‘I think it’s going to take a librarian to go through and pick apart’: The MCU admitting it’ll take scholars to sift through the wreckage of current canon is hardly a show of confidence

Any franchise that stretches on for a number of years – if not decades – is going to be prone to tying itself in canonical knots, and never has that been truer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe than in the aftermath of Secret Invasion.

The entire premise hinged on which characters were Skrulls and how long they’d been assimilated, with the divisive Rhodey rug-pull hinting that we haven’t seen the real James Rhodes since Captain America: Civil War, which in turn means he’s got absolutely no idea his longtime best friend Tony Stark is even dead.

How that segues into Armor Wars is anyone’s guess, but there’s a chance The Marvels could do some explaining given the return of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Carol Danvers’ prior history with the shapeshifting alien.

Either way, Secret Invasion director Ali Selim admitting to Radio Times that it’ll take scholars sifting through years of film and television content to join the dots and figure out the specifics of infiltration is nowhere near as fun or exciting as he seems to think it’ll be.

“Yep. He’s been a Skrull the whole time, yeah. [It has] massive implications. I think it’s going to take a librarian to go through and pick apart every Rhodey moment up until Secret Invasion, but there’s a lot to be unpacked now and I think a lot of it will be unpacked in Armor Wars, which is where Don is going next.”

The MCU has been getting so big it borders on the unmanageable for a while now, but with Skrulls now everywhere and possibly anyone, Secret Invasion could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.