Secret Invasion

Furiouser And Furiouser

Secret Invasion
USA June - July 2023
Six episodes
Marvel/Disney

Yeah, okay... I watched yet another Marvel TV series, this one based on their Secret Invasion comics. Now I’ve not read those but I’m guessing this is just the title that’s been borrowed here because the comics had absolutely loads of the Marvel super-hero characters in it (Spider-Man and The Avengers to name just a few) and was a big crossover event. Instead this show is trying... and not succeeding awfully well... to do a cold war spy drama like what you would get back in the 1960s which, to be fair, is exactly what they were doing in the sixties when the war comic Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandos was transformed by the cinematic scene into Nick Fury - Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

So we have Samuel L. Jackson reprising his role as Nick Fury and it follows on from the events depicted in Captain Marvel (reviewed here)... so we have Ben Mendelsohn returning as the Skrull Talos. These two have some great dialogue scenes together. Olivia Coleman does very well in a role somewhat reminiscent of the one she played in the TV show Citadel and she really shines in her scenes. Emilia Clarke does pretty well too, as Talos’ estranged daughter and Charlayne Woodard does a good job as Fury’s Skrull lover. But that’s about it as far as what’s good about the show goes.

Firstly, the show starts off with Martin Freeman reprising his role from the Marvel films except, the last time we saw him in Black Panther - Wakanda Forever (reviewed here) he ended up a fugitive from justice so... what the heck he’s doing here as a friendly agent (and also a Skrull pretending to be him) is anybody’s guess but, continuity totally seems to have got screwed here.

And this is basically a spy game with a faction of the shape shifting Skrulls wanting to take over the planet after what they see as a lack of commitment from Fury and Talos, infiltrating government and trying to start World War Three so they can inherit the planet after the humans have all wiped themselves out. So it’s doubles or rather, a game of ‘spot which one is really a Skrull’ for six episodes and it gets old really quickly. The Mission Impossible films barely get away with the ‘mask’ shenanigans these days but they do it better than what’s on offer here, for sure. And the stakes are kinda lost when you know anyone could be a Skrull... Whose death is real? Who is actually someone else etc? For instance, when Don Cheadle returns as Rhodey and fires Nick Shield, it’s obvious he’s a Skrull so why does it take everybody else a number of episodes to realise that?

So... it’s not a terrible series and there were some nice moments in it but, yeah, it does kinda fail to capture that whole spy movie feel that Captain America - The Winter Soldier (reviewed here) got right for a lot of its running time. To give an example which is probably quite telling, when I started to watch this the people who I usually watch the Marvel shows with told me that they no longer wanted to see anymore after the first episode... they thought it was that bad. I myself took a couple of months just to get through watching the first three episodes so... it wasn’t a ‘must see’ show for me. In fact, the only reason I binged the last three episodes is because The Marvels hits cinemas very soon (review coming tomorrow) and I wanted to make sure I understood where everyone is supposed to be in play at the start of that... although, if the continuity follow through is as bad as it is here, I guess it kinda doesn’t matter after all.

And that’s kinda where I’m at on this one. A fairly short review, I know but... I really don’t have much to say about it. The actors all did a fine job in Secret Invasion but, excepting a few dialogue scenes, they weren’t being supported by good writing on the story beats and it shows. Not the disaster it’s been made out to be by some for sure but, also just not as interesting as a cold war espionage story should be, I would say.