‘Secret Invasion’: First Plot and Character Details Arrive Along With 10 New Photos Revealed by Vanity Fair; New Trailer Incoming
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
We’ve known for a while that Marvel is taking some time to rethink its pipeline of projects, especially on Disney Plus, and this year will serve as a litmus test for their new strategy. 2023 will have several victims, including the second season of What If…?, which was due out early in the year, as well as Echo and Ironheart, both of which are not going to meet their spring and fall release windows, respectively. It is Secret Invasion that will kick off the year of Marvel series on Disney Plus; a show that has also suffered somewhat of a delay.
It was revealed earlier this week that the show would be hitting the platform on June 21, and though technically it’s not a huge delay from its announced spring 2023 release window (June 21 is the official start of the summer), it’s definitely not the date that Marvel had initially in mind. This is not necessarily bad news, though, as it means the studio has devoted more post-production time (and therefore money) to make sure they are happy with the final product. But with 2.5 months to go, the marketing is already starting.
A new trailer for the series is expected to air this Sunday on ESPN, and as a preview, Vanity Fair released the first story details for the upcoming series, as well as a confirmation on who’s who on the cast list. The series, which hails from showrunner Kyle Bradstreet, was initially billed as a Nick Fury-Talos spy thriller, co-starring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn reprising their respective roles from Captain Marvel.
Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
It is essentially the first of two sequel projects to the 2019 billion-dollar hit that are coming out this year — Secret Invasion focuses on the Skrull side of the narrative, and how the species has changed over the decades, while Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels (out on November 10) will focus on Carol Danvers’ story.
In Secret Invasion, we will learn that a section of the Skrulls, led by Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik, has been radicalized and separated from the peaceful society that Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos was trying to build 20 years prior. After many years of being silenced and left aside, they are ready to take action, which involves taking over the high levels of society in disguise. Said Mendelsohn about their thought process:
“I think any time that you get cultures that have significant tensions between groups of people, then you can find a corollary. The Cold War stuff is the big one that jumps out, but there is plenty of strife between groups of people that this addresses.”
One of the members of this radical faction of the Skrulls is Emilia Clarke’s G’iah, a character we’ve already seen in the MCU… only we didn’t know about it. She is Talos’ daughter, whom we’d already met in the third act of Captain Marvel; there is, therefore, a lot of baggage involved in her relationship with Mendelsohn’s character. As Samuel L. Jackson described her:
“Remember when Ben was there with his wife and daughter? She’s the little Skrull girl grown up. She’s his daughter.”
G’iah (Emilia Clarke) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
Clarke described her character as follows:
“It’s hardened her, for sure. There’s a kind of punk feeling that you get from this girl. She’s a refugee kid who’s had Talos for a dad, you know what I mean? Maybe the fact that we didn’t know he had a kid up until this point tells you everything you need to know about their relationship.”
She has had enough of Fury and the humans, as she added:
“These people promised a lot of stuff a long time ago, and not a lot has happened. So understandably, a certain amount of resentment has been built. There’s a lot of emotions that live within her, and there’s a lot of confrontational aspects to her character that have come from circumstance. You understand why she has the feelings that she does.”
G’iah (Emilia Clarke) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
Fury, who has spent the last few years off-planet helping his Skrull allies find a new home, is completely burned out by the fight against Thanos and the loss of key Avengers. As Jackson explained:
“Even Nick Fury can be shaken, you know? He’s up there trying to process what the fuck happened, you know? And what his place in the world is. The death of Iron Man, the death of Black Widow—with that stuff going on, he just kind of checked out.”
We see one of the big changes right away, as he is no longer wearing his eye patch. This, according to Jackson, is a sign that he’s practically given up:
“He just doesn’t wear the patch. The patch is part of who the strong Nick Fury was. It’s part of his vulnerability now. You can look at it and see he’s not this perfectly indestructible person. He doesn’t feel like that guy.”
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
He comes back to Earth when he learns that there may be a conspiracy to take over nations all over the world by placing Skrulls as double agents. Maria Hill, his longtime ally played by Cobie Smulders, has been trying to contact him for years and is quite tired of not being able to reach him, as the actress explained:
“I think Maria Hill has really run out of patience. She’s always had this really close relationship with Nick Fury, [but] he’s been gone for so long, and she’s just been running around putting out fires.”
Executive producer Jonathan Schwartz hints that the Skrull takeover may be partially Fury’s fault, as the story finally catches up with some of the character’s morally-ambiguous decisions:
“Sins from his past start to haunt him once again. We often see Nick Fury doing the right thing. We don’t always see him doing it in a perfectly morally correct way. All of those things have ramifications. Without getting too specific, the things that Nick Fury’s had to do to protect the Earth have costs.”
An unidentified Skrull looking in the mirror in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
For instance, Fury, the ultimate spy, has installed over the decades a network of Skrulls that allow him to have eyes and ears everywhere. But they are quite tired of that, as Jackson explained:
“Nick had a whole Skrull spy network because they could shape-shift and go places that people couldn’t go. They kept their word. They worked for him, but he hasn’t done what he said he was going to do. They want a home. They want to live. They want to live like they are. They want to live in their skin. They don’t want to live in ours.”
In his mission to slow down the Skrull secret takeover, Fury will recruit many allies besides Maria Hill. First, as we saw in the trailer, he has Don Cheadle’s Rhodey by his side. Jackson explained the character’s role in the story as follows:
“This is a different kind of Rhodey—a political animal and not, you know, a guy who has a special suit. He’s the president’s right-hand man in this. So he’s the guy that makes a lot of decisions—some good, some bad.”
-
- Olivia Colman in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
-
- Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
Cheadle has said before that Secret Invasion and his character’s involvement in the series will perfectly set up the story of his upcoming solo film, Armor Wars. Another American ally in the intelligence section of the government is Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross, from the CIA. The agency’s British counterpart is represented in the series by Olivia Colman, who plays a high-ranking MI6 officer who has a personal history with Fury. The Vanity Fair piece also hinted that a big plot point of the series will be to figure out whether Colman is who she says she is, or a Skrull in disguise, as her decisions may not always align with Fury’s mindset.
The series is a true spy thriller inspired by Homeland and The Americans; one that could make Captain America: The Winter Soldier seem like an appetizer. More will be revealed in the coming months.
Secret Invasion will hit Disney Plus on June 21.
Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) in a picture from Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion revealed by Vanity Fair.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
