Well, that was certainly one way to end a show.

Episode 6 of Secret Invasion left some things to be desired as the ending didn’t exactly go as many planned or hoped. No, I’m not talking about a possible cameo fest either or certain SHIELD agents making an appearance. The Super Skrull showdown went in a slightly different direction than I have to say I anticipated and, well, that was really the biggest part of the episode. Beyond that, Fury’s character development was mediocre at best and we got our real Rhodey and Ross back. So it wasn’t all a bust, but for a show doing as well as Secret Invasion was, it was definitely disappointing. We get into some of the big reasons we felt a little let down in our latest podcast episode, which you can start listening to by clicking the button below or hitting play on the link provided.

Super Skrull vs. Super Skull

Starting with the final ‘battle’ of the series, well, what is there to say. It for sure happened. We watched something. What exactly we saw, you know I’m not quite sure. It was expected that G’iah would take on Gravik, as this is something even I have been predicting, especially since she became a Super Skrull herself. Although I’m not sure my prediction envisioned them both receiving the Harvest and becoming some really intense mega Super Skrulls. Honestly, I think I want to go back to my predictions and pretend that happened instead. Taylor and I will do a whole episode dedicated to G’iah and her future, so I won’t get too much into that here, but let’s get into this fight a little more.

Strategically, sending G’iah was definitely the right call. Her Super Skrull abilities were going to keep her alive against Gravik, as Fury would never have survived or beat him. She also was the heart of the people while he was their leader, so it made sense for her to represent the Skrulls and to fight against their general that has gone off his rocker. However, I will say, Fury, not actually being there to have the heart-to-heart with Gravik and face the monster that he created, left sort of a bad taste in my mouth. We will get to Fury’s character development in a moment, but facing one of his biggest mistakes personified into Gravik was something that this show kept leading up to, only for Fury to not actually be there.

As for the fight itself, the best part was trying to guess who the Super Skrulls were mimicking and morphing into. That was pretty much it. The strange morphing was not what I anticipated, as I expected more of the internal enhancements, such as the extra strength, not a physical Hulk arm. To shout out someone on Twitter who made a great point, they pretty much made the final fight of this show exactly what She-Hulk was making fun of. It was sort of ridiculous if you ask me and was not the way this show should have wrapped up, at all.

The Fate of the Harvest

My feelings on what happened with the Harvest are definitely mixed. On one hand, I’m not upset that it’s technically out of play. On the other, I’m not really sure I saw it being used the way it was. As Taylor said in the podcast episode, letting G’iah and Gravik both take it and become mega Super Skrulls was a huge risk on Fury’s part. He was gambling that G’iah would be able to take down Gravik, which luckily she did. Yet there wasn’t a guarantee. Now we have one mega Super Skrull that we don’t exactly know what to do with. So what comes next?

As I said, I would have definitely preferred the Harvest to become part of a different chess game later on down the road. TFAWS was driven mainly by the prospect of more Super Soldier serum being created and I have to say, an arms race for the Harvest I think would have been a pretty interesting plotline for a future show. Either that, or we see it get destroyed in the final episode, although I think that would have just annoyed me that we brought this biological weapon into the mix for a whole of two episodes. It was a really cool possible storyline for the future that has morphed into something totally different.

Instead, we now have a Skrull who physically has the abilities of about 20 different super powered beings coursing through her DNA. And, well, it was sort of just underwhelming. I think a lot of people had thoughts for G’iah’s future in the MCU, but this definitely wasn’t in their cards. What do you do with a character like her? You just created one of the most powerful beings in the universe solely because you combined the DNA of super powered people and now we once again have to sit here and go “well, where’s G’iah when you need her?” Has this not been the problem with Carol all these years? Everyone, including us, have asked why she wasn’t around for some of the other big moments, even including this part of the Skrull invasion. Now we have G’iah who is arguably more powerful as she has Carol’s powers on top of others, and we have to ask what the heck are we supposed to do with her?

I genuinely thought the Harvest would cause Gravik to blow up essentially and meet his demise due to his own ego and power need. Easy, off the board, and accounted for, the Harvest story would end. Now, it lives on with G’iah, so we are going to be patient and see what side effects it may bring and how G’iah learns to use the powers she’s been given. I also can’t wait to see the Avengers react to this, it’s going to be so good.

Fury’s Questionable Character Development

Throughout the series, we continued to come back to the fact we might actually see Fury go through some real character development for the first time ever. As a side character in all of his other appearances, he was never really able to have one moment in which we as an audience could see him grow. I would say in this series, the growth remained relatively minimal, as Fury, even when faced with his past mistakes, really didn’t show much growth.

Starting at the beginning, Fury comes down from SABER because he recieves word from Talos that things on Earth have taken a turn for the worst, which we find out is because of Gravik. As the show goes on, we learn that Gravik essentially was made out of Fury’s mistakes, being a soldier for Fury at a young age and seeing graphic things so that Fury would help his people and give them purpose. Gravik idolized Fury, something that Fury of course had to know and realize, yet he seemed shocked when Gravik began his attempt to start war among the humans to free the Skrulls once Fury abandoned him. Of course, this is all old news, as we learned this throughout the series. But for someone who preached he had to do this all alone because he could recognize he created the problem, Fury never actually went and faced Gravik. The needed conversation that happened between him and Gravik in this final episode never actually happened, as it was instead G’iah disguised as Fury. Fury again had to call in someone more powerful to fight his fight and wasn’t even there to put an end to Gravik himself or at least witness it. Growth rating: 1/5

