Secret Invasion S1E3: Betrayal

Three weeks into a six-week show, and we should really have a clearer idea of what’s going on in Secret Invasion and why we should care. I mean, sure, Gravik wants to wipe out humanity so the Skrulls can take over, but we know that isn’t going to happen. Thematically, it’d make sense for Fury to die at the end of the series to redeem some of his mistakes given how much time has been given to him running from and not atoning for past failures, but we know he’ll still be alive for The Marvels because we’ve seen the trailers.

But it’s hard to tell what’s going on thematically. We get glimpses of a few things — new Evil Skrull recruit Beto seems unsure about joining the bad guys, but we only spend a quick moment with him. Gravik’s building some sort of machine to turn the bad Skrulls into “super Skrulls,” but we don’t get an explanation of what that means, except that it’s somehow going to lead to a confrontation with the Avengers, an all out war, and the extinction of the human race.

But first another flashback to 1998, where De-Aged Nick Fury meets with Varra — his Skrull girlfriend (wife? Again, it’s not clear) who we saw at the end of last episode. In the present, she gives him a hard time for being away for years — like everyone else has — and we still don’t get a reason why he retreated to space for so long.

Gravik’s becoming suspicious of G’iah, and it’s still not clear to us whether her loyalties lie with Gravik or her father, Talos, because while we’ve seen a lot of G’iah sneaking around, we still don’t really know her at all. Gravik lets her overhear information about his plan to have a nuclear submarine shoot down a UN jet, presumably to find out whether she’s leaking it. Then he meets with Talos — Gravik is brash and overconfident in his plan to take over the world, Talos is wary, and thinks Gravik understimates humans. “They’re at their most formidable when they’re threatened by a common foe.” If Gravik attacks, Talos promises to expose Gravik’s faction of evil Skrulls and trust that the humans won’t pain them all with the same brush.

After the meeting, Fury shows up to lean on Talos to help him go after a Skrull infiltrating the US government, but Talos isn’t impressed. The Skrull in question is presumably Rhodey, who fired Fury from S.H.I.E.L.D. last week, although it’s entirely likely that he wasn’t a Skrull and was just sick of Fury’s bullshit. Talos is sick of his bullshit too — in his opinion, all of Fury’s success with S.H.I.E.L.D. came on the back of Talos and his network of Skrull spies, and Fury’s done little for his Skrull friends in return. Fury’s unimpressed, although given how important Talos is to Fury both in the past and in the moment, it’s not clear why he’s being such a dick to him.

They quickly put their differences aside because there’s still that nuclear sub to worry about. G’iah passes on information to Talos about the attack, and Fury learns from Olivia Coleman’s chummy spymaster the name of the naval commodore in charge of the sub. Fury and Talos break into the Commodore’s house, hoping to stop him before ordering the attack. 

After they kill several security guards, I fully expect it to be a fakeout in which there was no attack and the two have to explain themselves, but no, there’s a Skrull impersonating the Commodore. He’s already ordered the attack, and they have to get a code out of him to order the sub to call it off. Fury’s the bad cop, while Talos is reluctant to beat an answer out of a fellow Skrull. But the moment the Skrull taunts him by calling G’iah a traitor, Talos kills hm. Oops.

Thankfully Gravik has the real Commodore in one of his Matrix-like pods so that the impostor can access his memories. G’iah’s able to gets the password just in time and pass it along to her father. She high-tails it out of the compound, but Gravik is waiting for her. The whole thing was a ploy to flush out the traitor after all.

That’s not good news for G’iah, but it’s not that easy to care. That might be because the trap she walks into was so clearly telegraphed at the beginning of the episode. Or maybe it’s because, three episodes in, we don’t really know her that well or have much reason to care about her more than Talos does, but even then, we only got a quick glimpse of their prickly relationship.

Stopping the attack was a good thing, in theory, but it’s hard to care too much about that either. We don’t know anyone on that UN plane, and we have to take Gravik’s word for it that the attack will lead to war and not more of the brow-furrowing we got after the dirty bomb attack. Speaking of which, is Moscow permanently irradiated now? Doesn’t matter, the attack’s already been forgotten on this show where nearly everything is weightless. Given that Marvel is in the business of making movies that introduce new characters and get you to care about them in two hours and change, their TV shows should be better at this.

Stray thoughts:
• Talos doesn’t get the human-dog relationship. “Name me one other interspecies relationship where it’s acceptable to clean up the other guy’s poop.”

• The UN is always far more powerful and important on these kinds of shows than it is in real life. Unless you’re a conspiracy-obsessed weirdo, ask yourself when the last time you spent more than three minutes thinking about the UN was.

• I’ll give the episode credit for one thing — digitally de-aged Fury looked more lifelike than he did last week.

• Fury meets Valla in the past, and then refers to her as Scilla in the present. Apparently her human identity is Priscilla, but that isn’t mentioned on the show (I had to look it up), and given we only hear each name once, it’s needlessly confusing.

• The moment during Talos’ meeting with Gravik where he threatens Gravik and every bystander in the room shapeshifts into Gravik is a killer moment in the trailer. But it falls a bit flat here, given that a few minutes later Talos hurts Gravik and the other Skrulls just sit back and let it happen. (He heals immediately, presumably because he’s now a Super Skrull, not that show has given non-Marvel-comics-readers any idea what that means.)

• We’ll end on a positive note. While the show hasn’t put much effort into giving the characters depth or real emotional stakes, Ben Mendelsohn is doing yeoman’s work as world-weary, conflicted Talos. Even when he’s tearing down Fury, he clearly has affection for — and intense loyalty to — him, and that’s 10% writing and 90% acting. Mendelsohn’s bringing more emotional depth to his character than the rest of the show put together.