Super Skrulls are on the way.
Last time on Secret Invasion,
things started to escalate. Fury and Talos escaped the bombing and headed
west. They parted ways on bad terms when
Fury learned that Earth had become the second largest concentration of Skrulls
in the known universe without his knowledge. Gravik, meanwhile, capitalized on
the success of his bombing by forcing a coup in the Skrull council on Earth and
being named their General. G’iah, suspicious of the events of the last few
days, looks into a private area and learns that Gravik is having his number two
looking for something called the Harvest and that there are Skrull scientists
doing DNA research. Quite scary DNA research as their database has Groot and
Cull Obsidian on their list. Sonya Falsworth took over the interrogation of the
Skrull AAR plant and got the name “Dalton” and learns Gravik is working on
something to make them stronger. She escapes when the Skrulls come to free him,
and he’s executed later. Fury dealt with the unfortunate task of telling Maria
Hill’s mother what happened to her. He then goes onto London where he attempts
to get Rhodey’s help dealing with the Skrull, but is instead fired for not
stopping the Moscow bombing. Fury, furious, leaves. He grabs an old Jeep,
drives out into the country and heads to a Skrull woman’s house. It’s revealed
that this woman is his wife just before the credits roll. Damn. Enough Recap,
let’s get to it.
Ep 3: Betrayal
We begin with some Skrulls
outfitting themselves for a fight. Well, an older man looking Skrull and Beto,
the recruit from the first episode. Beto asks if they think this will actually
work, bringing Chaos and all that. Pagon asks why he joined the resistance, and
Beto said that he doesn’t want them to have to keep running. Pagon says that he
really joined because he has faith in their future and that future is built on
risk. They’re each given folders on new cover identities and head out.
Gravik enters the backroom and
looks at the big machine. He’s joined by the Skrull Council. He reveals to them
his plan for taking Earth. He sent the three Skrulls from earlier to infiltrate
the Royal Navy and to execute a strike on a key UN target. The Heroes of Earth
will react to that, and that, he says, the only way to counter that is to
become super themselves. He wants to turn them into “uniquely programed weapons
of mass destruction.” Super Skrulls. Somewhere, Kl’rt is feeling really
offended he’s not involved in this. … He’s the OG Super Skrull, the one that
has the combined powers of the Fantastic Four. Gravik says that they’ll let the
humans be at each other’s throats and then they’ll break our backs. While he’s
explaining, we see the three infiltrators take their positions in Navy base and
prep for war.
We jump back to 1998 New York. Fury
arrived in at a dinner and meets with Varra, the Skrull woman from the last
flashback. She’s given him intel on how to stop a man named Draykov. Fury
compliments her new face, and the two flirt. He initially says that there are
rules against fraternization between operatives, but Varra points out that
their unit doesn’t exist and that she doesn’t really work for him.
We jump to the present at the Fury
house while Fury is making breakfast. He’s watching a broadcast from that weird
Carlson looking Skrull, Chris Sterns. Varra joins him and they have a nice
domestic moment. She asks what sort of calamity must have happened to bring him
home. She admits that while she knew that Fury had to go out into space, what
hurt her was him staying away for years. Fury says he retired, she asks what
he’s doing with his downtime, and he says he never cared for golf so he may
take up revenge. He grills her about Gravik, asking if she’s spoken to him
recently. She counters by bringing up how badly it hurt her when he was killed
in the Blip and how that hurt her so much more when he vanished again
voluntarily. Pretty classic “how dare you think I’d hurt you?” maneuver. She
says that she became “me” the person she was before she met Fury. She gets a
call and answers it. She gives a weirdly mechanical response and tells Fury it
wasn’t important before heading out. Fury looks hard at her phone.
Shifting back to Skrullos, G’iah is
awoken by Gravik, whom wants to have a conversation about Brogan, the Skrull
that was executed last time. Someone told the cops where they were headed, and
she’s one of only four people who knew where they were going. She says that
Brogan must have made an educated guess when he was under torture, simple as
that. He accepts the answer, saying that they’ll be headed out early tomorrow.
The next day they land. On the
drive, Gravik tells her that they’re meeting her father and going to discuss
her. He gets a call and says that the UN plane will be at the Neptune’s coordinates
at 2200 hours. They reach their destination and Gravik heads out to the
meeting. While alone, G’iah texts someone the info about the Neptune. Talos
and Gravik meet in front of an oil painting in a museum where Gravik gets to
rant about he’d rather be a soldier remembered for blood spilt than a statesmen
remembered in an oil painting. They head to the museum diner to parley. Talos
asks Gravik to stop killing innocent people, and smug Gravik says that he’d be
doing him a favor to kill him now. Talos says he’d face him in a duel of honor
if he just says the word, but Gravik says that wouldn’t look right, a general
challenging a subordinate. He mentions G’iah is in the car and Talos warns him
to be very careful with his next few words. Gravik tells him to be grateful he
hasn’t sent her back in a body bag yet. Talos goes for him, but then every
other person in the cafeteria gets up and shapeshifts into Gravik’s human form.
Gravik gives them the signal and they back down. Talos accuses him of bringing
their people to the brink of extinction with this war with humans and Gravik
counters by saying all we know is murder. Talos says he doesn’t know the first
thing about humans, that we’re at our most dangerous when we have a common
enemy. Gravik asks if he’s forgotten how they fight, and Talos threatens him by
saying he won’t let Gravik keep up an anonymous campaign against us. Gravik
says that he’ll be the one to wipe them out. Talos says he’ll show humans the
difference between Skrulls infected with Gravik’s “sickness” and himself.
