I think we can all agree that after the huge moments of Avengers: Endgame, we have all been chasing a kind of superhero high that we don’t get anymore. Sure, that movie was absolutely tremendous, pulling in all the characters and all our hopes and expectations after decades of wanting a massive superhero crossover film, fanboys and new fans alike hyperventilating as the heroes all massed into that battlefield…yeah, hold on, sorry, I gotta catch my breath here. Anyway, we all had this one epic crescendo of a thing and since then we’ve been chasing the high. 

And honestly, in the same way that a hard drug gives you a high that you’ll probably never get again, with you taking progressively more drugs to get you even remotely close to the moment of ecstasy you had that first moment – sometimes coming close, but not exactly… 

Well, here we are with Secret Invasion, a series that comes burdened not only with all the superhero expectations built up from years past, but also with the fact that there are fans of this storyline actually, genuinely excited to see how it will go. Suffice it to say that prior success makes it almost impossible for this to live up to it all.

I’ll drop the metaphor now and really get into it. I got to watch the first two episodes, as well as attend a press conference where the key players shared how great their experience was working on the series. I won’t pull quotes from that except for one crucial, mind-blowing one, where Ben Mendelsohn says: “Working with Marvel is the shiznit.” 

The cast members who were in the press conference all confirmed this, and if nothing else, it’s clear that working with Marvel is probably unlike any other production, and that Marvel (especially with its massive budgets after the Disney acquisition) has irrevocably changed the film and TV landscape. 

Now is Secret Invasion the shiznit? 

I can’t tell yet. But what these first two episodes do is allow me to set expectations. As with most things Marvel, I know I’ll watch it. But I also know that I have to take it on its own terms and not place the huge expectations that we seem to put on every single Marvel release – only to be disappointed when it doesn’t give us the same high. 

I’d hoped that this would go in a decidedly more genre direction, specifically horror. One of my favorites, and what I think is probably the most underrated and least talked about of the Disney+ Marvel releases, Werewolf by Night, did this perfectly, making something incredibly fun that fit within a genre tradition, tipped its hat to things, and made new spaces in the whole MCU. It was maybe too much to ask that we would get Invasion of the Bodysnatchers but with Marvel characters (who knows – maybe later episodes?).

What we get is something that’s more in the world of Captain America: The Winter Soldier but with much more emphasis on the Nick Fury and SHIELD side of things. We also pick up more from Captain Marvel than the recent happenings in the universe. Timelines are in place, I think, but I wouldn’t sweat too much about when exactly this is and stuff like that. 

The Skrull who found their way to Earth and formed an alliance with Captain Marvel and Nick Fury have been around all these decades. And they aren’t content with what Fury and SHIELD have allowed them to do. They want more. And some bad dudes in that Skrull contingent are more than happy to turn to terrorism. 

The broad strokes of it have the Skrull planning strategic terrorist attacks meant to provoke nations into attacking each other. Once the nations attack each other, Earth’s defenses as a whole will be weakened, making it easier for the Skrull to take over the planet. And standing in the way of it all is Nick Fury. 

Samuel L. Jackson has been playing Fury since the start of the MCU, and now it’s his show. To make it interesting, the show puts him on his back foot, seemingly out of touch, a little off his game. Where before he might have had plans, might have had wheels within wheels spinning, here we see him trying to recover from the invasion, confronted with disbelief and a lack of support from those we would have expected to be his allies. 

I want to see an espionage show where Fury is out in the cold, finding his way, pulling hopefully on all the spy connections we have seeded in previous movies and series. And I hope that will actually be interesting. 

Because what we have so far in the first few episodes is a lot of table setting, and it’s also a little too familiar to other things in play. The Skrull have invaded human society, from people on the street all the way up to the higher echelons of power. Which sounds a lot like…Hydra. And part of the legitimate grievance of the Skrull is that they are refugees who were promised a home, or at least expected some level of humane treatment and integration. It isn’t exactly the same, but very similar grievances can be thought of when you think of the Flag Smashers. I will call myself out on this and admit: this is part of expecting the mythos to make sense and these things to continue to be original, when maybe all they need to do is just find the right footing and tell a simple story. 

Secret Invasion probably isn’t the biggest and most awaited of Marvel’s releases, but that’s where it might actually surprise us. If it leans into the espionage and covert ops action, it might expand on some of the cool things we saw, say, in Madripoor with Sharon Carter, or delve into more of the challenging gray areas hinted at in Winter Soldier. Based on its first two episodes, it isn’t exactly a must-watch yet, but give it a few more episodes and it might just get its legs. – Rappler.com