Secret Invasion S1E1: Resurrection
It’s been a while since a Marvel TV show felt important. Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law were entertaining but small-scale; Moon Knight felt disconnected from the rest of the MCU; What If…? was a fun experiment. But with Secret Invasion, the first Marvel series of “Phase Five,” and the first since Disney+ took a break from more or less continuously airing Marvel shows back in October, is made to feel like a big deal.
We’ve got a high-stakes, high-concept premise — Samuel L. Jackson’s secret agent Nick Fury fighting off shapeshifting aliens the Skrulls (introduced to both Fury and the audience in Captain Marvel). We’ve got an almost comically overqualified cast — besides Don Cheadle and Martin Freeman showing up as their recurring MCU characters, Oscar Winner Olivia Coleman is on hand as an MI6 spymaster, and Dermot Mulroney makes a brief appearance as The President. Not to mention the regular cast, which includes Cobie Smulders returning as Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague Maria Hill, and Emilia Clarke as a Skrull who’s not what she seems.
But then, none of the Skrulls are what they seem. They’re alien shapeshifters, who have traditionally been villains in Marvel comics, which let Captain Marvel give us the terrific twist of the Skrulls being on our side. But that was 30 years of digital de-aging ago. Marvel and Fury promised to find the Skrulls a new planet to call home… and then got busy with other stuff. So now a rebel faction of Skrulls has decided that since they’re already here, they’ll just take over Earth, thankyouverymuch. So there are good Skrulls and bad Skrulls, and telling which is which isn’t much easier than telling who among us isn’t human, when humans are deceptive enough as it is.
Largely because most of the humans we meet are spies. A paranoid CIA agent calls in Freeman’s Agent Ross, who calls in Hill, who calls in Fury, and we’re off to the races. Making Secret Invasion a spy thriller is a terrific thematic use of the Skrulls, as pretending to be someone else and not knowing who to trust are staples of the genre. But it also means “Resurrection” hits us with a ton of characters without any clear idea of who’s important or who’s on which side, and the murderer’s row of actors on the payroll are mostly just here to spout exposition, to catch us up on the various factions — both human and Skrull — and what they’re all up to.
The exposition largely works because a lot of characters need to catch Fury up on a lot of things. He’s been in outer space and largely absent from events since Endgame (and since then, Jackson has only appeared in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and even then his character was revealed to be a Skrull impersonating Fury, not the real thing). Fury hasn’t been the same since the Blip… which we know because three different characters tell him that, not because of anything markedly different with the character. Yes, he has a grizzled beard now and walks with a limp (which we can only assume he’s faking so people will let their guard down), but on the surface he’s the same cool customer with the million-dollar glower.
And that’s the big problem with the first episode. We’re thrown into a lot of action without giving a whole lot of reason to care about it apart from the fate of the world being at stake, as usual. Emilia Clarke’s G’iah is the daughter of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), the friendly Skrull we met in Captain Marvel, they’re on opposite sides of things, and they’re both sad because her mom died. Talos says the Skrulls G’iah are now working with were responsible, but we don’t get any details or even much of a reaction from G’iah. It just feels like we’re checking a lot of boxes.
Hero who’s too old for this shit. Check.
Conspiracy that would seem incredibly unlikely, except, if it weren’t true there wouldn’t be a show. Check.
Villain plot that’s just a setup for a much bigger plot. Check.
Passing reference to past MCU events without any real deep connection. Check.
Granted, we’re only one episode in. It’s possible after this week’s table-setting, we’ll get to the main course, where actors get to act and storylines get to carry emotional weight. But this is only a 6-episode season. They’d better get moving.
Stray thoughts:
• A terrorist attack in Moscow is planned for “Unity Day,” which may sound like the kind of made-up holiday they use in the movies, but it’s a Russian national holiday commemorating a 1612 victory in a rare occasion when Poland invaded Russia and not the other way around.
• The faction of disaffected Skrulls who are staging terrorist attacks and have a vague plan to bring the world to its knees led by an actress who was in Solo: A Star Wars Story is a little too reminiscent of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s faction of disaffected super-soldiers who were staging terrorist attacks and had a vague plan to bring the world to its knees led by an actress who was in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
• If we seem cynical about this episode, it’s only because we had high hopes for the series. Some of the best Marvel projects have taken on genres apart from the straight action movie, and a John le Carré novel with shapeshifting aliens is a killer premise.