Then regarding the Skrulls and his promise to find a new home, Fury actually managed to make life worse for the Skrulls on Earth, believe it or not. Now, we can theorize that Fury made sure Sonya was there to intercept G’iah and help support the Skrulls in the war being brought upon them by humans (more on that momentarily). If that theory is true, at least Fury wouldn’t have left them completely screwed. However, if that isn’t true, Fury completely exposed the Skrull people, good and bad, to the president who then went trigger happy, ready to destroy the whole alien race. After years of using the Skrulls and not actually trying to find them a real home, Fury exposing them fully is almost the icing on the cake of disaster. We know it wasn’t Fury’s intentions, but regardless his actions have only hurt the Skrulls more, and then he left again. Growth rating: 1/5

Finally, the most personal piece of growth, Fury’s relationship, he actually does improve in. Maybe this is a way to hope that moving forward Fury can make up for his mistakes and try again, as we do actually see character growth within his relationship with Varra. We talked extensively about how almost fake that relationship was. Fury was able to grow within their relationship, not only giving the relationship another chance, but giving it a chance with Varra, not Priscilla. As Fury said in the show, Priscilla being a Skrull was always a blindspot for him, a weakness he knew would bite him in the butt eventually. He is allowing himself to give into the weakness and give a shot at being with her, something Fury before this ordeal likely wouldn’t have done. So in that sense, we do see a change in Fury, even if it is just a start. Growth rating: 3/5

The War on Skrulls

Arguably the best part of this episode is that it set up another phase of Secret Invasion. For right now, we don’t entirely know what that’s going to look like, whether it comes in the form of a second season, a movie, or is plastered onto another property such as The Marvels. Our August newsletter took a stab at theorizing more deeply into this, but let’s focus on the fact that the idea of Secret Invasion is only catching fire as Skrulls have now been outed to the entire human population.

It’s almost ironic how close this storyline is to the one the Inhumans faced in Agents of SHIELD, obviously a show that we have yet to confirm if it is canon or not. But the parallels are extreme, including the mass fear that I’m sure is going through the population over not knowing who may or may not be a Skrull. With this parallel, it is leading me to believe I should be expecting mass hysteria in some upcoming works and that the Skrulls being on Earth should definitely eventually become a bigger problem. I think of how the Inhumans storyline on AoS should have ended up as a bigger Avengers threat, all things considered, but was instead constrained to the show itself. Secret Invasion did a great job setting up the invasion further, although it did once again make the Skrulls sympathetic and more the victim of just terrible luck. We will have to do another 180 to reach how the Skrulls are once again a threat, but if you corner an animal, it will attack. Putting the Skrulls on blast might finally crack them to the point of full invasion and revolt.

Secret Invasion Connecting to The Marvels

It was clear going into Secret Invasion that there was going to be a direct correlation between the show and The Marvels coming out later this year. For a while, the debate stood around the question of whether The Marvels might actually come before Secret Invasion. I think it’s safe to say we can confirm it to be the other way around and that Secret Invasion is going to flow directly into The Marvels. This being said, understanding what ways this is going to happen is how we are going to most likely figure out part of the plot for The Marvels and where the Skrulls fall into it all.

In the final episode of Secret Invasion, we are made aware of the fact the Kree are willing to have peace talks with the Skrulls. However, we also know that the biggest antagonist in The Marvels is Kree and holds the sister bangle to Kamala’s. It’s possible the peace talks are a way of targeting the Skrulls into an ambush to help kill more of their people. The discrepancy between what we’ve been told and what we are seeing in the trailers shows that something is going to go wrong during these talks. It is also a possibility that Dar-Benn, the Kree antagonist, is similar to Gravik in the sense that she is an extremist who wants all the Skrulls gone. So maybe peace talks from the empire are trying to happen, but Dar-Benn will ensure that doesn’t take place.

We also know Fury has returned to SABER with Varra, where we can seemingly confirm Monica is as well. This is what we believe starts The Marvels film and how Fury once again ends up wandering around on Earth as seen in the trailers. As we have also gotten confirmation in the show that Nick hasn’t returned to Earth since he left after the Blip, we know his second return is in fact, his second return and not his first.

But where do the Skrulls fit into all of it, specifically the ones on Earth? As mentioned before, there’s a possibility that Skrulls like G’iah may be summoned to the peace talks, as she is going to be the closest to a leader the Skrulls have and is now a mega Super Skrull. It would also be insanely fitting for her to meet up again with Captain Marvel and Monica, although G’iah’s fate in the MCU is a little blurry. It’s also very possible the Skrulls we see in The Marvels are the group Talos mentioned that set up a new colony elsewhere and didn’t come down to Earth. Considering the Skrulls on Earth now have a war with the humans to worry about too, I put my money on the other colony being the ones working to negotiate the peace talks. That doesn’t mean it won’t affect the Skrulls on Earth, but I do think there’s a strong likelihood that we’re dealing with an entirely different group. We will keep up with this connection as we receive more footage and confirmations coming from The Marvels as we move closer to its’ release in November.

Conclusion

While the ending might not have gone the way we expected it to, we have finished another MCU Disney+ show that has opened more doors to future content. We will be keeping up with any updates that come our way regarding this show and characters from it, but for now, we should all prepare for The Marvels and Loki, both coming towards the end of the year. Next week, our podcast episode will be all about G’iah and her powers, limitations, and where her story might go. Make sure you don’t miss out as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Secret Invasion Episode 6”, Lukas Abramovich, Comic Basics