Secret Invasion Review: A Disappointing Farce of an MCU Story
Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Columnist
Please note: spoilers abound regarding the MCU show “Secret Invasion”.
I usually advise audiences who watch comic book movies to try not to watch the shows or movies too intently. The more questions you ask about the plausibility of events, the less you understand how to watch the programming. Any show about people with superpowers is a show you need to suspend disbelief about fundamentally.
The purpose is not to educate or inform you about the human condition or the world around you. The goal is to entertain.
*Deep breath*
With that said, the key to good comic book movies is to try at least explain logically what’s happening in the movies when it comes to crazy superpowers on screen.
For example, a common trope in comic book movies is shapeshifters. Some of them can look like anyone they want, talk any way they want, wear whatever clothes they want, and sometimes all the person’s identity they are assuming’s deepest secrets.
I'm not fond of this trope because it leads to lazy writing and plot devices. If a shapeshifter can be any person at any time, you can’t trust anything you see on screen. Also, it’s usually hard to understand why shapeshifters always prefer one specific human body for 90% of the screen time.
However, if there are rules or conditions for shapeshifting, it makes for more interesting programming. For example, in Secret Invasion, the Skrulls can shapeshift into whatever person or creature they want, but they have to see at least the person to do it, and if they want that person’s brain, they have to hook them up to a machine to zap their thoughts away. The technology is preposterous, especially at the speed that it happens, with zero effects, but at least it’s a rule that limits them from essentially being gods.
Unfortunately for Secret Invasion, that’s about the only kind thing I can say about the logic of the show.
Let’s start with the last episode. The Macguffin was revealed to be “The Harvest”, a collection of the Avenger’s DNA that Gravik wanted to further make the Skrulls unstoppable in their quest to conquer Earth. Nick Fury revealed in the 5th episode that he collected it after the events of Avengers: Endgame as an insurance policy of sorts in case he needed it, and, I am inferring, other bad guys didn’t get it. Sounds promising and scary, but many questions arose:
1) How did they know whose DNA they collected?
2) How did they know the DNA wasn’t compromised by thousands of beings stepping all over it, never mind the fire and explosions potentially tainting it?
3) Why would they put all the DNA samples into a single vial?
4) How would they know all the DNA would perfectly mesh in a single Skrull organism, despite being a wild mix of human and alien DNA?
The short answer is that they had six episodes to answer these questions, and they waited until the 5th episode even to reveal the MacGuffin, so they handwaved all these logical questions. Any answer doesn’t have to be rooted in science; it just needs an explanation or some limiting principles.
Also, what exactly was the plan to defeat Gravik? Was G’iah supposed to give him the Harvest? If so, was the plan that she knew she would also be in the machine that gave Gravik the Avenger powers? What if she still couldn’t stop him? How would she even know how to use the powers? What would have been the plan if Gravik tied her up outside of the machine?
Unfortunately, the leaps of faith weren’t limited to the MacGuffin. We had Sonya Falsworth holding the fake Colonel Rhoades at gunpoint, trying to convince the president that he was a Skrull, when all she had to do to persuade him, as she had done previously, was shoot him in a limb to reveal himself. Why did she not do it? We can’t say because it was never brought up, even though two lines of dialogue could have explained it.
Why did the secret service agent willingly hand over his only gun to a clearly hobbled president, further jeopardizing their safety?
Going back to episode 4, when Gravik attempted a presidential assassination, how was the area not clear of any unknown cars, planes, or helicopters, as is protocol every second of every day concerning the president? How did a completely unknown helicopter carrying enemy combatants quickly enter restricted airspace?
For a show that is supposed to be a grounded spy thriller, these are obvious questions that must be addressed but weren’t.
I could go on, but for all our sakes, our brains are too numb from going through these suspensions of disbelief.
Secret Invasion was billed as a spy thriller but was actually a Nick Fury character study, and, I’ll admit, a decent one at that! But of course, they couldn’t market the show as that because no one would watch.
This was also a good showcase for Ben Mendelsohn as Talos and a wonderful showcase for Olivia Coleman as Sonya Falsworth, whom I hope we see a whole lot more of in future projects (is she being set up as the next Nick Fury? Time will tell)
The frustrating thing, of course, is the comic book source material had a great basis for a great TV show, which they hinted at in the closing scenes of Secret Invasion. If millions of Skrulls were around us, paranoia would run rampant, society would be in chaos, and the world would be at war.
But, for reasons unknown, that wasn’t the show Marvel gave us. It decided to provide us with a Nick Fury character study instead.
What a disappointment.