Secret Invasion Gets Personal In Its Penultimate Episode - But Is It Too Little, Too Late?
This article contains spoilers for "Secret Invasion" episode 5.
What drives a man like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to willingly endure "the path of struggle," as he later puts it to G'iah (Emilia Clarke) in episode 5 of "Secret Invasion" (titled "Harvest"), putting himself back in harm's way after having lost a step in the long years since the Blip? What keeps fueling Kingsley Ben-Adir's Gravik in his one-Skrull quest to overthrow Earth and create a new safe haven for his people? These are questions that the latest Marvel series posed in the premiere and especially in episode 2 ... before promptly sidestepping them for the majority of the intervening episodes.
With the season now winding down to a close, however, it's long past time to refocus on our main conflict — not just Skrulls vs. humanity, but the far more personal war between Fury and Gravik. It's been a struggle so far for this show to properly define its stakes, as Gravik notes himself when he announces to Fury: "I'm raising the stakes." Unfortunately, this feels more like an accidental admission that the series simply hasn't had much of that to this point.
As we're approaching the finale, episode 5 stuffs as much table-setting as it possibly can. Our heroes are forced to regroup after the death of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), the Skrulls resort to some rather unexpected infighting of their own as Gravik has to fend off a mutiny, and various subplots (some more interesting than others) weave their way into and out of the story as the pieces are put in place for next week's big showdown. In the middle of it all is the hint of an idea about the personal stakes between Gravik and Fury, but it's starting to get late early.
Take me to your leader
Is it just me or has it felt difficult to pin down exactly what this rebellious faction of Skrulls has even managed to accomplish thus far? The terrorist attack in Russia at the end of the premiere set the stage for an international powder keg and the onset of World War III, yet the overarching plot has mostly kept spinning its wheels until the attack on President Ritson's (Dermot Mulroney) motorcade last week. As we find out in this episode, however, even Talos' death hardly counts as much of a victory when Fury managed to whisk the injured President — their prime target — to safety. They couldn't kill the President, they let Fury get away, and second-in-command Pagon (Killian Scott) points out that they haven't even been able to recover the Avengers' DNA that Fury apparently hid from them.
Well, Gravik's people have finally started to notice that he's been an oddly ineffectual leader. Pagon's rather abrupt turn against Gravik and his subsequent death for daring to question his trustworthiness as a leader inspires an all-out mutiny, led by the newest recruit Beto (Samuel Adewunmi). It doesn't help that, despite all his previous appearances hinting at a greater role to come, he gets a knife to his throat for his troubles and none of this really ever goes anywhere. All this could've (and arguably should've) been set up and executed as a B-story running in the background of the entire season, mind you, but episode 5 breezes right through this subplot in shockingly little time at all. Although it's clearly meant to show how formidable Gravik has become with his Super Skrull abilities and the lengths he'll go to maintain his grip on power (even to the point of killing his own people!), it really only has the opposite effect of undermining any gravitas that Ben-Adir previously brought to the role.
As it turns out, it's kind of hard to take a supervillain seriously when he can barely even keep his own followers in line. Who knew! It's a bold strategy to make the show's main villain look like a bit of a chump just when he should be presenting the greatest threat, so we'll just have to see how this pays off in the finale.
The most wanted man on the planet
While Gravik's dealing with trouble at home, Fury sets off to get his house in order. When Don Cheadle's Rhodey (or the Skrull impersonating him, at least) sends Fury on the run by leaking the footage of Gravik murdering Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) while disguised as Fury, our hero has no choice but to leave the President behind and take his chances elsewhere. Luckily, Gravik suddenly has a change of heart about killing off Ritson (which only makes him look even more weak and indecisive, but I digress) and instead has "Rhodey" manipulate him into launching a strike against the Skrulls currently hiding in Russia.
