Spoilers

Nick Fury is summoned back to Earth…

I’ve been waiting for Secret Invasion for a while. It’s a story, that for me, promised to bridge that gap between down to earth everyday thriller and Marvel with some of the strongest, most famous, material from the comics to draw upon.

It should be thrilling, mysterious, paranoid and feel dangerous.

This opening episode is solid enough but it presents some issues that I don’t know if the series can get over and this is through no fault of its own.

Before we discuss that though, there’s three big oddities we have to get out of the way.

The first is the bizarre AI generated opening credits. I mean, what? When writers are on strike and it’s an open secret that Disney is the bad dog when it comes to treating its staff well, the use of AI stinks both creatively and also equitably. Bad juju, Disney, bad juju.

Secondly – the use of Russia as the location of a spy thriller when Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago feels… tone deaf. I get it and I suspect the show was well underway when the invasion occurred but it still feels anachronistic and off kilter for the show to start here and try to make it feel like we’re in a Cold War kind of situation. Sure, the initial antagonist is a rebel but if this war hasn’t proved that Russia’s a collection of warlords fighting like cats in a sack barely being held together by Vladimir Putin then who knows what plausible feels like. Either way, it’s not even that it’s on the nose, it’s more that I watched this episode and then watched Wagner mercenaries march on Moscow and when the fantasy show feels less far-fetched then you have a problem.

Lastly. The fridging of a major long running female character in the opening episode for no apparent reason is just infuriating. Her death did not ramp up the tension, did not further establish the antagonist as a ‘baddie’, it just stank of let’s kill a character who obviously happens to be one of only a couple of women in the show alongside a great many men. I’m not completely outraged by this because we have a couple of other strong female characters against Sam Jackson as the only man to get a lot of screen time but nevertheless it also felt… tone deaf.

The episode itself is solid enough if, at times, stretching towards pastiche. I enjoyed it a lot and am really looking forward to seeing where it goes. I worry that with no actual Avengers team (or other superhero team) currently active in the MCU the tension of wondering if major heroes are actually Skrulls recedes significantly.

In some ways, who cares if a president or general is a Skrull if Captain America and Thor remain themselves?

The show has a challenge ahead of it to claw some of the tension so present in the comics onto the screen.

Having said that, I’m going to assume it’s far too early to judge and just say that Sam Jackson does a great line in tired old man and you get the feeling there’s some interesting roads this could take. I’m not precious about them sticking to the threads of the comics, I just want that sense of tension and paranoia!

At this stage I’m very much in the camp of ‘let’s see where this goes’.

Rating? 7 out of 10

Stewart Hotston