Warning: The article contains spoilers for Secret Invasion episode two.
On the surface, Secret Invasion hinges on the about-to-explode Skrull rebellion because they didn’t get the home promised to them. But it is becoming evident that the real problem is that Fury was busy in space.
For those who forgot, Nick has been in space for quite some time now. He left for space soon after attending Tony Stark’s funeral at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Facing what he termed as a “crisis in faith,” Fury ascended to space on behalf of the U.S. government to build the aerospace security system S.A.B.E.R.
Based on what we saw in Spider-Man: Far Away From Home, even though he was in space, he was still in contact with his Skrull buddies, Talos and Soren, who were free enough to impersonate him and Maria Hill on Fury’s orders. He returned to Earth after Maria Hill informed him about the Skrulls invading the planet.
But evidently, Mysterio running rogue isn’t the only disaster being pinned on Fury as the second episode of Secret Invasion has stressed how he and his space rendezvous are majorly responsible for the rebellious Skrulls daring to declare war on humankind.
Nick Fury being in space turned the dormant Skrull rebellion into a catastrophe
Being the first MCU project that has made timelines pretty clear, Secret Invasion confirms that Fury (and a strangely absent Captain Marvel) had been promising the Skrulls a home planet of their own since 1995. The promise was — as Talos eloquently puts it — in exchange for the Skrulls to be Fury’s “spies and errand boys.”
But even though Fury has been rather busy saving Earth for decades to completely focus on getting his new friends residence on another planet, he enjoyed the trust of the small population of Skrull survivors he monitored and put to his use. And then the Snap happened, dusting away Fury without warning and leaving the struggling Skrulls without instructions or hope.
What Fury never knew — until now — was that the Skrulls he saved weren’t the only ones who escaped their home world’s destruction by the Kree as at least a million survived it. But they were still being hunted across the universe by the Kree. And after Fury was snapped away, Talos, who was at his wit’s end, called these survivors to Earth.
The situation would have been salvageable after Fury came back to life five years later, but as Talos puts it, his inability to face the altered rules of life made it “impossible to talk to him about anything real,” and it soon send him holing up in space for years (leaving his wife behind, which might have been a big mistake). This forced Talos — who is not exactly leader material — to once again deal with the problem, which was getting out of his hand as the disgruntled Skrulls, scared for their lives, homeless, and right about done with Fury’s empty promises, started rebelling.
Throughout this, Fury was up there, in space, blissfully and voluntarily unaware of the havoc he unleashed on Earth with promises he never managed to fulfill. What’s worse is he pointedly refused to deal with it until it turned into an epidemic of epic proportions. And unless he manages to wrap up this mess before the last episode airs, he will be once again leaving the Skrulls hanging as he returns to space in The Marvels.
Secret Invasion airs every Wednesday on Disney Plus.
