Secret Invasion Episode 6 Review: A Dark and Unexpected Thriller! The Usual Marvel Ending?
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Killian Scott, Samuel Adewunmi, Dermot Mulroney, Richard Dormer, Charlayne Woodard, Don Cheadle
Direction: Ali Selim
Streaming Platform: Disney+
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars)
After She-Hulk, MCU is back with a new TV series with interesting premises. Secret Invasion was eagerly awaited for many reasons: first of all the return of Samuel L. Jackson to take on the role of Fury shortly before the theatrical release of The Marvels, a story that takes up the atmosphere of The Winter Soldier and a screenplay that rests on thriller and western elements. Premises that have not been kept, making Secret Invasion only the umpteenth Marvel serial product that comes from a good idea, but which soon gets lost among its promises. Our fears have come true. After five episodes of ups and downs, the Secret Invasion ending is finally available. And accompanying it are those issues that have become a constant for Marvel Studios products on Disney Plus. A conclusion capable of re-evaluating an entire series, which had shown to have enormous potential. All nullified by the second part of the season, a slow decline, after the interesting ideas of the first episodes. A slump that hits its lowest point in a senseless season finale.
I watched and wrote the review for Resurrection and found myself off to a solid start to a promising miniseries. The following week, I watched and wrote the Promises review and confirmed that the series was above average. But then I went on vacation, stayed away from the internet, and left the little shop in the care of my colleague Kevin Rick (not Feige) who, immediately, tried to ruin everything, whether in Betrayed, which started to go downhill, but still held the ends, or in Beloved, which started to scare, finally arriving at Harvest, best known as the episode that introduced a MacGuffin almost completely out of the blue, while also missing out on some of the good dialogue from the beginning of the series. And now, with me back, there was no way I could fix the damage Kevin left in his wake of destruction and Home couldn’t be any different from a fusion of everything Secret Invasion promised not to be.
Secret Invasion Episode 6 Review: The Story Plot
Secret Invasion Episode 6 restarts from the ending of the last episode. Nick Fury prepares to face Gravik, bringing with him the “harvest”, or the DNA of Carol Danvers and the other Avengers requested by the leader of the rebel Skrulls. At the same time, Colonel Rhodes tries to convince President Ritson of the involvement of the Russians in the terrorist attack that concerned him. An invasion fought on two fronts. Gravik, who aspires to become the most powerful individual on Earth to conquer it, Rhodes committed to starting a new world conflict. This is the only invasion that Secret Invasion tells. Of the Skrulls infiltrated into the main positions of the world governments, very little is now seen. An invasion that never manages to re-propose the tension that was glimpsed only in the first episodes of the series. That inability to distinguish between enemies and allies. In the end, it all boils down to a trivial fight between super-powered beings. The classic Marvel finale that forgets the nature of the series itself.
As we mentioned, Secret Invasion has a darker and more mature aura right from the synopsis. A rebel group of Skrulls have decided to take the reins and make their new home on Earth after Nick Fury promised them help and tolerance. Promises that proved to be in vain as Nick Fury, after returning from the blip, but never recovering from the trauma, fled into space without leaving a trace. Upon his necessary return, what he faces is a tense socio-political situation close to war. Seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks reinforce tensions between various countries, increasing discrimination and the already existing problems used by the Skrulls as pretexts to be able to achieve their goals. Betrayals among the high political spheres, tensions, and a climate that portends the concrete possibility of a third world war are only the basis of the plan of Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and his followers, including G’iah (Emilia Clarke).
Secret Invasion Episode 6 Review and Analysis
The gloomy atmospheres and espionage tones of Secret Invasion, what struck us the most, gradually diluted throughout the series. In this way, even more, space was left for Fury, who became the absolute protagonist. Secret Invasion is a decent series about Nick Fury. One of the longest-running characters in the Marvel universe who has finally been properly explored. It’s just not a good series about the Skrull invasion. And as if that weren’t enough, we will still have to wait to find out how the story will end. Because Secret Invasion concludes very little. The quality of the episode is not the only problem with the Secret Invasion ending. We could also overlook a very uninspiring plot, or bad CGI, but not among the worst in the MCU.
