Spoilers

Plans are made by both sides – but neither survives contact with the enemy…

The highlight of this episode is a conversation between Talos and G’iah about what he wants for the future, what his plan is. He’s stuck in that assimilationist mindset where the authorities are to be aped rather than lived alongside. He’s ready to be invisible for the sake of peace whereas G’iah, like so many second-generation immigrants (myself included) want to be who we are even if we’re not quite sure what that looks like.

It’s heartbreaking in a very specific way as both generations are right and both are wrong, their desires are reasonable and yet they see past one another without finding their common ground.

Then the problems with the show set in.

We continue to have a villain who is one-dimensional and that dimension is all bad decisions. He appears to regard any kind of failure or dissent as a reason for execution. I’m amazed that people haven’t just stuck two fingers up and left.

Worse still is that this kind of approach is incoherent. How does someone with such nonsense in their head attract a following in the first place? Nothing about Gravik makes sense and, as a result, his presence is entirely wasted – serving as nothing more than an unhinged enemy who moves the plot along at convenient moments.

In the final action sequence, which is bafflingly flat, we have Russian military helicopters flying across the UK unchecked while the US President is on the road. This would see half the armed services lose their jobs for countless security breaches not to mention how those helicopters made it the thousands of miles from Russia to central England without being spotted by the many, many NATO countries they crossed on their way…

Not to mention that Gravik has superpowers and doesn’t use them. Why go to all the effort of using them just once and then reverting to guns?

It’s just awful writing and direction.

Look, when you have shows like Slow Horses and movies like Spider-Man Across the Spider-verse as your alternate viewing this kind of hybrid shows all its flaws at once. It’s not tightly enough plotted to be a good spy show and it’s not Marvel enough to be a good superhero show.

How would this be better? The plot needed to be that much tighter. The entire schtick of a spy thriller is the plotting – it’s tight, it’s twisty and they are as lean as they come.

Secret Invasion is none of these things and as a result it falls down where it could have shone. I’m not sure if this is the limitations of the format or the show itself but it is what it is and that’s disappointing.

Rating? 6 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston