Secret Invasion Episode 5 Review: Between an Undisclosed Threat and Revealed Secrets
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: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
One appointment from the end, Secret Invasion offers an intriguing episode between intimate moments and plot twists, despite the return of some ghosts. In the end, it’s all always attributable to a general management problem when dealing with Marvel Studios and their serial productions. Having reached this point, which is only one appointment from the conclusion, the usual problems emerge for the umpteenth time in Secret Invasion, excessive accelerations on the plot and logical leaps to complete it. On the other hand, we can’t feel as let down as in the past, as we perceive with each scene the desire to create something important, and different, driven by incredibly charismatic characters with much less simplistic motivations than on previous occasions.
The new MCU series lives on this delicate balance, perhaps even managing to make it part of its charm together with the noir atmospheres, the more mature tone, and a tangible threat that strikes continuously. Here, in all likelihood Secret Invasion will be a good – at times excellent – show with many micro-defects scattered almost everywhere, but of course, we’ll have to wait for next week to be sure. Even the very structure of the fifth episode is studied and conceived well, because it wants to be a moment to remember and give a proper farewell to Talos without renouncing to prepare the ending, with Fury’s decisive characterization shot and some rather intriguing revelations that do not than making Gravik an even more threatening villain. There is everything, in short, perhaps too much to cover in just over half an hour.
Secret Invasion Episode 5 Review: The Story Plot
Let’s pick up the threads of the narration we find Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) grappling with an attempt to save President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney) as well as warn him not to trust Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and at the same time he convinces himself that he must end this battle once and for all, whatever the cost; meanwhile, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) has to deal not only with the failed attempt on the President but also with not being able to get his hands on an essential object for his plan, a piece of the mosaic for which he is ready to sacrifice anything. Now, as already mentioned at the beginning, it is an episode that wisely juggles between more intimate moments – all dedicated to the death of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and how it influenced the various protagonists – and the main plot, placing excellent twists that first of all they finally make Fury’s characterization more concrete and also they set the table for next week’s grand finale in an intriguing way.
Mind you, nothing revolutionary or pioneering, but just enough to drive away from the various Fury, Gravik, and Sonya (Olivia Colman) extremely charismatic reactions that support the incipit Secret Invasion. Indeed, perhaps to be honest, it’s a shame that Fury and Sonya have spent most of the miniseries apart, they work wonderfully as a couple despite – or perhaps because of – their difference in objectives and methodologies. And the most intimate part is no different, all centered on G’iah (Emilia Clarke), her surprisingly complex relationship with her father who still can’t fully forgive.
Secret Invasion Episode 5 Review and Analysis
Since the first episode Secret Invasion outlines the figure of Gravik around that of a sneaky manipulator, able to make a large part of the Skrull people on Earth kneel at his feet, or a tyrannical leader, whose parable has been a crescendo of violence and anarchic madness. From that moment when, still a child but already an orphan, he was welcomed by Fury’s broken promises, hatred took root in his heart. Expanding throughout the body, until it reaches the mind, it has clouded his thoughts, making them dark and terrifying, like his intentions. Furthermore, his plan, to have New Skrulls destroyed, reveals his true nature, demonstrating how he is ready to sacrifice his people, to obtain the coveted power. When the season finale is one episode away, we’re no longer sure that Gravik’s only enemy is Nick Fury.
The nerve center of the narrative continues to be Nick Fury, and although he is not on the screen for long stretches, the feeling is that his past constantly influences the events that are shown to us, that his aura is present in every frame of the series. The fifth episode finally reveals why he decided to leave the SABER space station to return to Earth. In a certain sense, we had already understood it from the second episode; it is in him that most of the faults reside. Now, however, we come to know a further detail: it was he who sent Gravik to take DNA samples from the Avengers on the battlefields. By his admission, therefore, Fury chose to return to Earth. He was tormented by guilt because he was aware that he had unleashed Gravik’s wrath, and that he too was probably the only one able and duty-bound to stop him.
But then, in the folds of this well-thought-out, well-staged, and well-acted moments, here come the forcings, shortcomings, accelerations, and logical leaps. For example, we pass too quickly from a sensation of success – given the failed assassination attempt on the President – to a further crisis to be avoided immediately, there is a lack of a central connecting part that allows the events to breathe and solidify in the viewer. Or the situation of Gravik who at one-point falls almost out of nowhere, practically suddenly with a lot of objectives that seem to partly contradict his original plans.
We’re certainly not at the level of plot holes seen in our Ms. Marvel review; they do not break the narrative fabric but highlight once again the management problems now typical of Marvel Studios. Was there a need for more time to develop these plot twists? So why not take it, why go from the approximately 50 minutes of the first two episodes to just over half an hour in duration? Or why not at this point make an effort to insert crucial elements even in the most intimate and calm chapters (especially the second and fourth), as done now? All that remains is to hope that the ending can honor all these ideas, as well as answer age-old questions that have hovered over the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Captain Marvel.
If on the one hand, we have Fury, the weight of his mistakes and his suffering, on the other we have Gravik, now a tyrannical and ruthless leader, completely intoxicated by his power. In Secret Invasion Episode 5, we see the worst sides of the Skrull commander explode, he takes it out on his people, sedates disagreements with violence, and even plans a mass extermination of his people to get what he wants, or the DNA of the Avengers to create relentless Super Skrulls. There is no longer a shred of lucidity in Gravik, who is increasingly obsessed with his aims and objectives, so much so that by now it is not even clear which ideological beacon guides his actions. Gravik’s anger is the great counter to Fury’s suffering and the clash between them promises to be explosive in the season finale.
Secret Invasion Episode 5 also had the great acclaim of showing us new flashes of a great character, who unfortunately has had too little space so far. We are talking about Sonya Falsworth, the MI6 agent masterfully played by a sumptuous Olivia Colman. Great absence last week, Sonya returns with her charge of cynicism and irony and shows, even in just a few passages, the enormous scope of her character. It is not clear whether we will see her again in other Marvel products, but if this were not the case, she will be able to erase her regret for not having given more space to one of the most successful characters of MCU’s very recent past.
We are, therefore, one step away from the grand finale, from the epilogue that promises to redraw the lines of the entire MCU. As with any Marvel production, Secret Invasion must also be seen in a broader context, and at this point it is practically certain that the ending leads directly to The Marvels, the next film scheduled for the House of Ideas and closely linked to the Disney+ series. By this, evaluating Marvel products individually is very difficult, and talking about the ending will be complex, but as far as possible we can certainly say that what we expect is an explosive ending, especially for the fate of Nick Fury. The character of Samuel L. Jackson has deserved a whole series of him, even if in reality he has been accompanied by several great interpreters, and is holding up the expectations of the eve, despite the slowdowns of the last episode.
We are probably facing another great watershed, a bit like it was recently for the third chapter of Guardians of the Galaxy, and in this sense the expectations for the Secret Invasion ending are very high. It would be important to close this adventure in the best possible way, both as the culmination of a TV series which, despite a moment of difficulty for the MCU, has been able to show many positive sides, and as a form of respect for a character like Nick Fury without whom, simply, the whole narrative universe of the last fifteen years would not have been there. From Fury to Fury, let’s get ready for the decidedly intense finale of Secret Invasion.
Secret Invasion Episode 5 Review: The Last Words
Secret Invasion Episode 5 is certainly well thought out, well studied, intriguingly prepares for next week’s grand finale, and perfectly uses the disappearance of Talos to make a further leap in the characterization of the protagonists as well as offer some fascinating more intimate moments. In the end, Secret Invasion turned out to be more of a fine-tuning of the characters, and so a chapter like this fits as organically as possible into the narrative fabric. More than anything, as always in this moment of all or almost all MCU series, some accelerations and logical leaps arrive for the umpteenth time, which does not cause real plot holes, but they leave a bad taste in the mouth for playing minutes that could have been better exploited – or that didn’t necessarily have to go down from the 50-plus minutes of the first episodes to just over half an hour today. If more time was needed to better prepare some plot twists, why not take it? Let’s hope that the ending does justice to all these points.
Secret Invasion Episode 5 Review: Between an Undisclosed Threat and Revealed Secrets - Filmyhype
Director: Ali Selim
Date Created: 2023-07-19 19:36
4
Pros
- The action sequences were well-choreographed and exciting.
- The character work was better than in previous episodes.
- The episode did a good job of building tension ahead of the finale.
Cons
- The villain, Gravik, is still underdeveloped.
- The episode's pacing is a bit uneven.
