SECRET INVASION 1×06 “Home” ends with an attempt at a bang instead of a whimper but sadly ends up falling flat on its face. I had high hopes for Secret Invasion when it first happened but the start of the show disappointed me by wasting Colbie Smulder’s Maria Hill and the show never quite recovered, especially since it had so many questionable decisions by our protagonists as well as plot holes. I really wanted to like this show but, unfortunately, I’m going to have to give it a D+ and that’s only because Samuel L. Jackson, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Coleman, and Ben Mendelson are doing their best to elevate the material.
Basically, like I predicted in my last review, the big climax of the show is a big CGI punch out between Gi’ah and Gravik. This is easily the laziest way you can resolve the conflict between two competing ideologies. Except, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no idealogies on display. Gi’ah seemed okay with Gravik’s insane plan until she found out that he murdered her mother (then murdered her father). Fury never even gets to speak with Gravik before he’s killed, though they to have it both ways by having Gi’ah impersonate Fury. That doesn’t work, though, since anything she says can’t be taken as gospel of what Fury would have said.
The show never explains why Fury never found a homeworld for the Skrulls and the explanation that Gi’ah Fury gives is that Nick hoped that they would eventually adopt Earth. Which is ridiculous as Nick clearly didn’t think Skrulls would ever be accepted on Terra Firma. More likely, Gi’ah is repeating her father’s opinions. If they’d bothered to state this, then I might have actually been interested in the emotional developments of the final fight.
The rest of the episode has Nick Fury attempting to prevent President Bixton from starting World War 3 by bombing Russia to get rid of the Skrulls. There are so many plot holes in this that it is difficult to deal with. Not the least being that Fury could have assembled at least some Avengers or soldiers to take down the Skrulls guarding the President or just shot Rhodey. Rhodey would have turned into a Skrull and the problem would have been solved.
But the ending’s coda is the nastiest part of all of this as all the efforts to show Skrulls are not all genocidal monsters by Talos, including saving the President’s life, amount to nothing. He makes a big hate filled speech and starts mass murder of Skrulls (as well as innocents mistaken for Skrulls). I think this is supposed to be related to January 6th but whatever message the show is trying to tell is completely muddled. “Yeah, he’s racist against Skrulls but a bunch of Skrulls really are genocidal madmen.”
There are so many questions raised by the finale that I don’t know where to begin. So, Gi’ah just has all the powers of the Avengers now and is the Super-Duper Skrull? She can just beat up Carol Danvers and Thor with one hand? Fury’s plan amounted to giving Gravik this exact same power and hope that Gi’ah won? When did Rhodey disappear? Was it before Endgame? Why in the world would Gi’ah agree to work with Sonya Falsworth? What was the whole point of this? Did the producers how many Anti-Semitic/Anti-Refugee conspiracy theories this played into or was that the point?
Most of all, though, the show just feels lazy and boring. It wastes two well-liked characters and never shows Nick Fury as the cunning mastermind he is. Here’s just a few suggestions they could have made to make the story better:
* Gravik is a leader of a rogue faction.
* Don’t kill Talos and Maria Hill.
* Gravik has a motive better than Fury not finding them a home planet.
* Fury poisons the Harvest and Gravik kills himself fighting a much weaker G’iah.
* Fury is there.
* Hill and Talos stop the President being forced to bomb Russia.
* Don’t use Russia, use Latveria or Symkaria. We’d buy it.
* Keep Fury’s monologues because they’re the best part of the show.
* Make this a movie and 2 hours long so you don’t have to focus on all the boring parts.
Except, here’s the thing, it still wouldn’t be that good. It would be a perfectly passable movie and maybe a C+ or B- if it’s done exceptionally well. It wouldn’t be a boring slog, though, that trades in offensive conspiracy theory as well as badly done plotting. This supposedly cost $200,000,000 and I have no idea where the money is supposed to have been spent. Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel weren’t fantastic, but they were miles better than this. Loki and Wandavision were shows I outright didn’t like it but at least I respected them as an attempt to do something artistic. This is The Phantom Menace level bad.
