Secret Invasion TV review: lost in a Marvel-lous labyrinth?
Oh, Marvel. You’re like that trusty old blender in the kitchen that’s always there, whirling around countless ingredients and spitting out smoothie after smoothie of superhero concoctions. Sometimes you get a delightful mixture like “WandaVision,” other times, it’s a lumpy, green shake. And now we have Secret Invasion. It’s not exactly a chunky blend, but it does seem to have too many exotic fruits in one serving.
BEWARE: SPOILERS LIE AHEAD
Imagine “House of Cards” meets “The X-Files,” sprinkled with a dash of “Game of Thrones” for spice. What you get is a twisted mishmash of political intrigue, extraterrestrial espionage, and Emilia Clarke, presumably included to up the star quotient, but who mostly just makes me crave for her riding dragons instead of playing shape-shifting aliens.
The show attempts to inject serious layers into the sometimes kiddie-pool-deep Marvel Universe. I applaud the ambition, but the execution wavers, like a fickle Skrull changing form. One moment, it’s a somber, grim rumination on the costs of endless war, and the next, it’s attempting one-liners that land with the force of a deflated beach ball.
Samuel L. Jackson is back as Nick Fury, now grizzled and aging but still fiercely committed to that eyepatch aesthetic. He shuffles around the Marvel sandbox with the weary determination of someone who’s seen it all before, probably because he has. There are times you can see him asking himself how he ended up entangled in a deep-space, midlife crisis, surrounded by unfulfilled promises and angry, world-conquering aliens.
Meanwhile, Olivia Colman’s Sonya Falsworth is a fascinating yet underused character, like finding a diamond in your cereal but not being allowed to take it out of the box. Her character promises a sophisticated sheen to this tangled narrative, but like a tantalizing mystery locked inside a seemingly never-ending enigma, we are left to wait for what her real role in this intergalactic soup is.
The show assumes you’ve devoured every morsel of MCU lore like a starving comic book fan in a convention center. This could be a problem for those who haven’t kept up with the ever-expanding Marvel canon, making some plot developments feel as confusing as attempting long division without a calculator. Maria Hill’s death, for example, may not resonate as much for the uninitiated, coming across more as an unexpected hiccup in the story rather than a significant shakeup.
Amidst the thrills, chills, and occasional spills, there’s a core of potential in “Secret Invasion.” But it’s sometimes buried beneath a heap of monologues, expository dialogues, and disorienting shifts from one storyline to another, like a game of interdimensional hopscotch. However, I am curious to see how it evolves. Will it hone its identity and stand tall amongst its more successful Marvel siblings, or will it languish in the shadow of its own ambition? Time, and the remaining episodes, will tell.
So, strap in, fellow viewers. Secret Invasion might not be the smoothest ride in the Marvel theme park, but at least it’s never boring. If anything, it’s like going on a rollercoaster with a blindfold – disorienting, slightly nauseating, but hey, you can’t say it doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping.
The Secret Invasion live action TV series is now streaming on Disney Plus from today!
