How many licks does it take to get to the center of Secret Invasion Ep. 3?
Existentially fraught time is ticking, and I’m not sure this series will be able to beat the clock.
The Short Take:
I’m almost back to square one with this show. It’s fine, but I can’t help thinking how much potential it has to be great. There are plenty of twists and turns; it just all feels too easy.
[SPOILER WARNING: Anyone could be a spoiler.]
The Long Take:
There was an owl with a tiny eyepatch in this episode. This is Jen-bait if I’ve ever seen it.
Okay, so it wasn’t a real owl. That would have certainly sent me over the edge. Still, an owl clock activated the cute receptors in my brain. When Talos learns from his double agent daughter, G’iah, that rebel leader Gravik has plans to launch a nuclear missile from a British submarine, Fury calls the only MI6 agent we’ve met so far, Sonya Falsworth. As they exchange barbs, she gingerly places a small eyepatch on the stately metal statue that’s been harboring a tiny camera in its eye since Fury planted it there in Episode 1. She wryly says that “Nicholas Fury” is his new name, adding that “He has a rather dashing little eyepatch now.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Coleman continues to devour all of her lines with an indulgent charm. I love her, and I love her in this.
Practically speaking, Sonya likely adorns her office decor with a signature Nick Fury accessory to block the camera that she can’t completely remove. (Or, perhaps, she really is just that whimsically spiteful, which would endear her to me even more.) But the image of a miniature, almost doll-sized eyepatch on an owl clock just HAS to be laden with symbolism. The fact that it’s a clock, which I didn’t catch until I went back to grab the exact quote (I thought the owl was an oversized paperweight) fits in nicely with the theme of aging, the passage of time, and making amends for the past. In Episode 1, after all, Sonya explains to Fury that when agents retire they put a clock on the wall.
More so, however, Fury’s owl avatar is emblematic of this series’ desire to take Fury down a peg. Through the strigiformes formerly known as Hoot, the writers pose a question: What happens when we shrink down a larger than life character who has been in and out of so many MCU films — and usually is the one who always has the answers and is always one step ahead of everyone else — to a humbler, less intimidating, and therefore more interesting character. To look upon this cool, tough, wise (perhaps that’s why little Nicholas Fury is an owl as opposed to some other animal) spy as a caricature of himself, to be lovingly mocked. And, in the process, we could try to get at how Nick Fury is more to the MCU than just a metonymic eyepatch.
That loving mockery primarily manifests in Talos and Fury’s bromantic banter, and the dynamic between the two of them might be the show’s biggest strength, anchoring the story thus far for me. Talos freely takes shots at Fury and gives him a hard time, yet tells him that he’s not with Gravik “because I’m with you.” From their bickering about the whole “dog thing” to their tender forehead touch greetings, I’m enjoying and invested in their friendship in a way I would not have expected. In this episode, Ben Mendelsohn stands out as the actor injecting a lot more into his role than the words he’s been given would at face value.
The problem I have with the sentiment or potentially rich proposition behind the tiny eyepatch, however, is that the series isn’t willing to fully commit to that premise. The chips were all down for Nick Fury last week. I was so excited to see what he would do next. And then…the show mostly deflated the stakes it had so nicely set up. Fury didn’t have to learn anything. He didn’t have to be scrappy. He didn’t have any epiphanies about his past or his role in the brewing war. All he had to do was begrudgingly tell Talos, “Help me, Talos, because I am useless without you” and make one phone call to Sonya, who freely gives him all the information he needs to stop a nuclear missile and save the day.
This has unsettling implications for two reasons. For one, it sends a message that all that ragging on Nick Fury for his misdeeds, neglect, and avoidance wasn’t really that big of a deal. He technically says sorry to Talos, and then tells Sonya that he already used up his one apology for the day. But I got the sense that he hadn’t really expressed any genuine remorse or taken responsibility for his actions (which would mostly be fine had we NOT made such a huge deal out of that in the last episode). So the series has missed an opportunity to show Fury clawing his way up from the bottom of the barrel to earn the good graces of his former friends.
Secondly, it undermines the slow burn mystery that I keep wanting this show to be. Granted, as I said after the premiere, this is mostly on me. I need to conceive of this show as it is and not as I’d like it to be. And yet I can’t help thinking what Secret Invasion could be like if we had more time to tell a more gradual story. And I haven’t necessarily had that kind of critique of past Marvel Disney+ series, as others have. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s because past series haven’t evoked the genre of the spy thriller, which benefits from more deliberate pacing.
