Exactly what Marvel does and doesn’t want us to know about Secret Invasion is becoming very hard to ascertain. Just days after Disney Plus announced the show was premiering this June 21, only to remove that date almost immediately, a spoiler-filled Vanity Fair preview of the incoming series has emerged which destroys much of the mystery that Marvel had effectively cultivated around the show so far.
As well as outing multiple major story points, it also confirms the truth behind the biggest question fans had been asking: who exactly is Emilia Clarke playing? For a long while now, it’s been widely assumed that the Game of Thrones icon was portraying the MCU version of Abigail Brand, the commander of S.W.O.R.D. in the comics. As it turns out, however, this guess was so far off the mark that it’s not even in the right species. Clarke is really playing G’iah (pronounced “Guy-ahh”), the daughter of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn, the show’s co-lead opposite Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury).
On the face of it, this news may come as something of a blow to fans, then, seeing as Clarke’s casting as Brand would likely keep her around the MCU for a long while to come, thanks to the no-doubt ever-growing role S.W.O.R.D. will play in proceedings. As G’iah, an original character for the screen, it’s less clear how she could crossover from project to project. That said, there is a way that comic book readers could still get what they want even with this surprising turn of events.
To explain, we first need to recap who Abigail Brand is on the page. Recognizable for her bright green hair, Abigail Thanriaguiaxus (as is her real name) is actually half-human/half-alien. More specifically, she’s a mutant human/alien hybrid, and was raised on the planet Axus by her otherworldly father and Earthling mother. Her M-gene, inherited from her mother, gives her the power of pyrokinesis.
So while G’iah and Abigail are clearly entirely different characters, they do share one thing in common: their extraterrestrial origins. If G’iah ultimately remains on Team Fury by the end of Secret Invasion, it’s possible she could take on a human guise, known as Abigail Brand, maybe even adopting green hair as a nod to her true Skrull form. She could then become the MCU’s go-to agent of S.W.O.R.D., allowing Clarke to pop up wherever.
Alternatively, maybe there is no immediate future for Abigail Brand in the MCU. Becoming that character would certainly open a lot of doors for Emilia Clarke’s future in the franchise, but so long as she has a future in the franchise period the fans should be appeased.