As the ‘Secret Invasion’ finale shames Marvel and Disney Plus, ‘She-Hulk’ gets the last laugh

Has a Marvel Disney Plus series ever promised so much and delivered so little as Secret Invasion? Sure, many, if not all of, the studio’s streaming shows have dropped the ball in some shape or form, but Samuel L. Jackson’s long-awaited first MCU solo project is destined to be remembered as the daddy of them all, thanks to its seriously underwhelming series finale, which limply dragged what should’ve been an epic franchise-shaking story arc over the finish line.

There are a lot of problems with the finale’s plot (we make it 12, at last count), but perhaps the thing that doomed it the most was attempting to play one of the MCU’s most eye-rolling tropes straight, after She-Hulk: Attorney at Law so thoroughly skewered it on this same platform less than a year ago. How were we ever supposed to take the big Gravik vs. G’iah battle seriously when Marvel Studios has already told us that it knows this is the MCU’s most uninspired way of ending a finale?

In case you need a reminder, She-Hulk‘s last episode saw Jen Walters get involved in a four-way Hulked-out tussled between Hulk-Todd, Titania, and Abomination, only — in her inimitable style — she then called Marvel out on the formulaic climax, climbing out of her Disney Plus window and storming the studio’s HQ to demand something better that actually focused on her character development, given that she’s the protagonist of thing.

She-Hulk‘s bold finale naturally didn’t sit well with everyone, but one thing it did seem to do was act as a message from Marvel to its audience: hey, we know we often fall into the same tropes and we promise we’ll do better in future. And yet, in literally the next MCU Disney Plus show to air, Secret Invasion reheats the very thing that She-Hulk tore apart.

Just when it looks like Fury and Gravik are going to have a meaty conversation about Fury’s failings as a savior to the Skrulls, it turns out it’s just G’iah in disguise. Cue The Harvest, a macguffin introduced just last week to contrive a way for these two foes to suddenly become the most OP characters in the entire franchise. After a few minutes of lazy CGI (again, treat your VFX team better, Marvel!) Secret Invasion calls it a day, once it’s thrown a few more intriguing ideas at the wall we know are destined to be ignored.

You might think She-Hulk would go down as having the most controversial Marvel series finale, but actually it’s almost certainly going to be Secret Invasion, with the episode comfortably standing as the lowest-rated Marvel Studios production on Rotten Tomatoes. The Jade Giantess may have received a lot of flak for her meta-humor, but time is already telling us that Marvel needs to learn from her out-of-the-box thinking. How can we be wowed by a trick once we’ve been told we’re going to be tricked?

Your honor, I rest my case.