idea to create Super Skrulls is kinda genius (we don’t have the FF yet so no way to utilize them, but what the heck, there are powers galore to steal in the MCU).The issue of anyone being “out of character” is not going to be anything I complain about till I find out who’s a Skrull and who’s not, but I really dug the confrontation between Rhodey and Fury.And,,, yes, I am hoping that Maria Hill isn’t dead – that could have been a Skrull or an LMD, right?
Amending my original theory that Gravik = Nick Fury Jr. to Gravik = Adopted Nick Fury Jr. taking over the world due to father figure abandonment issues?
Nick Fury being out of sorts since the Blip was referenced in Spider-Man Far From Home too though. ‘I used to know everything, now I’m being ghosted by a teenager!’
That wasn’t Fury.
Except “Nick Fury” in FFH was Talos pretending to be Fury.
So we are sure the Fury knows his wife is a Skrull? That seems like a big plot point either way. I’m not as sure he knows
Better episode I thought. Still seems like I missed something vs they haven’t fully revealed the whole plot.
“Using A.I. and passing it off as thematically relevant is an insult to viewers and artists, so I will be dropping the grade down a full letter each episode from now on.”Which is dumb and unfair thing to do. Over a title sequence that most people just blow through anyways?Fury’s secret family – a callback to Hawkeye’s secret family that “Fury helped set up” in Ultron. Apparently, Fury set one up for himself too.
What, no mention of the non-existent high-speed train from Moscow to Warsaw???Even with the MCU world being fantastical, the pace at which scenery went by from the compartment vs the speeds of the train from the wide shot are way, way off. The pace from inside the compartment is exactly as fast as one goes on old Soviet lines. Scenery flies by if you’re on high-speed rail.I like the show, in general. I worry Gravik is going to be as one note as whatever her name was from Falcon and Winter Soldier. One thing I’m curious about, though: the Skrulls started arriving en masse sometime after 1995, but it seems it was much more recently than that. Even if the members of the Skrull council were there in the beginning, who did they emulate to get where they are? Did they work their way up through ranks to become global leaders from nothing? Did they somehow abduct and swap in for already established global leaders? If it’s the former, I want to know what happened to the original persons. Locked in a Skrull prison somewhere? The Skrulls can only change into something they’ve seen. And for notable people, simply seeing them wouldn’t be enough. They’d have to take the originals off the chess board.
Yeah those details of how Skrulls rose to positions of power—like a prime minister or a Fox news host!—if it was “organic” or really planned “infiltration” would be interesting, but I doubt we’ll get anything interesting.
“What, no mention of the non-existent high-speed train from Moscow to Warsaw???”By American standards, the Polonez is high-speed rail.
When I saw that scene with Rhodes I did think “oh they’re writing him as Tony now”.
“So it came out last week along with the premiere that the intro sequence for this show was created with A.I. I thought the intro sequence was weird/trippy before, but now that I know that, I think it sucks and is awful. If the idea was to make it so the viewer doesn’t know what’s “real,” then that doesn’t apply to this show at all. The Skrulls aren’t unfeeling machines; they’re living beings with thoughts! Using A.I. and passing it off as thematically relevant is an insult to viewers and artists, so I will be dropping the grade down a full letter each episode from now on.”
– in fear of losing job much?
The trailers showed Gravik using Groot’s abilities so it’s not a huge spoiler