The Short Take:
No miracles here. While the show has a nice ending for Nick Fury and in the end nets slightly positive for his character development, this series ends with the same problems with which it started.
Image Credit: Entertainment Tonight
[SPOILER WARNING: Big spoilers from the get-go, since this is a finale.]
The Long Take:
Of all the spy joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into Fury’s.
Deep down, I’m an old romantic at heart, and even if I weren’t, I’m only human. So I have to acknowledge that seeing Nick Fury make amends with his wife, Varra, and seeing him show us that he really did love her true Skrull self rather than the human face that “put him at ease,” was nice. Seeing them beam up together in a space ship to broker a treaty with the Kree so that the Skrulls could reclaim their place in the cosmos felt good.
Fury saying, “We’re better together,” I’ll admit, felt hokey and cheesy. And their kiss felt awkward, like the camera was too self-conscious about actually staging human/alien intimacy. But, look, the man deserves to be happy.
When I look back at all six episodes of Secret Invasion, the Fury/Varra relationship feels the most grounded and authentic narrative element. It cuts through all the plot noise and handwaving of the geopolitical climate or international relations in the MCU. I probably wouldn’t feel that way had we not gotten all the development of their relationship in Episode 4. Maybe that just means that the story thread the series invested the most time and energy in paid off the most.
Image Credit: Dexerto
Unfortunately, however, other than this nice resolution to Fury’s marriage story, from distrustful and distant enemy lovers to united allies who can actually spend time together, this final episode exhibited much of the patchiness of earlier episodes. The main revelation of the secret Skrull plot was that even though Fury, Sonya, and G’iah took down fake Rhoadey and saved the President’s life, the President did not react with the gratitude and good will they thought he would. Instead, he declares war on all Skrulls and pledges to hunt them all down, regardless of whether they were members of Gravik’s rebellion. This does reinforce Fury’s words about how saving 8 billion people’s lives is a lot easier than opening their hearts and minds; yet, there wasn’t really consistent enough engagement with the theme of intolerance for that to have that much impact emotionally. Maybe if we had seen a loving human relationship between an unsuspecting human and Skrull, with the human tragically turning on the Skrull when they reveal their true identity (out of love rather than subterfuge)? The problem with all the Skrulls being secret is we never really see how humans would react to aliens among them until the President appears on TV threatening them all, in a very abstract manner.
Because of all this, I’m almost ready to declare that the Disney+ Marvel format, with the shorter six-odd episode season, creates an unnecessary uphill battle for writers and showrunners. What works perfectly well in a quick 5-issue run of comic books does not translate into serialized storytelling for screen. Or maybe it’s that creators have to approach a series like Secret Invasion as a movie that’s too long and needs to be broken up into episodes rather than a properly paced, laid out, gradual season of television. Each episode has to be its own contained story, but also has to move the needle of the season forward. The less successful Marvel Disney+ series like Secret Invasion seem to struggle with how to do that in only six episodes.
Even the guest stars or exciting MCU crossover characters don’t get enough screen time in this format. Shame on these creators for thinking that three seconds of Martin Freeman waking up in his fracking pod and looking around confused would satisfy me. I wanted more! (I actually really enjoy him as Agent Ross in the Black Panther films. I think he’s got great comedic timing and puts a warmer spin on the agent/suit archetype.) I get that he’s a busy man, and I get that they have him look over at Rhoadey. But I feel like some substantive conversation between the two of them, or cutting to later when Ross knows what’s going on and can comment on the whole situation would have justified his cameo in the series.
I was similarly dissatisfied with the Gravik-G’iah fight. On paper, it sounds epic. If someone said to me, “what if we had two characters who absorbed all the Avengers’ DNA and could use any and all of their powers at will?”, I would have said, “that sounds incredibly cool; I can’t wait to see it.” And I will admit that G’iah using Mantis’ powers to put Gravik to sleep mid-air was cool. But something about the blocking of the choreography here, probably combined with the middling VFX, made this sufficient but not climactic in the way it was likely intended.
And while the Fury/G’iah switcher-oo makes a lot of sense for the practical realities of the story, as I think any sane person — including Fury himself — would hesitate to send Nick Fury into a radiation-ridden zone with just a bottle of pills, the reveal that it was G’iah all along undercuts the dramatic impact of the apology to Gravik. If these two characters really had such a strong relationship, then we probably needed an apology from the real Fury that counted.
Image Credit: Forbes
All that said, the idea of G’iah sticking around in the MCU and joining the small pantheon of ridiculously overpowered Marvel characters is fun and might be just the kind of power-balancing the MCU needs in its current state. If Scarlet Witch were ever to come back, we’d need a character with all the fire power of Captain Marvel paired with all the nearly reality-bending rolodex of power in order to be a legitimate challenger, especially if Carol Danvers or Stephen Strange are not available. Or…how about we retcon that the version of her in Multiverse of Madness was just an evil variant we don’t care about and bring back WandaVision Wanda and then they can all be on the same team? I’m never going to let that one go.
It’s clear that G’iah has some kind of a future in the MCU, because that’s the only reason to have a scene with her and Sonya Falsworth, in which they create a new human-Skrull alliance. The prospect of these two skilled British actors spending more time opposite one another excites me. I can already feel their chilly yet respectful antagonism as Olivia Colman dryly and wryly says, “Yes, let's be sure not to repeat the mistakes of Talos and Fury and leave love and friendship out of it.” If these two become more important figures down the line, then this series might have been worth it, flaws and all. Perhaps while Fury leads the charge in space, Sonya and G’iah will become our go-to Fury-esque characters, running around all the more Earth-bound stories of Phase 5. Again, I feel like you don’t hire actors of this caliber unless you have bigger plans for them.
In the more immediate future, at least, we can see what plans the MCU has for Nick Fury: The Marvels, which is slated to hit theaters November 10. This next film was actually supposed to be out this week, which explains why my kids ended up with “Princess Carol” toys in their happy meals yesterday. She’s wearing a ball gown version of her red, blue, and gold suit. I’m really curious how that’s going to manifest in the movie.
At any rate, it seems that sending Fury back into the stars at the end of this series will put him where he needs to be for The Marvels because I’m pretty sure all of his scenes in the trailer are on ships in space, save a hilarious house call to the Khans. Will the villain, who appears to be a Kree, try to interfere with the establishment of a new home for the Skrulls? And what role will Goose play in the Skrull relocation project? My kids were surprisingly into Princess Carol, but they kept saying that they really wish they’d gotten the “cat eating a starfish.”