Gravik says that G’iah will stay with him then, regardless. Talos gets up,
stabs Gravik through the hand and chokes him for a second, saying to keep her
name out of his mouth until the end of time and storms off. Gravik pulls his
hand free from the knife and regenerates. The effect looks like he’s a got
Extremis. Interesting… Talos heads out and a mysterious old man covertly gives
him a phone before slipping away. Gravik comes out and tries to follow him but
is cut off by a truck.
We jump over to Talos having
breakfast when Fury joins him. They argue for a bit before Fury I forced to ask
Talos for help uncovering a high ranking Skrull in the US government. They head
out and Talos reveals the info that G’iah texted him. Fury, knowing that Neptune
is a British sub, he calls Sonya. She demands an apology for him planting a
bug on her owl. An owl that she’s redubbed Nicholas Fury, since she gave it a
little eye patch to cover the camera. He tells her about the Skrulls on the Neptune
and asks for her help stopping it. She says she can’t as she’s dealing with her
own internal leak as someone told the Skrulls about the butcher shop. She does
tell him the captain of the sub is Commodore Robert Fairbanks, and even sends
them his address.
On the drive over, they have an
argument over who has cleaned up the most of the other guy’s messes in their 30-year
relationship. Talos, rightly, points out that Fury did benefit lot from having
20 shapeshifting spies under his command. He says that he doesn’t even need a
thank you, he just wants the courtesy of not rewriting their history in front
of him. It’s only then that he realizes that they arrived at Fairbanks’ house.
They head in. Talos infiltrates the house as Fairbanks but is immediately
discovered to be a Skrull by security. Talos heads into the house and Fury
takes out several Skrull guards. Fury enters the house and calls for a status
on Talos. Talos tells “Nick” which room to go to. Fury does so, only after
grabbing Fairbanks son and informing the captain that nobody calls him “Nick.” They
release hostages and Talos is sent to get something to tie them up. Fury sees on
Fairbanks computer that the strike is imminent.
On the Neptune, they
get the orders to shoot the plane down.
They try to get Fairbanks to
listen, but he’s loyal to Gravik. Fury asks Talos to just shapeshift into
Fairbanks and call off the strike, but Talos point out Fairbanks is the only
one who knows the actual codes. Fury, running out of patience, shoots Fairbanks
in the leg to try to pressure him. Fairbanks insults G’iah and a pissed off
Talos kills him. He calls G’iah to try to get the termination password from
her.
As the Neptune prepares to
launch, she breaks into their holding cells and uses their tech to scan the
real Fairbanks’ mind for it. She figures out that the code is Fairbanks’ son’s
name and tells Talos. He’s able to abort the launch at the last minute. He
tells G’iah to run.
Fury and Talos clean up the bodies.
Fury asks if it’s hard for him to not side with Gravik. Talos tells him that
the reason he didn’t side with Gravik is because he’s with Fury.
G’iah tries to escape on her
motorcycle but is intercepted by Gravik. She tries to play it off that she was
going to help exfiltrate their men after their failed mission. Gravik says that
the mission didn’t fail, as while destroying the plane would have been helpful,
finding the traitor was essential. He shoots G’iah and leaves her for dead.
At the Fury house, Varra gets a
text, grabs a key and heads out. She travels to a bank and opens her safety
deposit box. Inside is a gun. She makes a call and is told to meet the man on
the other side at St. James church in an hour. She says she wants to talk to
Gravik, but he says she’s talking to him.
…
The episode tries to play it coy,
but it’s clearly Rhodey’s voice on the other end off that phone.
I mentioned this above, but again, it’s weird that this Secret Invasion plot with Super Skrulls is happening without THE Super Skrull. Sure, it’d be hard to explain Kl’rt’s powers in a Marvel Universe where the Fantastic Four might not be a thing yet… but come on, he is THE Super Skrull. And on that, I will also say that the plot of taking the DNA of heroes, aliens and other empowered MCU characters just feels less threatening in the MCU. Why? Because SO many powers are either magic (and thus non-replicatable) or tech based. Gravik showing off the Extremis glow suggests they’ve cracked the tech, but their grab bag of powers is otherwise pretty small. You’ve got lots of versions of super strength (Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, Groot), energy blasts (Iron Man, War Machine, Vision) and MAYBE Superspeed, if someone got Quicksilver in the brief time that he was active. The threat just feels less threatening without the plethora of Superpowers a huge Universe brings to the table. The spy stuff is pretty bare bones thus far. You’ve got G’iah feeding her dad information, child of the enemy being a double agent, that’s like grade 1 spy stuff. The idea that Rhodey might somehow be involved is better… but I’m not sure how I feel about it. We’ll see as that plot point develops. Fury being straight up married to a Skrull was not a plot twist I saw coming. I’m pretty sure Nick has been single for most of if not all his publication history. Connecting him to the Skrulls like that does suggest he was completely sincere with his claim at helping them get a new home as it would directly benefit the person closest to him… but also you could see him maybe dragging his heels on it in case it meant that she would leave. I’ll b curious as to what explanation they end up giving as to why the Skrulls are still on Earth 30 years after the fact. I mean, the MCU is just getting into space travel, but you’d think Fury might have asked the Guardians of the Galaxy if they knew of any uninhabited worlds that would be inconvenient for the Kree to get to or something. Gravik’s little speech at the painting was well done, a nice little bit of hypocrisy right there. He might see himself as “in the trenches” but he’s already the general calling the shots and not putting himself in any real danger. Case in point, the room filled with Skrull with orders to mimic him to help him escape in a meeting with Talos. He’s a smarmy little bugger. We’ll see where this plot goes in episode 4. See you then.
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