The primary episode of Marvel’s Secret Invasion collection was a stable begin to a spy collection that would upend the Marvel Cinematic Universe, during which a gaggle of extremist shape-shifting Skrull refugees are plotting to take over Earth and, within the course of, kill the people who stay there. It is well-written, the solid is uniformly nice, it does not appear like it was shot on a particularly fake-looking CGI soundstage. I am unable to assist however hope that this might be a uncommon Marvel season that manages to begin properly after which keep its high quality.
However the first episode of Secret Invasion additionally gave me a sense I have been getting from the MCU loads over the previous few years: Why wasn’t this story ever arrange or teased prior to now? There have been 11 motion pictures and eight seasons of TV which have come out for the reason that Skrulls had been launched in Captain Marvel, however all that Marvel has achieved with them since is to very often remind us that Nick Fury’s inexperienced buddies are nonetheless round. And there is been nothing, in the meantime, about these secret different Skrulls who’re doing that titular invasion.
Warning: This text incorporates mild spoilers for the primary episode of Secret Invasion, and it additionally discusses main plot particulars from some previous Marvel collection, like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision.
Because it stands proper now, there have been no significant story precursors in any respect for Secret Invasion since Spider-Man: Far From Dwelling in 2020. Not one of the 9 motion pictures or eight seasons of TV that we have gotten since Far From Dwelling have been related to what is going on on here–and the final canonical look by a Skrull was on the finish of WandaVision, when one of many aliens working for Fury recruited Monica Rambeau for one thing we nonetheless have not seen but. Monica will not be anticipated to seem on Secret Invasion, so no matter that was possible will not come up till The Marvels this fall.
That lack of connective tissue between completely different motion pictures and reveals has been an more and more sore spot for followers within the post-Endgame period, and it is a difficulty that is exacerbated by the way it usually appears like that connective tissue was current in a narrative after which eliminated. It is not a totally ridiculous thought. The MCU expanded dramatically with the addition of Disney+ collection, after which COVID-19 upended the discharge schedule–it follows that sacrifices must be made as soon as issues received out of order as a result of there have been and are so many transferring components.
One of many largest victims of that shuffling needs to be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a collection that by no means actually settled on a thematic focus as a result of its villains, the Flag Smashers, had been so poorly sketched out, leaving a bizarre gaping gap the place their character improvement and private motivations had been imagined to go. In the course of the Blip, nationwide strains had been redrawn or erased, and other people lived the place they happy. However as soon as the half-empty world grew to become full once more, all people tried to push issues again to the outdated normal–and that left a whole lot of people newly displaced, which led to the formation of the Flag Smashers.
However whatever the righteousness of their trigger, by the top of the present they’re all lifeless, and Sam Wilson completed their mission by giving a “why cannot all of us simply get alongside?” speech on TV.
The entire bit was unsatisfying and obscure, and it felt just like the true thematic core of the story had been sucked out. Since that was very early within the post-Endgame cycle, it was powerful to even know the place to start making an attempt to determine how they’d gutted this story. Now, we have now too many potentialities, however Secret Invasion has given me my favourite one up to now: that the early days of this Skrull invasion had been part of this story, however their half was reduce.
The side of Secret Invasion that put the thought into my head is that these Skrull rebels have a remarkably related trigger to that of the Flag Smashers. These alien refugees, whose world was demolished by the Kree, had been promised a brand new residence by Nick Fury. However Fury received snapped, and he hasn’t come via with something since his return, and so a gaggle of those Skrulls determine to take issues into their very own, newly extremist arms in an effort to get issues achieved. They’re just about the Flag Smashers: Outer House Version.
Other than that remarkably apparent thematic parallel, there’s nothing else of observe within the textual content that actively helps this concept. But it surely matches properly sufficient circumstantially in a whole lot of other ways. The rushed new Captain America may actually be the work of a secret Skrull within the U.S. authorities who needs an unwitting Skrull-controlled superhero who can act within the open on Earth. On the similar time, Skrulls are tremendous sturdy to start with, and so that you would not have the ability to inform the distinction between a Skrull disguised as a human and a human who had taken the tremendous soldier serum like members of the Flag Smashers had.
However I need to stress once more that that is largely hypothesis and guesswork. It is educated hypothesis and guesswork, however that is nonetheless a really great distance from verified truth. Thankfully, although, if there’s something to this concept, we’ll most likely discover out fairly quickly. Whereas the MCU did not handle to arrange a lot of Secret Invasion prematurely, it is a good guess that it’s going to retroactively insert these insurgent Skrulls into previous tales in order to determine how they’ve managed to get this far of their secret warfare.
Retroactively organising your story in flashbacks actually would not be as satisfying as it might have been if that they had arrange this storyline prematurely the conventional method, but when they’ll handle to successfully promote these retcons, it may go a great distance towards fixing the MCU within the close to future by really giving the MCU a much bigger image as soon as once more.
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