After a disappointing Phase 4, MCU Phase 5’s very first movie aka Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania turned out to be one of the worst MCU films ever made. And even though GOTG 3 has brought MCU back on track, the hype around Marvel is quickly fading and the skepticism around all its upcoming projects is rising. Among all this arrives MCU Phase 5’s very first TV Season aka Marvel’s Secret Invasion. Execs really tried to hype this series up as the most mature and thrilling content MCU has ever made but it would be understating to say that it hasn’t yet lived up to that hype. In fact, today’s finale has ensured that it is one of the worst MCU Disney Plus shows and that’s saying something, as most of the MCU shows have been disappointing. So, catch our full verdict for the series below but tread carefully as MAJOR SPOILER follow.
Secret Invasion Saves the Worst For the Finale
Rating – ★★
After consistently disappointing fans for the first few episodes, it felt Secret Invasion was finally beginning to find its footing in Episode 4 and 5. How wrong have we been proven, as Episode 6 aka the finale is the absolute worst of the series. For its promise of being a witty and gritty spy thriller, the series has some of the worst writing of all Disney Plus shows. The CGI battle between Gi’ah and Gravik is not just misplaced and unrequired, but also choreographed and animated poorly. Misplaced here means that in a series which was supposed to be grounded and spy related, this isn’t the way to go. You can’t promise fans something and then deliver the opposite of that yet expect them to like it.
The bigger matter however, is that the entire concept of the series has no place in the current MCU scenario. Gravik’s entire motivation of being a ruthlessness antagonist is based on the fact that Fury and Captain Marvel haven’t been able to find a new planet for Skrulls. This reflects poorly on the character of Captain Marvel as well as the entire MCU ensemble so far. Seriously, how incompetent can someone be? Denvers has had one job since 1980’s and hasn’t been able to do that and Fury who has contacts with literal Gods and Guardians of the Galaxy has also failed to find them a home. The right way to go about the plot would have been to go the comics way and letting Skrulls be alien invaders who they were meant to be.
This series should never have been a grounded project in the first place and if it they had to go this way, they should have found better ways to avoid the rest of the MCU. Look at Star War’s Andor, which literally took Star Wars to a whole new level without hampering the relevance of other things going on in that universe. Andor is the text book example of how a clever, gritty, and self contained stories can be told in such expanded franchises. Another massive problem with Secret Invasion is that it went the 6 short episodes way rather than showing commitment and building longer narratives and character arcs. This show could have been so much but it settled for being a forgettable and poorly realized mess.
Moving on to the performances, they were probably the only thing good about this series as the entire cast seemed pretty committed to this poorly written and produced series. While Olivia Coleman and Ben Mendelsohn were the show stealers, Samuel L Jackson was as committed as ever and Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emilia Clarke, and Charlayne Woodard did the best they could have with what they were given. Characters wise, almost all characters were poorly realized but the biggest disappointments were the returning characters Maria Hill and Rhodey. Rhodey was basically useless and spent his time being captured while Maria Hill was killed off the very first episode, which is most probably one of the worst moments of MCU. It would have been more impactful and devastating if she died towards the middle of the series, once audiences were more attached to her.
What’s worse is that the series failed to provide a proper resolution to the fairly simple plot it had. All it did was kill of certain characters, but the main conflict of the series still remains as Skrulls still don’t have a home. In fact, now they are being targeted by people of Earth, so basically all our heroes as well as the villain failed in achieving their objectives and rendered things worse than they were for both humans and Skrulls. So, the burning question all viewers have after the horrendous finale is that “what the hell was the point of this series?”
Final Verdict – On that note, Secret Invasion settles for being the second worst MCU Disney Plus series, only behind She-Hulk. Not only did it bring nothing new to the plate, it failed at being good at what it was. It definitely isn’t what was promised to the viewers and for that sin alone, it deserves to be ridiculed as it is being. Sure, it was a bit bloodier, but in no was it mature, gritty, clever, though-provoking, or even enjoyable. Absolute miss from MCU!
If you have any questions regarding MCU, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay tuned. As usual, like, subscribe and share our articles as we here are trying to build a community of people High on Cinema!
