How long have Nick Fury and Rick Mason known each other, and are they related?

Secret Invasion promised to lift the lid (or the eyepatch, as the case may be) on Nicholas J. Fury more than ever before, allowing us to really get under the skin of Samuel L. Jackson’s OG MCU icon. And, in some ways, it has, thanks to the introduction of Fury’s wife, Priscilla Davis/Varra, and the depiction of him as a disheveled has-been. That said, with just one episode to go, there’s still so many questions we still have about Fury. And episode 5 just added a honking great new one to the list.

To everyone’s surprise, the show’s penultimate installment brought back Black Widow‘s O-T Fagbenle for a surprise cameo as Rick Mason. Remember Rick, Natasha Romanoff’s pal who fixed her up with fake IDs and transport? No? That’s fair enough, as he’s a relatively minor player in the grand scheme of things in the MCU and really not someone we ever expected to see again. So that’s got us thinking, is there a larger significance to Rick’s character that his Secret Invasion return alluded to?

Nick and Rick’s banter in the latter’s sole scene in the episode is especially curious as it makes clear that the duo have an unexpectedly informal relationship. Their casual conversation reveals that they’ve been through a lot together and Rick’s relentless teasing of Fury, joking that he needs to be “moth-balled” like the helicarrier and that he needs a “nap” because he’s getting “grumpy,” is at odds with the reverential way you would think he would treat the former S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

And yet Mason clearly has a great deal of respect for Fury. When Nick quips that “Mama always said I was special,” Rick admits, “Mama was right.” In many ways, then, the dynamic between Nick and Rick isn’t that of a spymaster and a spy but the cheeky, irreverent, yet ultimately loyal relationship of that between, dare I say it… a father and a son.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, practically every Avenger is getting a child at this point in the MCU so the next generation of the Fury family has got to be on its way. Throwing Rick back into the mix like this could be a smart but subtle way of seeding him back into our thoughts prior to revealing that he’s really Nick’s son. Not that I’m suggesting he’s the half-human, half-Skrull son of Fury and Priscilla. O-T Fagbenle is 42 years old in real life, so he would have to be the product of a romance Nick had in his early 30s.

If I’m following this theory to its logical conclusion, it stands to reason that Rick could be the MCU’s version of Marcus Johnson aka Nick Fury Jr., a character who took over from his father as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics. S.H.I.E.L.D. might be dead in the MCU, but S.W.O.R.D. could be in need of a new leader if Fury decides to call it a day after he’s finally solved the Skrulls’ problems.

The comics version of Rick Mason, by the way, is a very different character — he’s the son of Spider-Man villain the Tinkerer, for starters — but he is a mercenary who received covert ops training from none other than Nick Fury. It’s possible Secret Invasion was simply alluding to this backstory in the familiarity displayed by Rick and Nick. And yet, again, their banter didn’t reflect that of a military man and his mentor but a son deliberately riling up his old pops.

Rick Mason is unlikely to pop up in the Secret Invasion finale to confirm this theory, but, hey, there’s always Young Avengers…