Secret Invasion arrived on Disney+ on June 21, 2023, with a promise the Marvel Cinematic Universe had not kept in years: a story about spies, not gods. The six-episode season ran through July 26, 2023, and left Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury back on Earth, a Skrull insurgency led by Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik, and a nagging sense that the whole thing was assembled from parts that never quite fit.
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
Nick Fury Comes Home
The premise is strong. Fury and Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos uncover a conspiracy by renegade Skrulls who have been infiltrating Earth for years, posing as humans to seize the planet’s resources. Gravik breaks from Talos and sets up in a decommissioned radioactive site in Russia. Kyle Bradstreet created the series, Ali Selim directed, and the cast runs deep: Emilia Clarke as Talos’s daughter G’iah, Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth, Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Dermot Mulroney as President Ritson, Killian Scott as Gravik’s second-in-command Pagon.
Jackson said the series let him “explore something other than the badassery of who Nick Fury is,” including the toll of the job on his personal life. That is the show’s best idea.
A Creative Team in Flux
The production history explains a lot. Development began by September 2020. Filming started in London by September 2021 and wrapped in late April 2022. Then much of the creative team was replaced: Brian Tucker took over as writer from Bradstreet, Thomas Bezucha exited, and extensive reshoots ran from mid-June to late September 2022.
The churn is visible in the finished season. Storylines start and stall. Characters arrive with weight they have not earned. That is the paper’s read, not a connection the production record establishes.
The Skrulls, Ranked by What They Deliver
- Gravik — Ben-Adir found the right pitch of hatred for a leader who trusts no one and needs everyone.
- Talos — Mendelsohn plays a man who has lost his footing, and the weariness lands.
- G’iah — Clarke gets the arc with the most at stake and the least room to play it.
- Sonya Falsworth — Colman is sharp, underused, and gone too soon.
- Pagon — Killian Scott’s second-in-command is a function, not a person.
What the Show Gets Right
The Skrull premise is genuinely good. Anyone can be anyone, which should make every handshake a threat. Gravik is not, as Selim put it, “just a bad guy with a bomb,” and the series tries to explore him. Fury is worn out and uncertain of his place in the world in part because of the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and that gives Jackson real material. Jonathan Schwartz, an executive producer, said “sins from [Fury’s] past start to haunt him once again.” That thread is the show’s spine, and when it holds, Secret Invasion works.
Where It Comes Apart
The paranoia never bites. A shapeshifter story lives or dies on whether you doubt the person across the table, and Secret Invasion rarely makes you. Priscilla, Fury’s Skrull wife, is played by Charlayne Woodard. The season gives her little room.
Six episodes is not the problem. Six episodes that behave like eight is.
The show’s real failure is structural, not tonal. Gravik’s rebellion is built on a grievance the series states but never dramatizes: the Skrulls were promised a home and never got one. Fury’s guilt over that broken promise is the only engine strong enough to carry six episodes, and the season keeps cutting away from it to service a conspiracy plot that resolves without cost. Strip out the Marvel machinery and what remains is a spy story that forgot to make betrayal hurt. The churn behind the camera is the likeliest culprit, and it is the part worth watching if Marvel tries this again.
Secret Invasion scores 6.4 of 10.
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