Spoilers

Gravik faces mutiny…

We’re into the penultimate episode and it doesn’t feel like we’re ready for a finale. There’s going to be a lot of work needed to resolve this plot next week – not least because the stakes took a hard left turn and jumped the shark.

After the weird and unfulfilling episode 4 with its action sequence in which the main villain decided not to use his obvious superpowers to achieve his ends, this episode sees a bunch of equally strange narrative choices which feel piled onto a set of characters whose main approach to life is to make the most obvious bad choice presented to them and then hope that the plot can change the goal posts to make them seem coherent.

I try not to really dislike shows and movies but this is just rubbish. It’s old school rubbish too – with a plot no one really cares for enough to have it make sense and characters who are, barely, clinging onto some kind of distinctiveness.

That distinctiveness comes at a price – Gravik is as dense as a neutron star, a psycho without any kind of charm or nuance. Fury is just whatever the scene needs him to be. G’iah is… well, who knows what kind of person she’s meant to be, which is, at least, distinct from the others.

And as for Talos… this show does something bad to him this episode and I’m pretty annoyed by that but won’t mention it for sake of spoilers. Nevertheless – having major events occur off screen is absolutely terrible. There’s not even any transition explaining what happens to Talos, just one scene before and then scenes after without anyone appearing to be told anything – rather they just know by osmosis.

I’m still in for the last episode but I’m certain that nothing’s going to be resolved – when one of the main characters has to question the basic intelligence of another even as you’re shouting at the screen about how dumb they’re being you know the writers feel this way too.

Was too little time given to write this? Was too much pressure applied to tie this into other parts of the franchise?

With Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, announcing officially what we’ve seen happening surreptitiously via slate changes – namely that there will be fewer Marvel shows and those that are made will be made for less and come at longer intervals – Secret Invasion might well be the last of the current crop of Marvel shows. Given the drop in quality across Marvel’s output I’m at a loss to suggest what comes next – the point about comic book franchises like Marvel is that they’re intertwined, tied together and need a constant output to keep engagement high enough that viewers can remember who’s doing what where and with whom. Long gaps between intertwined shows make them harder to follow for fans and, crucially, it’s much more difficult to actually generate engagement from casual viewers.

I can’t help but think we’re about to see a change in direction from Marvel and it may well be unrecognisable from what’s come before.

The last episode of She Hulk in which there’s an admission of creative bankruptcy and lack of resources may well be the truest thing this stable has yet said.

Rating? 4 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston