REVIEW: ‘Secret Invasion’ Episode 6 — “Home”

Marvel finally gets to play with their action figures in Secret Invasion Episode 6. In a move where they’re literally using their characters as the toys they’re selling, taking one action figure’s arm and sticking it on another’s body, the series finale goes off on the dulled, inconsequential note it began with. If the main draw of the episode is the pull of seeing familiar powers utilized by those who don’t originally wield them, the thread is lost. We’re not watching Secret Invasion for the story it’s telling or the plights of those such as G’iah and Sonya but for the many Easter Eggs left that draw lines to past and future MCU endeavors. The series, in a long line of lesser than shows, proves that Marvel has become little more than a walking advertisement for all of its other current projects. It’s a money maker first, a tool for artistic expression second, and the films and series are suffering due to it. 

At the very least, Secret Invasion Episode 6 is short, coming in under 40 minutes. That said, the pacing is poor so that by the time the main fight sequence happens and we check the time we’re left incredulous as to how much more story they’re going to have to cram in. There’s a lot of exposition as lead up to what ultimately is a very brief brawl between G’iah and Gravick, the former having masqueraded as Fury to reach the latter. 

As noted in Episode 5 though, G’iah is a noncharacter. She’s hardly been given a personality beyond looking fatigued, and to hinge such a crucial sequence on our care for her is a big risk. It helps that we’re so tired of Gravick’s shout explaining that we’re relieved for the action to break it up, but that is also a cause of irritation. Kinglsey Ben-Adir is a very good actor delivering a very bad performance, and it’s the worst it’s been in Episode 6. By relying on shouting his lines to convey his anger with Fury, he denied the scenes the subtlety it needed. Similarly, while G’iah disguised as Fury is a nice trick, it also undercuts the tension between would-be Fury and Gravick as Fury tells Gravick that he knows he let the Skrull down. The moment of emotional vulnerability where he confesses to being relieved at the blip having taken him because it meant he didn’t have to fight any longer is also stripped of its potency when we realize it wasn’t the man himself sharing these truths. 

There are many pieces of the series that have been a detriment to the quality. The direction, as is the case with many big studio projects, has terrible lighting, so many key scenes are dimly lit, and hard to work out the details. And it’s not just night sequences that suffer, with a sequence set in what should be fluorescent-lit hallways of a hospital dim and gray. 

But it’s the writing that truly failed the series, the actors themselves are only capable of doing so much with so little. At the very least Olivia Colman is always a delight as Sonya, though that might need to be attributed to her baseline charisma. 

There’s just no level of consistency to how the story is told, with characters behaving irregularly for the sake of plot convenience rather than in ways that suit their character. Dermot Mulroney has been given exactly nothing to do other than sulk and cower for all the previous episodes, but in Episode 6 is given his big bad villain moment as he tells Fury to get the Skrull off “his” planet. This follows a moment where Fury had criticized him for a hateful speech he gave that incited vigilantism violence that has seen the deaths of Skrulls and humans alike. 

The commentary on how hate speech can cause widespread panic and then, ultimately, violence is obvious. But it would’ve succeeded better had again it been woven into the overall plot, rather than saved as a “gotcha” moment. For all of the series’ big ideas and the way in which director Ali Selim clearly wanted to convey nods to classic espionage cinema, the series failed to discover its own tone or personality. It’s saying humans fear change and the unknown, but it doesn’t spend any time wrestling with those ideas. Varra is meant to be an enormous part of Fury’s life, and yet she, too, is given very little development. Fury has lost some of his only friends throughout the series with Maria Hill and Talos, and we never get to see him grieve. 

The finale ends on an open-ended note as Fury looks to space again to broker peace with the Kree that will possibly allow for the Skrulls to cohabit on their planet. We’ll probably have to wait until Armor Wars to know if this was successful though. 

Secret Invasion Episode 6 is just as dour and dim as the rest of the series. Samuel L. Jackson deserved a project befitting his talent and Secret Invasion squandered that potential. Without an ounce of playfulness, the finale fails to deliver any thrills in the big, action-packed moments, while the characters work only as far as the performers can push them. Muddled with inconsistent and self-serious writing, the finale can’t manage a last-minute save to make the series better than the sum of its parts. 

Secret Invasion Season 1 is available now on Disney+.