Secret Invasion is an upcoming Marvel Disney+ series starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, and Martin Freeman. Nick Fury (Jackson) and Talus (Mendelsohn) must stop the Skrulls, a villainous race who have infiltrated the highest levels of the MCU. Secret Invasion explains the story of their unknown invasion of Earth. The Skrulls, a group of alien shape-shifters, have secretly replaced many superheroes in the Marvel Universe with impostors (the Skrulls pretending to be them), as part of their plan to take over the planet. Who is a real person, and who’s an imposter? It’s often not easy to be sure. The Skrulls believe the Earth is rightfully theirs and are out to claim it as such without a planet to call their own anymore.
You may remember the Skrulls from Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson as the title character. The Skrulls have been well established in the comics and have had significant run-ins with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, She-Hulk, Deadpool, among others, often impersonating them. There are many directions their story has gone in the comics, much more than a single movie could cover. Thankfully, Secret Invasion on Disney+ will be a six-episode series in the continuation of Phase 4 in the MCU. While originally speculated to be a movie rather than a series, here’s why Secret Invasion as it’s been established as a Marvel Comics storyline works better as a series rather than a movie.
There’s a Potentially Lengthy Story to Tell
Every MCU character being impersonated by the Skrulls already has a potential built-in story of how the Skrulls took over their lives on Earth. Then, there could be a continuing storyline of how each character is discovered to be an imposter and how this wrong is ultimately overturned. The new show will likely explain how the Skrulls are able to successfully infiltrate the lives of some of Marvel’s biggest heroes and not be noticed or found out in the process. You could easily spend an hour-long episode just explaining the scenario of how this occurs to already established characters, while also introducing new ones in the process. Perhaps this will include cameos from various Marvel characters not currently confirmed to be part of Secret Invasion to make small appearances. For what it’s worth, none of the storylines in this upcoming show necessarily need to be fully resolved by the end of this series either. Depending on how Marvel wants to play it, if the show’s successful, who’s to say the show couldn’t even get greenlit for a second season like Loki already is?
Anyone Can Be a Skrull
Disney
There’s a political paranoia aspect to the Secret Invasion spy-thriller story, which will likely play out during each episode. How can you trust anyone if there’s a chance they aren’t the person you think they are? In fact, we most recently saw Nick Fury in the MCU as part of Spider-Man: Far from Home as he was onboard a massive Skrull spaceship while Talos impersonated him on Earth. This will hopefully be explained by Marvel in this new Disney+ show. How deep does the threat truly go? It’s tough to say. There could be greater unpredictability and longer-term consequences for having the story explained over the course of an entire series instead of a film. Hopefully, this won’t result in the plot becoming too unnecessarily overcomplicated. However, the MCU Kevin Feige has created so far has done a magnificent job with the overwhelmingly large majority of all its projects in eventually creating definitive conclusions to both short and long-term story arcs.
Secret Invasion Will Likely Tie in With Future MCU Projects
The officially announced Captain America 4 movie, and even the upcoming Ms. Marvel Disney+ series (which will be released before Secret Invasion) could all tie in with the storylines from the Skrulls. As a matter of fact, the Skrulls could infiltrate practically any part of the MCU the Marvel writers want them to for many years to come as long as there is a justifiable reason for them to do so. As the technologically advanced race of reptilian humanoids native to the planet Skrullos that was destroyed during the Kree-Skrull War, there is a fruitful backstory in the long history of the species that has yet to be fully told in the MCU. With their overall story set in present-day, and significant comic book storyline moments involving Nick Fury and others in the MCU set in the near future in 2023 and 2024, it’s likely the upcoming series will draw on these plots going forward. Even though an exact release date has not been officially announced, Secret Invasion is now likely to arrive on Disney+ in late 2022. This would align similarly to how Marvel’s Hawkeye episodes dropped on the streaming platform over November and December 2021.