In an effort to make amends, Fury reconnects with G'iah in the same London location where he recruited young Gravik and the rest of Talos' Skrulls all those years ago. His story of West Indies immigrants finding a safe haven here in the aftermath of World War II further connects Skrulls to the immigrant/refugee metaphor that 2019's "Captain Marvel" took great pains to establish (and which felt significantly undercut when "Secret Invasion" decided to turn them into villains), but this thread has felt mighty thin for weeks now. Regardless, the two have a heart-to-heart about the futility of Talos' death and the need for G'iah to bury her father, which sends her on a collision course with his wife Varra (Charlayne Woodard) — who's awaiting her execution for defying Gravik's orders to kill her husband.
This interlude at least two of the show's remaining female characters an opportunity to interact with one another, bonding over Skrull burial rituals as G'iah lays her father to rest and further exploring her chip on her shoulder about Skrulls having to hide in human form. Although they're inevitably interrupted by Gravik's henchmen and an obligatory shootout, this continues the show's trend of quiet conversational scenes packing more of a punch than any half-hearted action ever could. Their final parting, although maybe a bit rushed, provides a welcome bit of warmth in an otherwise dour episode.
The Harvest
There's no time like the present to finally get some clarity about the big villainous plot behind the entire show — especially when there's only one more episode to go. The other major highlight of the hour comes from the return of Olivia Colman's Sonya Falsworth, who embarks on her own personal Skrull hunt. After uncovering Director Weatherby as an extraterrestrial impersonator ("Who in the hell isn't a Skrull these days?" she hilariously remarks to Fury once she's informed about Rhodey later on), her investigation leads her directly to Dr. Rosa Dalton (Katie Finneran) and her scientific work for Gravik. Between the information she wrings out of the good doctor off-screen and Fury's intel in Finland as they travel to one of his fake gravesites, the exact parameters of the Harvest comes into focus.
In "The Battle of Earth," the epic defeat of Thanos as seen in "Avengers: Endgame," practically every Avenger inadvertently left behind DNA for interested parties to recover after the fact. Some of the "collectors" sent in were Skrulls, and according to Fury, this is how Gravik came up with the entire idea of Super Skrulls in the first place. It's not entirely clear why it took this long to find out why Fury holds himself responsible for their current plight and for him to articulate that this was the reason he returned to Earth from SABER in the first place, but better late than never, I guess?
In any case, all the talk of Avengers leads to Fury reasserting why he can't call them in to get them out of this jam. This is his problem, for better or worse, and it's up to him to prove his worth again by making things right. After recovering the vial of Avengers DNA and donning his famous eyepatch from a nearby safehouse, the episode ends on the resounding note that Fury is finally back and ready to save the day.
Stray thoughts
- Familiar Faces: Recognize that character who shows up in Fury's jet as he makes his way to Finland? That's none other than O-T Fagbenle's Rick Mason, the former soldier-turned-smuggler who we last saw in "Black Widow" helping Natasha Romanoff while she was on the run. Last time, he helped get Black Widow a Quinjet. This time, he's regretfully informing Fury that Helicarriers have been mothballed entirely. They had a good run!
- Widow's Veil: While on the subject of Black Widow-related Easter eggs, Sonya's wry remarks about Fury using the discount "Mission: Impossible" facemask tech to sneak into Finland leads to a throwaway detail that there's a new version of the mask that, apparently, is able to mimic more than just a face. In this business, that's what we call "foreshadowing," folks.
- Say What? Look, Emilia Clarke has been through so much. Forcing her to deliver the groanworthy one-liner, "Don't worry about me, I'll put on a good face" just feels unnecessarily cruel and unusual.
- Loose Ends: I'm the last person to draw attention to annoying little logic problems in movies or shows, believe me, but did anyone else find it bizarre that the Fury/"Rhodey" scene in the hospital early on acts as if the only way to uncover a Skrull is to kill them? As has been shown in previous episodes (and later in this very same one!), merely injuring a Skrull in disguise will cause them to revert back to their original green form. Fury, you could've saved yourself so much grief by exposing Rhodey as a Skrull right then and there!