Spoilers

Gravik’s plan is revealed…

This is a solid if unremarkable entry into the series. We learn how the Skrulls are intending not only to survive a confrontation with super powered people but we also see that there might be some grounds for having proper concern about who’s been replaced.

With a million or more Skrulls on the planet and an unknown number of those on Garik’s side, we have in place enough faceless goons for team evil to waste people on stupid decisions and plans.

As it is, it’s the stupid decision Garik made the previous episode that comes back to haunt him and offers Talos a chance to make inroads into his scheme.

Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos gets a lot of material to work with this episode. After Fury’s grimly anti-immigrant stance to which Talos was given no right of reply we finally get to see it in play here.

Furthermore we get to see some other agents do their thing and, without spoiling anything, there’s a phone call at the end of the episode that suggests some of Fury’s closest friends may well have been replaced by Skrulls.

It was a fun episode with a lot of back and forth between Talos and Fury – most definitely where the best writing was. However, Garik remains… underwritten and undersold. I do wonder if this is because Marvel’s written Garik like this as a reaction to the criticism it’s received about its villains. They’ve been rightly criticised for putting popular countercultural arguments into the mouths of their villains and then making those same villains perform acts of weird over the top carnage to show ‘they’re evil’. When your villain’s politics are ‘justice for the poor and the environment’ it’s hard to take it as anything other than fundamentally right wing when you then go out of your way to show they’re actually really evil.

Garik remains non-descript. There’s material there about being an immigrant, a survivor and someone who’s been betrayed by the authorities but none of it’s brought out because the message it would send would be… terrible.

Like, Garik’s basic motivation could be seen as ‘I’m an immigrant and now I’m here I want to replace those who gave me sanctuary (because they betrayed me and abandoned their promises to give me a home)’ and that’s a legitimately terrible message worthy of Suella Braverman at her most unhinged. So his underwriting feels intentional which, Marvel, is not the way to respond to criticisms that socially progressive motivations to bring about social change should not be painted as evil.

Verdict: Still. As a spy drama it’s fine and as Marvel it’s fine and together it’s fine. But so far? It’s not special or all that especially interesting.

Rating? 6 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston