Secret Invasion billed itself as a low-key espionage thriller, pushing aside the MCU’s usual superhero-based action and zeroing in on the murky waters Nick Fury calls home. The result is a show whose high points aren’t explosions and CGI punching, but veteran actors trading barbs over coffee.
Most agree that Secret Invasion has nailed the “thriller” part, but some have doubts about the “politics” bit. A post in r/MarvelStudios argues that the show is in obvious need of a military advisor, claiming that the Skrull council member posing as the commander of NATO assuring his friends that he can “mobilize a million soldiers in a week” is “not even something that’s plausible as a figure of speech”.
In Secret Invasion‘s defense, the MCU’s politics are radically different from our own, though no movie or TV show has really gotten into what repeated alien invasions, Thanos’ snap, and the presence of Norse Gods on Earth have done to the geopolitical landscape. We suspect they’re intentionally keeping things vague so they don’t have to deal with real-world political issues and take a position that may alienate large swathes of their audience.
That said, we also wish Marvel had brought in some political advisors on Secret Invasion. They might have pointed out that a story about evil terrorist refugees comes across as a Fox News wet dream. To say nothing of the concept of world governments being secretly under the control of a shadowy elite minority out to overthrow democracy being torn straight out of dusty old antisemitic conspiracy theories.
We have just two episodes to go, so maybe some of this will be better explained. But at this point, we somehow doubt it.
Secret Invasion airs Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
Published: Jul 17, 2023 04:55 am