Ongoing (spoilers).

I’ve been reluctant to write about ongoing series for a while now because my time/inclination to actually write for this website is rather tentative and with new episodes coming out weekly for most of these shows, what usually happens is the front page gets cluttered with the same show. So I’m not going to do that anymore. Instead I’ll just be updating a single piece as the episodes release.

Secret Invasion is homework, for the audience, for YouTubers, and for the creators. Like many MCU shows, and for that matter like many of the films nowadays, its purpose is homework for the big test. Because Antguy and the Quantum Wasp of Multiversal Kangness wasn’t a film, but a delivery mechanism to 1.) make sure you’ve been paying attention to the MCU so far and 2.) to get you ready for the events coming up in the future. Otherwise its purpose was effectively the same as Loki Season 1. FYI: Kang is the bad guy and there’s more of him coming.

For the army of manchild YouTubers who thrive and make their income building videos with titles like “10 Things Your Shit Brain Missed In Secret Invasion Episode 2” it’s like distributed welfare. Disney passing the clickbait charity fund so people can pretend to still be excited by half-assed easter eggs like a background mural that kinda looks like Iron Man while shilling crappy mail-order frozen dinners in videos that are almost as long as the episode itself and far more bloated for time.

Directed by Ali Selim whose filmography can be best summarized as directing one or two episodes in that show you didn’t watch, Secret Invasion has the unfortunate responsibility of trying to present high stakes plot with a who cares cast. It brings back Sam Jackson as Nick Fury so the audience can be reminded constantly that he’s old and not ready to deal with this shit, something everyone wants out of a superhero franchise.

#1: Resurrection

If Secret Invasion was shaping up to be a great show, I’d be asking “why is this only six episodes?” But as it happens with Disney+ shows these days I find myself asking “why did they have to make this six whole episodes?” Secret Invasion uses episode 1 to set up its own plot armor. More specifically why a series that is now in phase 5 and has an incredibly bloated cast of superheroes is inexplicably not able to call on a single one of them.

Nick Fury is back and he’s in a secret war against the Skrulls, a shapeshifting alien race that can assume the role of its copy exactly. Brad Jones used to bring up the rule of not mentioning a better movie in your crappy movie, and I think there should be another rule about plot device. Never acknowledge the better plot your show could have. For instance when Fury says that they can’t bring in the Avengers because the Skrull could copy their powers the only thing I could think of for the rest of the episode was how awesome this would be as a feature film with heroes fighting clones of themselves.

Which made the hard reality of the show’s returning cast all the more disappointing.

I have a theory that many of the Disney+ villains went to the same villain school, or had the same mentor. My only basis for this theory is that they eventually come to the same conclusion; in order to show how serious they are, they need to bomb a place. And this is where the show really lost me, because the explosions at the end of episode 1 were ridiculously underwhelming but the show expects me to believe that upward of six thousand people were killed. The explosion in Civil War felt bigger and only 11 people died. But we have to have the villain bomb a place because creative bankruptcy.

Like many things in the MCU, Disney punches the viewer over the head with the same beats until it’s no longer interesting. The idea of “who could be a Skrull” would be great if it was characters we cared about. Is Agent Ross a Skrull? Who cares. Same goes for the death of Cobie Smulders.

#2: Promises

Episode 2 solidifies the motivation of the bad Skrull and the audience should never be able to nullify the villain’s motivation by saying “that’s really stupid.” In the comics the Skrull empire invades Earth because they want it, there might be a prophecy subplot, and also the empire presumably is made up of billions if not trillions of individuals. A dangerous force, mind you. In the show we learn two things; there are roughly a million Skrull left and they are all on Earth. Or most of them are anyway.

At the end of Captain Marvel, Nick Fury says he’ll help the Skrull find a home. In the intervening decades he hasn’t had any luck, neither has Carol Danvers or the Skrull themselves. So what’s the big plot? Skrull head honcho Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) decides they are going to manipulate humanity into wiping itself out through nuclear war so the Skrull can inhabit the rubble. Man that’s really goddamn stupid.

It’s also kinda funny to see in a Disney plot, because in any other light the show would come off as anti-immigrant propaganda. Remember Danvers and Fury agreed to let something like a thousand Skrull live on Earth out of nothing but sheer hospitality. The Skrull then lie, bring in a million more of their people, and then after they aren’t given a free planet to live on decide the best plan of action is to murder their hosts, make the planet an inhospitable shit hole, and live in the ensuing wasteland by themselves.

Oh and the whole plot is full of morons. For example; Nick Fury is spotted at the bombing on live camera and the assumption is he is behind the bombing. Why? No reason. Those same cameras also don’t pick up on the two Furys that appear next to one another and nobody notices the Skrull shapeshifting in broad daylight. Rhodes makes matters worse which the show covers as actually being damage control by claiming the footage may be faked rather than just admitting Fury was there to stop the attack.