What leaves us more perplexed, however, is the inability to answer all the questions left open. Indeed, Secret Invasion does nothing but leave the viewer with many more doubts. Why condense everything into a finale lasting less than 30 minutes and not take the time to give, at the very least, a comprehensive answer to the questions that the series poses? In some cases even trivial questions, which would have required two lines of dialogue to give a sense of completeness to the series. Maybe we’ll find answers already in The Marvels, or maybe we’ll have to wait years. Certainly, however, this ending does not arouse such curiosity as to want to find out how the story will evolve. It is now clear that the public is tired of this type of Marvel product. A series cost the beauty of 212 million dollars (not much less than the budgets of Oppenheimer and Barbie combined). Secret Invasion had presented itself as a product distant from the recent canons of the MCU. A spy-thriller a la The Winter Soldier. For a few weeks, we trusted in its ability to stand out from the usual Marvel products. The result is a big disappointment.
By the way, this annoying little business of internal logic must not be something that is part of Kyle Bradstreet’s vocabulary., because that sequence of Rhodes captured by Falsworth and Fury trying to convince President Ritson that his right arm is a jawed lizard makes no sense at all. After all, we learned not long before that all it takes is hurting a Skrull for him to reveal himself as a Skrull, so all that “look to your left, aim the other way” talk and whatnot is a hilarious attempt. to create suspense, while everything could have been resolved in seconds with a shot in the leg of the subject. And I confess that I don’t quite understand Fury’s relationship with Priscilla/Varra. Okay, they like each other. Okay, she’s independent. Okay, he left her without explanation. But those three OKs there, when put together, don’t match, or if they do, I couldn’t quite understand the whole thing. Was the aim to convey the message that we should love people for who they are? Because if it was just this silly cliché, She-Hulk had better show up breaking the fourth wall to tell us that directly, without all the fluff we saw in the episode.
What Home does is take Secret Invasion and turn the promise of something cool into a trite and frustrating business that wastes Fury and Falsworth. It could have been a good introductory series for the issue it addresses and that, without any shame, threw the real resolution of the problem to some future time in the MCU, but it makes the pitch without being good and that combination does not work. It’s not the end of the bad world, obviously, but it irritates the path the miniseries attempted to take in its first two episodes, giving the impression that there was only material for a feature film or, perhaps more appropriately, a medium-length “special” like Werewolf in the Night. Yeah, never let anything good into Kevin Rick’s hand, because he doesn’t know how to play and just breaks other people’s toys…
Marvel TV series since their debut have kept the promise of being inspired by different genres without ever polarizing and Secret Invasion makes no difference. With Fury as the protagonist, the series takes the Marvel tone of a few years ago when it focused on action scenes, and political and social tensions with humor reduced to a minimum. In Secret Invasion there is also a social criticism well balanced by the presence of Samuel L. Jackson himself. The Skrulls are nothing more than refugees who flee their homes under compulsion, hoping they can find a place to rebuild their lives and instead find only indifference – which soon turns into contempt – and neglect. The experiences that Skrulls have are similar to those experienced by many ethnic minorities, including African Americans. Fury’s character writing adds another piece by openly addressing the issue of racism which becomes a key message of the series.
The long-awaited return of Fury does not disappoint expectations. A pivotal character of the MCU, he is addressed here with a new, more mature, and adult interpretation. His clash with the Skrulls is not only physical but above all moral. Fury will have to come to terms not so much with Gravik and anyone who supports him, but especially with himself. His avoidance of Earth wasn’t dictated solely by the need for him in space, Fury for years has tried to avoid facing the trauma of his death that conditioned him more than (and us with him) could imagine. Fury’s is a real escape: from his past, from life before the blip and from the one he built after, and from his responsibilities. Facing the Skrulls is for him facing his mistakes, and his inability to meet promises and commit to keeping them. For years Fury has lived simply from day to day to avoid thinking, a physical distance that corresponds to the desire to get away from himself. The result is a dark, slow thriller that focuses on the writing of the characters, their ghosts, and the impossibility of escaping which alternate with action scenes of the most classic. This is as true for Fury as it is for Talos, for G’iah as for Gravik.
However, the defects of Secret Invasion soon emerge and, unfortunately, it is disheartening to note that they are the same as all (or almost) the other Marvel serial productions. The slow, intimate tone often falls into monotony and repetition with the result that many moments simply resemble others and fail to add anything to what has already been said. Monolithic moments are suddenly enlivened by very important events for the MCU universe, but which are faced, on the contrary, with an excessive speed that makes the event itself of little impact. Events whose consequences are never really addressed. But what makes Secret Invasion a tiring series is the lack of a coherent thread, starting from the playing time itself. As we said, the series follows the negative models to which the viewer is unfortunately accustomed. Longer bets alternate with shorter bets and the latter deal with events and have a horizontal plot that otherwise would need more time to proceed. The result of Secret Invasion is long dead moments that alternate with too short, interesting moments, and dead episodes that give way to eventful episodes too late.
The general impression is that Marvel has not yet found a precise direction for its series to take, but rather that it simply uses them as stepping stones for its future projects. Secret Invasion, after initial excitement wanes, takes the form of a bridge to The Marvels (coming in November) and introduces a role that will in all likelihood be pivotal to the future of MCU. It would be naive not to believe that TV series are purposely interconnected with films and expand the cinematic universe for commercial reasons, but often what is missing is narrative coherence as well. The initial idea is that the TV series would have developed the already existing stories by creating new narrative ramifications and going to deal with characters and stories that do not find their place in the films; an idea that was soon lost. The result at the moment is that TV series are lazy products that rely only on the will of the fans to follow the course of events to arrive prepared for the viewing of the film of the moment rather than an opportunity to expand even from a creative point of view.
Here, Secret Invasion remains a cohesive, coherent, compact series up to the two final chapters, which unfortunately in the usual Marvel Studios style drastically accelerate the timing and introduce too many new elements into the game that scatter the emotional involvement. Nothing devastating at the level of the already mentioned Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight, which generated plot holes and openly contradicted previous rules and events, but still enough to create annoyance and a bit of confusion: from one scene to another Gravik’s plan seems to change suddenly, some past and crucial actions and decisions of Fury are never explained, sudden clashes with an extremely questionable CGI; In short, flaws that in the third year of the MCU series we sadly know perfectly well.
And so, some production choices appear incomprehensible to us, such as reducing the playing time of the episodes by about 20 minutes – which would have been decisive in the contextualization of certain plot twists – or the almost obsessive concentration on elements that are basically to be considered secondary. What remains is a bitter taste, for a story that does not end and that prepares the ground for the film War Machine and for atavistic questions which either are not answered or are superficial or not very credible. However, we do not feel like seeing Secret Invasion in a negative light, because the courage is undeniable and the showdown in building something truly unique in the context of a huge cinematic universe is tangible. And for a good part of its duration, it has captured us in its web made up of espionage, sabotage, dialogues that are undoubtedly among the best post-Endgames, and the absolute drama of the threat to be faced, expertly constructed episode after episode.
Secret Invasion Episode 6 Review: The Last Words
Despite the flaws that we can now consider almost ex officio for a Marvel Studios series, we can’t help but consider Secret Invasion a successful and largely amazing attempt at a dark and complex thriller in MCU sauce. The humor is kept to a minimum (decision consistent with the type of story being told), the anxiety of an invisible threat and potentially everywhere is tangible, an exquisite fine work on the characters and the past ghosts that still haunt them, a charismatic villain and granite that acts instead of stalling; they are all aspects and successes that cannot be considered secondary, on the contrary, it is from achievements of this kind that the MCU must start again to give the right variety to its products, instead of invoking a hegemonic style. But then come the last two episodes that drastically accelerate the narrative and introduce too many elements, the final battle with an extremely questionable CGI, the forcing and logical leaps to reach the ending. Nothing drastic and problematic has happened in other series that destroy their narrative, but the annoyance remains, above all because this time creating something amazing in the round was one step away.
Secret Invasion Episode 6 Review: A Dark and Unexpected Thriller! The Usual Marvel Ending? - Filmyhype
Director: Ali Selim
Date Created: 2023-07-26 16:58
3
Pros
- Nick Fury is a great protagonist
- Intimate and more adult themes
Cons
- Too long and slow episodes alternating with shorter episodes which, on the contrary, would have needed more time to be developed
- Redundancy of topics and events emphasized by lazy writing
