Secret Invasion Episode 2 review: Grown-up, brutal MCU

❘ Published: 2023-06-28T08:00:00

Samuel L. Jackson in Secret Invasion Episode 2

Disney+

Secret Invasion Episode 2 is a promising look at a more grown-up, considered MCU; there’s torture, finger-chopping violence, and a frightening sense of powerlessness.

Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe changing? Its post-Endgame legacy is rocky, to say the least: with the exception of Spider-Man: No Way Home, in itself an anomaly because of all the Sony nonsense, the box office results have been slipping. The reception from fans and critics alike has been waning. Are we just… over it?

Well, for our money, the franchise is two-for-two so far: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 was a one-of-a-kind triumph, and Secret Invasion’s premiere pulled off the miracle of selling a seemingly semi-skimmed premise with stakes that felt refreshingly real.

This week, once you spit out the sour taste of those AI-generated credits, you’re in for a treat: we learn more about the extent of Gravik’s world-seizing plans, Olivia Colman’s Sonya shines even more nastily, and it paves an exciting path.

Secret Invasion flashback tells us more about Gravik

After a nippy flashback to the events of Captain Marvel – more than a few casual viewers have confessed to feeling confused about who’s who and what’s what, so this makes sense – we jump forward to 1997 in Brixton, London, where Nick Fury is appealing to the Skrulls to help him. In return, he’ll find them a proper home.

One young Skrull who lost his parents in the last stand against the Kree is keen to get involved: Gravik, who tells Fury that his parents “died a brilliant death.” Even from an early age, Gravik has clear definitions of honor, and when Fury tells him the work will be dangerous, he’s not afraid. Those around him say they went looking for a home but “found nothing but violence and hate… our entire species is scattered across the galaxy” – but Fury’s promise is enticing. A few good deeds for humanity and they’ll have their own world again. “You keep your word, and I’ll keep mine,” he says.

We return to the present day in the fallout of Gravik’s terrorist attack in Moscow. Maria Hill’s body lies among the masses of the dead under the ash and chaos, and Fury is quickly thrown into a fan by Talos in disguise. If you’re holding out for Maria’s return, don’t: she’s dead as a Dodo, and we get to meet her mum Elizabeth for the first time when her body is brought back to London (unsurprisingly, an American group being framed for the Moscow attack has put the two nations at odds). Fury asks how she died, and when he dances around the question, she snarls: “Don’t be one of those b*stards who that gives me a platitude.”

Fury assures promises that her daughter’s death was quick, but that it was at the hands of someone who wanted to kill him. “I don’t know what Maria died for, but don’t let it be for nothing,” she says, coldly.

Talos and Fury butt heads

As Talos and Fury leave Moscow on a train, Fury reminisces about the journeys he used to take with his “mama” when he was a child, armed with fried chicken, devilled eggs, and white bread. With nothing to do, she’d ask him: “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know” – so, Fury gives Talos the same question, but with regards to the destruction of Skrullos.

It doesn’t take long for him to confess: when Skrullos was destroyed, millions of Skrulls were forced to flee… and they ended up on Earth. Gravik may have at least 100 operators in the field, but the actual tally of their kind is incalculable at this point. Fury is, well, furious, but Talos was in an impossible situation: if he didn’t summon his people to Earth, they would have been annihilated. In his view, with Fury’s help, Skrulls could co-exist with humans – but Fury is too cynical. “Humans can’t coexist with each other,” he barks, and he tells Talos to leave.

Admittedly, if you stop to think about the politics of the show, it gets a bit messy: Captain Marvel did a great job by reframing the alien so-called invaders as victims of genocide. All they wanted was a home. Now, despite his close relationship with the Skrulls, Fury isn’t open to them coming to Earth, and the shapeshifters are being tarred with the terrorist brush? The eek-worthy readings of it are surely unintentional, but still worth considering.

Gravik meets with the council

Episode 2 is pivotal in how much it peels back about the current state of the MCU’s world. With the Moscow attack dominating newspapers and TV around the world, with many predicting Russian retaliation, Gravik meets with a secret council of global powers, including UK Prime Minister Pamela Lawton (Anna Madeley), NATO Secretary General Sergio Caspani (Giampiero Judica), and Shirley Sagar (Seeta Indrani).

They want to know why he didn’t kill Fury on the spot. “He’s just vapors… old. You don’t punish a man by giving him what he wants,” he says. They’re also angry about Gravik killing 2,000 people in an attack that wasn’t agreed by the council. For Gravik, it’s simple: Fury abandoned the Skrulls, so he’s decided to turn Earth into their new home, and in order to do that, he’ll throw mankind into all-out war. “Humans are doomed to self-destruction… we’re only hastening the inevitable,” he warns them.

And then comes the jaw-dropping reveal: they’re all Skrulls. In an emotional sense, it means nothing: we’ve just met these people, so why should we care? But think about the fabric of governance across the planet – how far back does the puppeteering go? It should promise harsher rug pulls ahead. Shirley refuses to cooperate, but she’s allowed to leave in peace. The rest of them submit to Gravik and vote him in as the new wartime general; a single fist to slam the world map, with absolute power at his fingertips.

Fury and Rhodey face off

After his brief appearance in Episode 1, Rhodey returns for an interrogation over the events in Moscow and the whereabouts of Fury and Maria. He basically pleads the fifth for most of the time, but Don Cheadle is still on hilarious form – he tells his assistant: “If Slovakia rolls her eyes at me one more time, I’m gonna put on the suit and carpet bomb it.”

As he leaves, he receives a call from Fury, and they agree to meet in a restaurant for a private chat. “Do me a favor and try not to pop off a nuclear holocaust before I get there,” Rhodey jokes. When they meet, it’s hard to not feel immediately deprived in hindsight – why have these two incredibly charismatic actors not shared more scenes in the MCU? Whatever the answer is, it ain’t good enough – this is easily the best scene in the show so far. “We’re being invaded and we can’t even tell who the invaders are,” Fury says.

Rhodey asks why they shouldn’t enlist the Avengers to fight the Skrulls, but Fury says this is a fight he needs to handle alone (also, they could steal their identities and pretend to be terrorists, and what good will that serve anyone?). All Fury wants is a bit of help, but Rhodey gives him the opposite: he fires him. “You earned all this smoke, brother,” he says, but when they try to put the cuffs on him, he makes light work of the footsoldier. “I’m Nick Fury. Even when I’m out, I’m in,” he says.

Sonya tortures a Skrull

Brogan (Ben Peel), a Skrull who stole a soldier’s face earlier in the show, finds himself captured. Sonya is brought in to find out what Gravik is up to; where he’s based, if there’ll be another attack, and what his larger plans are. He refuses to give up any information, so she starts him off light… by chopping off his finger. We even see it come off, albeit it returns to its alien form before it gets too graphic – but still, it’s enough to make you recoil, and it only gets worse. She injects him with a blood-boiling serum, cooking him from the inside until he gives her a mighty piece of intel: Gravik is building a mutation machine to “make us stronger” – which explains that contraption seen earlier in the episode and the quick glimpse of DNA similar to Groot’s.

Before she can squeeze anything more out of him, Gravik tears through the guards outside with a hail of bullets (he also casually Leatherfaces a man by hanging him on a butcher’s hook), so she escapes through a hatch on the ground. When they find Brogan, the effects of the serum are still burning his veins, so they help him out and take him to the fresh, cooling air of the woods… to shoot him.

As the episode ends, Fury walks into a home and hugs and kisses a woman: it’s his wife, Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard) – but she’s a Skrull. The question is, does he know?

Secret Invasion Episode 2 review score: 4/5

A confident second chapter that seems to represent a side of the MCU unafraid to grow up alongside its audience; we’re ready for whatever’s coming next.

Secret Invasion Episode 3 hits Disney+ on July 5. Check out our other coverage below: