Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the Secret Invasion season finale.
It’s another miss for Kevin Feige and the MCU. Even those of us who found the early episodes of Secret Invasion to be refreshingly restrained and dotted with compelling dialogue must concede that its season finale is a complete stinker.
Not only does the finale rely on a telegraphed reveal involving — get this! — a Skrull in disguise; the series also refuses to provide an explanation for why Nick Fury couldn’t find the Skrulls somewhere to live over the course of 30 years in an ever-expanding universe. (Oh, they’d be hunted by the Kree? Guess Captain Marvel will have to do her job or something.)
Plus, rather than giving the story closure, the finale seems to set up an even worse situation for the Skrulls on Earth, even though we’ll eat our hat if there’s a second season for a show as widely curb-stomped by fans as Secret Invasion.
Lastly, the conclusion jettisons the more nuanced spy games of the earlier episodes in favor of characters fighting in the sky again, wreathed in terrible CGI, like always, forever and ever, amen. At this point, Marvel has either given up on its Multiverse Saga entirely, or it’s intentionally gaslighting us.
But don’t take our word for it: Secret Invasion‘s final episode has achieved a new milestone of lowest-rated MCU project on Rotten Tomatoes, earning an abysmal 13 percent. Granted, there are fewer reviews for individual television episodes than for feature films. The percentage is based solely on eight reviews, but something tells us there are more negative notices on the way, since (in our humble opinion) the finale sucked harder than anything on Disney Plus besides The Return of Jafar.
Granted, Disney and Marvel have already said they plan to make fewer MCU projects and concentrate on quality in the coming years. Like everything else in Phases 4 and 5, Secret Invasion was more or less completed before Feige and company realized their fanbase was rapidly turning against them.
Since tying up its previous narrative with the satisfying Avengers: Engdame, Marvel has weathered scathing responses to the Disney Plus series Ms. Marvel (which we liked) and She-Hulk (which we tolerated), in addition to poorly received movies like Black Widow (which we laughed at), Eternals (which we complained through), Thor: Love and Thunder (which we never finished), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (which we disassociated during).
Here’s hoping the forthcoming Loki season 2 will get us excited for Marvel again — though, with a villain who may ultimately be scrapped from the larger continuity, we’re not counting on it.
Hey, at least we got Shang-Chi, Spider-Man: No Way Home, the good parts of Wakanda Forever, that one part of Multiverse of Madness where Strange fought himself using music notes, and Guardians 3! So it hasn’t been a total loss.