Yet, I hold onto hope. In The Avengers (2012), Tony Stark says to Steve Rogers that Nick Fury is “THE spy,” and that “His secrets have secrets.” With three episodes left, there is still time for Nick Fury to surprise us, and to reveal some of his deepest secrets. And I don’t mean “Oh, no, [fill in the blank] is a Skrull!” Or, “he’s married to a Skrull!” Rather, his emotional and spiritual secrets that may provide, as the opening of
’s review of Episodes 1 and 2 articulated so well, an introspective reckoning of Fury “at the end of the line.”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn’t a perfect film, and folks’ mileage may vary on how much it does the iconic character justice. But I do think James Mangold nailed how to tell a story about a larger than life hero (also with metonymic accessories, like a hat and a whip) at the end of his illustrious career, when everything hurts and they just can’t do everything they used to do. He did that by making the specter of mortal time, whether that’s represented by an ancient dial, a commemorative clock to regift as soon as possible, or one of the many clocks on Sonya’s wall, an active part of the plot and story. Three episodes into Secret Invasion, and I’m still not sure if Old Man Fury is, in fact, the focal point of the series.
Fury, in fact, does not even appear in the most thrilling scene of “Betrayed”: the museum stand-off between Talos and Gravik. The animosity and tension, paired with Gravik being one step ahead of Talos, not unlike a young Nick Fury would have been, had me on the edge of my seat. What does Fury’s absence here say about the series as a whole? In her review in
, keenly diagnosed that Secret Invasion “can’t decide if it wants to be a Nick Fury show or a Skrull show,” and that very much resonated with my own experience watching this week. The indecision or attempt to split the difference between a character study and a restoration of lost Skrull history to the MCU may explain the unmoored feeling I’ve been trying to shake. I think the series can include both; it just needs to designate one or the as the nucleus of the story.All that said, we still have to talk about the cliffhanger of the week, which, I have to admit, still put me in a tizzy. (I’m weak to serialized storytelling, and I make no apologies.) Fury’s wife, Varra, but… also somehow Priscilla (I’m not sure they explained that too well in the episode, or maybe I just missed it, still distracted by the owl with the tiny eyepatch) makes a phone call asking for Gravik, and the voice on the other end says, “Yea, well, you’re talking to me.” That voice almost certainly belongs to Rhoadey/War Machine. This seems like confirmation that he’s a Skrull working for Gravik.
There are other possibilities. Rhoadey may have intercepted the call because he’s monitoring Gravik, and wants to prevent Varra from getting in too deep. It’s also possible, by this same strain of logic, that Varra might not have betrayed Fury in his absence, but rather feels morally obligated to intervene due to what we saw in the flashback with a younger version of her and fury with an adolescent Gravik.
But — and I hate to bring this up yet again — do not forget The Power Broker reveal from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was the most obvious candidate all along and there were no red herrings. There weren’t even any pink ones; we all just got carried away and refused to see what was right in front of our faces because it seemed too easy. I also don’t think the MCU is brave and bold enough to say that Rhoadey and Everett Ross were Skrulls through large swaths of the Infinity Saga. By the end of this series, I predict that we’ll rescue Ross and Rhoadey and discover that they were only taken by Gravik’s Skrulls pretty recently in the MCU timeline. It would be mind-blowingly awesome to learn that Rhoadey being a Skrull since a much older Marvel film had a ripple effect, playing into Gravik’s hands in this series. That may be too much of a continuity high-wire act to pull off, though.
In short, Secret Invasion is probably going to feel a little too easy from here on out. Yet, there’s enough here for me to hang on for the uncomplicated ride.
A show that features Ben Mendelsohn and Samuel L Jackson is enough to keep me watching. I loved their performances and the introduction of Olivia Coleman and Emilia Clarke into the MCU were terrific additions. Story-wise though for me I’m afraid it’s getting too close to Agents of Shield as it boils a bit down to ‘a comic book hero show, without comic book heroes. I hate making that statement, but I think I’m trying to revise my expectations, even though I think I knew what the premise was for this series going in. Still going back and forth on this. Thanks for another great piece!