IN REVIEW: Secret Invasion (S1 – EP2) – Promises

Synopsis: In this week’s Secret Invasion, Fury grapples with the past and present. Meanwhile, the Skrulls plan their next move.

The Story

Having gotten out of Moscow after the Skrull attack. Fury and Talos have a chat on a train where Fury learns that Talos snook over a million Skrull to Earth during the 1990s. We get a few flashbacks to a meeting between Talos, Fury, and the few Skrull survivors the Skrull are invited to remain on Earth as long as they take a human identity and help Fury and S.H.E.I.L.D. prepare for the Kree. However, we soon learn that many more Skrull came to Earth and they have now infiltrated the seats of power in and around Europe as well as The UN.

Fury returns to America for a debriefing from Rhodey Rhodes, but Rhodes is not impressed with Fury nor the fact that his attempts to stop the attack in Moscow. He’s particularly sore about the fact that Fury’s actions seem to have gotten Maria Hill killed.  Subsequently, Rhodes fires Fury from his position in S.H.E.I.L.D.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Gravik has some Skrull scientists working on Skrull DNA with it in mind to produce a Super Skrull. Elsewhere, Agent Sonya Falsworth sets about interrogating a Skrull agent that was picked up by Authorities during the attack. 

The Acting

We get some really strong performances this week. The scene on the train between Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) was heated, to say the least. Fury rightly feels betrayed by Talos due to the fact that he put a lot of trust in Talos to help settled some of the Skrull survivors on Earth while they searched for a new world for the Skrulls to settle on. So learning that Talos had secretly snook over a million more Skrulls onto Earth was a major breach of that trust. Both actors do a great job of selling this reveal to a point where you completely empathize with both sides of the argument. This is only the first instance of Fury being on the raw end of things in this episode. As we get another scene with him and Rhodes (Don Cheadle) in which Fury gets fired.

Kingsley Ben-Adir puts in a solid performance as the Skrull terrorist leader Gravik. His scenes with the British Prime Minister and the head of the UN was really good and lifts the lid on how deep the Skrull conspiracy goes.

Overall

This second episode of Secret Invasion finishes off the job of deconstructing Fury’s character and begins the process of building him back up again. Though it is going to be interesting to find out how Fury will deal with any future revelations as the conspiracy is huge.