Secret Invasion is Marvel Studios’ most mature series to date, aiming for an older audience than previous entries by crafting a well-paced espionage thriller with plenty of twists and turns. It might be the favorite MCU series of audiences who might be tired of superheroes but enjoy a global action spy series. Yet it also bumps up to some uncomfortable real-world implications that, if not handled correctly, could make for a series with a rather troubling message.
While there has been a great deal of talk about Marvel over saturation. Yet the gap of eight monhts between Secret Invasion and the previous MCU series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, marks the longest time between Marvel Disney+ series since WandaVision kicked off the trend in 2021. This certainly helps Secret Invasion feel more like an event, as it has been a while since audiences could tune into an MCU adventure week after week.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 might have kicked off the summer movie season, but with The Marvels moving from July to November 2023, this makes Secret Invasion the big MCU summer event, as it will run from the end of June to July. It has a lot resting on it, and for the most part, the series delivers.
The Plot, Cast, and Characters
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Secret Invasion focuses on Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who has been summoned to Earth by former S.H.I.E.L.D. associate Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and former Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelson) with news of an uprising of Skrulls who are disappointed that Fury and Captain Marvel never found them a new home as they promised. Led by a Skrull radical, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), a new faction of Skrulls look to infiltrate Earth in key positions of power, and Fury must find a way to stop this threat.
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The series also features a major role for James Rhodes, aka War Machine (Don Cheadle). Talos’ daughter G’iah (Emilia Clarke) has been radicalized by Gravik and broken away from her father, but her loyalty is soon tested as she discovers Gravik’s hidden plans. Another new addition is Sonya Falsworth (the great Olivia Colman), a high-ranking M16 agent who has a history with Fury and is likely related to James Montgomery Falsworth, a member of Steve Roger’s Howling Commandos in Captain America: The First Avenger.
While all the actors do a great job, the audience is left with the notion that not everyone is as they seem and anybody at any time could, in fact, be a Skrull, giving many scenes a great deal of tension.
Secret Invasion: Style and Influence
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Secret Invasion is, in many ways, a follow-up to Captain Marvel, but tonally and stylistically, it is closer to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This is Marvel going hard into the world of espionage and spies. Whereas The Winter Soldier drew heavily from 70s spy thrillers like All The Presidents Men and Three Days of the Condor, Secret Invasion is heavily inspired by the work of John Le Carré and Tom Clancy.
The MCU series very much invokes the tone of a Cold War thriller (even setting most of the first two episodes of action in Russia), although, in terms of television comparisons, it is more 24 than The Americans. Given that Nick Fury’s original comics were spy-themed, this makes Secret Invasion a rather faithful modern adaptation of his original comic run.
Secret Invasion is certainly the most violent MCU entry. While there was a great deal mentioned about how dark films like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 got in terms of violence and subject matter, those were still meant to be seen by a wide audience. Secret Invasion, on the other hand, feels like Marvel Studios’ first real attempt at making a project not aimed at the whole family.
Most of the episodes are dialogue-driven, with a great deal of discussion about politics and even some refreshing upfront discussion of race and how it relates to various characters. There is action, but it is certainly spaced out more than other MCU series, and there is a more visceral level to the violence. Torture and limbs are taken off with no joke or quip to ease the viewer.
Secret Invasion Has a Tight Rope To Walk
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Secret Invasion draws from the comic book event of the same name written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Leinil Francis Yu, and was published between June 2008 to January 2009. Like many other comic events at the time, like Secret War and Civil War, Secret Invasion was very much a comic tacking American anxieties and fears following September 11th. The idea of a foreign enemy secretly invading positions of power to inflict a surprise attack was one that tapped into the fears and anxieties of Americans in not just the 21st century but was a fear of the Cold War as well.
The Skrulls themselves were born out of Americans’ fear of the Cold War, where there were fears of Communist spies around every corner. This is what made Captain Marvel so refreshing, twisting comic book fans’ expectations of the Skrulls as traditional villains and making them a refugee species, where their shapeshifting ability was not a nefarious way of infiltration but a necessary survival technique to avoid percussion. It was a nice update to the status quo that understood what these characters and ideas met in the 21st century.
Related: Will Secret Invasion Be the Solution to the MCU’s Decline?
That made the prospect of adapting Secret Invasion in the MCU even more tricky. While any version of the story would have had a slightly post-War on Terror tinge to it by nature, the recent developments of the Skrulls in the MCU make it even more complicated. Now the Skrulls are refugees on Earth who are seeking to attack humanity from within. Intentional or not, this can’t help but tap into the real-world mistrust refugees already face when trying to seek asylum in a country.
A common talking point among critics of refugees is they are secretly trying to infiltrate and destroy the very idea of the culture of a civilization, and this has led to a rise in xenophobia across the world, particularly in the United States. On top of that, there is the ridiculous conspiracy of key individuals in power actually being lizard people, yet Secret Invasion, by its nature, has to feature key individuals being Skrulls and orchestrating events from behind the scenes. This is the uncomfortable area where fiction and the reality of the world in which it brought into meet.
Marvel is clearly inviting real-world politics into this discussion. Early on, it is established that the new Skrull leader Gravik was once a child that supposedly was trained in the art of espionage by Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. (and, by extension, HYDRA). Now Fury is dealing with an enemy that he is responsible for weaponizing. This can’t help but call to mind the Mujahideen, Islamic guerrilla fighters who resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with backing from the United States CIA, which eventually morphed into the Taliban, leading to the United States’ global conflicts in the 21st century.
Secret Invasion’s Future in the MCU
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The question is, can Marvel thread the needle where they can tell a compelling spy narrative that also doesn’t inadvertently create a message that outsiders are infiltrators and must not be trusted? The moral lesson guiding the entire MCU is that unity is a strength, and the divisions in borders are weaknesses that will hold people back, so it would be out of place for them to suddenly have a series that undermines that. Marvel Studios has earned the benefit of the doubt until the final episode airs, and with a creative team that includes Sweetland director Ali Selim, Mr. Robot writer Kyle Bradstreet, and writer Brain Tucker, Secret Invasion could still have plenty of surprises.
It will be interesting to see how Marvel wraps up Secret Invasion. It is clear from the first two episodes this series will have major ramifications for the MCU in the same way that Captain America: The Winter Soldier did. Hints are already being dropped of how it will impact Earth-based stories like Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, but also the upcoming cosmic storyline The Marvels.
In the meantime, Secret Invasion does offer a refreshing change of pace from the high spectacle of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and offers a grimmer tale that could serve as an entry point into the MCU for viewers who never got on board with the superheroes. With a tone and style that is so different from previous entries, it shows how the MCU has endured for so long and how it will continue to live on.
Secret Invasion premieres on Disney+ on June 21, 2023.
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