Say what you like about the other MCU Disney+ shows but it felt like all of them were trying to do something interesting, whether they succeeded or not. Sadly Secret Invasion feels pretty uninspired, doing very little that is actively bad whilst also failing to do anything especially engaging either.
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) returns to Earth. After failing to find a new planet for the Skrulls, a large number have infiltrated Earth society and led by Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) are planning to start World War III and wipe out the human race.
There's great potential in the idea of shape-shifting aliens covertly taking over and the whole MCU as potential. There could have been all sorts of great reveals about who turns out to be a Skrull but there are hardly any twists here and they are extremely obvious. The plot moves forward at a snail's pace and there is very little of it. As the man who brought the Avengers together, it's disappointing that none of them make an appearance and the reasons for not calling them up never really fly.
The Winter Soldier was partially inspiration for this series and there are certainly similar themes with the enemy secretly taking over. The main reason that film works so well is that its action scenes are superb. For a Marvel show it's really odd how few action sequences there actually are here. I would argue there are only two- one at the end of episode four which is pretty good and a generic super-powered fight sequence in the finale.
Perhaps you could argue that the series is more of a character study. That would be fine but it never feels like it sticks with any one perspective long enough to do that properly. We certainly get more of Nick Fury than we've ever had before but they don't really do anything especially interesting with him. There are some significant character deaths in the series but they never seem to provide the emotional heft they really ought to.
I wasn't too enamored with the new characters here. Gravik is a pretty unhinged villain but I could never really understand his motivation. Ben-Adir delivers anger in spades but there's little nuance there. G'iah (Emilia Clarke) has more promise but she is a pretty silent character who hangs around near the action but doesn't do a whole lot for much of the series. Thankfully Olivia Colman is great as British agent Sonya Falsworth, full of personality and brilliant at her job. Colman never misses in a performance and it was a real treat seeing her in the MCU and it's a character I definitely would like to see again.
One thing that the MCU has always been very good at is telling an ongoing story, with each individual story setting up another chapter. Here though it feels like the series ends with the status quo largely the same as it was at the beginning. Given that this is was billed as a big MCU event bringing characters from multiple films together that is disappointing.
There are some good moments here and there but this an underwhelming MCU show that fails to reach anything near it's potential.
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