Summary
Secret Invasion gets a little more daring with its themes and content, while also dropping some major hints about how the show might matter to Marvel’s long-term storytelling plans.
This recap of the Disney+ series Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 2, “Promises”, contains spoilers.
Secret Invasion has been optimistically described by some as “Marvel’s Andor”, the implication being that it takes a famously unchallenging and family-friendly franchise and treats it suddenly seriously.
It’s not a favorable comparison. Andor was tremendous television, and Secret Invasion – thus far, anyway – is merely okay. But I felt it was more apt here in “Promises”.
Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 2 Recap
There’s a reason Episode 2 – written by series creator Kyle Bradstreet and directed by Ali Selim – opens in the past. In 1995, Nick Fury met the Skrulls. In 1997, he promised them a home. The conditions were that while he found them one, they would work to save Earth as a network of shapeshifting spies. They kept their end of the bargain. He didn’t.
This is how Fury first met a young Gravik. When he sees him again in the immediate aftermath of the Moscow bombing that capped off the premiere episode, the context is suddenly different. Fury knows that post-Blip, he hid. And in doing so he broke a promise to the Skrulls, suddenly left to fend for themselves in a world that was hostile to them. The debt has come due, and Maria Hill’s life was just a downpayment.
How many Skrulls are on Earth?
On a train from Moscow to Warsaw, Talos expresses the bulk of this sentiment to Fury. The Skrulls were refugees fleeing Kree genocide. Yes, he kept from Fury that their entire number – around a million – were summoned to the relative safety of Earth. But where else could they go?
Fury’s excuse – that humans can’t even co-exist with each other, and that there simply isn’t enough tolerance among humankind to accept an alien species – is understandable but doesn’t cut it.
Fury lashes out at Talos and sends him packing from the train. But the enormity of his revelations, and Fury’s personal responsibility for them, stays behind in the cabin.
Fury’s guilt is only exacerbated at Maria’s funeral, where her mother (Juliet Stevenson) reminds him that her death is on his head and that he has a responsibility to ensure it wasn’t for nothing. The question now is whether, given his age and his abundance of lingering trauma, he’ll be able to.
Who is on the Skrull Council?
Gravik doesn’t think so. On the way to a meeting of the Skrull Council, which G’iah drives him to, he’s openly unimpressed by the “vapors” that remain of the once-great spymaster.
The Council is convening amid geopolitical turmoil following the attack, which killed a minimum of 2000 innocent people. A Skrull, Brogan (Ben Peel), has been arrested as a suspect, still posing as an American member of the radical AAR group. Despite the U.S. President, Ritson, labeling the attack a clear false flag operation, Russia is poised to retaliate. War of a potentially nuclear variety seems imminent.
The Council meeting reveals that both the U.K. Prime Minister and the NATO secretary-general are Skrulls, and the former seems to have been in on Gravik’s plan. She promotes him to General and gives him total power over the Council, all of whom are persuaded to rally behind him with the notable exception of Shirley (Seeta Indrani), who refuses to bend the knee given how much the Skrulls have already sacrificed thanks to their willingness to wage war.
Gravik, who admires Shirley’s convictions, let’s her go. She immediately tells Talos what happened, and he asks her to set up a meeting between him and Gravik in a public place.
Whose DNA do the Skrulls have?
Back at New Skrullos, Gravik is more popular than ever among his rebel followers. G’iah, though, remains suspicious. It still isn’t totally clear where her allegiances really are. When she follows Pagon to a secret lab where a husband-and-wife scientist duo are feeding DNA samples into a machine, she overhears that Gravik is quietly – and thus far unsuccessfully – looking for something called “The Harvest”.
G’iah looks up the wife, Dr. Rosa Dalton (Katie Finneran), on the compound computer, and finds a list of DNA samples the Skrull have collected (including Groot, Cull Obsidian of the Black Order, and Iron Man’s Extremis technology). Gravik, who mentions offhandedly that he once suspected her of being Talos’s spy when she first joined but doesn’t seem to realize she’s spying on him in that very moment, invites her to join him in freeing the captured Brogan from Russian interrogation.
Is Rhodey a Skrull?
Meanwhile, the EU and the U.K. convene an emergency summit to essentially lay blame for the Moscow attack at the feet of the U.S., represented by James Rhodes. Rhodey isn’t interested in baseless allegations, and neither is President Ritson. But Fury and Hill’s presence at the scene is a bad look, geopolitically speaking, so when Fury calls Rhodey to invite him for a drink, War Machine fires him.
I’m not a huge fan of this development. I get it must happen so Fury has a narrative excuse to go rogue, but it never sits right when longstanding heroes act with inexplicable hostility to allies for the sake of plot, especially when Fury’s counterarguments against going public with the Skrull threat – their shapeshifting abilities make the usual defences, i.e., the Avengers, far too risky – make total sense.
I suppose there’s always a chance that Rhodey is a Skrull, though.
Is Gravik trying to create Super-Skrulls?
Anyway, Sonya Falsworth makes her presence felt in “Promises” when she takes over Brogan’s interrogation, cutting his finger off with a pair of scissors to confirm he’s a Skrull before moving onto her real strategy of injecting him with a chemical that makes his blood literally boil.
This, I think, is what lent some validity to the Andor comparisons. Torture of any kind is never a fun watch, but Sonya’s obvious nonchalance about it, coupled with the extremely macabre method, made me more uncomfortable than Marvel stuff usually does.
Anyway, Brogan spills about the Daltons, and hints that their machine is intended to make the Skrulls stronger, suggesting we’re doing a Super-Skrulls arc. Sonya escapes through a hatch just as Gravik and Pagon storm the place, killing all the Russians and taking Brogan away. G’iah, who stays in the car with Beto during the raid, makes a clandestine call, and when the Skrulls return to their safehouse they discover the police have been tipped off about it. Her? Probably.
Either way, Gravik has them drive into the woods, and Pagon executes Brogan.
Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 2 Ending Explained
As “Promises” comes to an end, Fury picks up a vehicle and heads out into the countryside.
There, he enters a house where a Skrull, cooking in the kitchen, presents as a human woman we subsequently learn is Priscilla Fury, Nick’s wife. He puts on his wedding ring, and they passionately kiss.
So, Fury’s married to a Skrull? That’s unexpected, and it raises all kinds of questions about what her allegiances might be as the season progresses. For now, though, we check out of a more provocative episode than the premiere which suggested that if Secret Invasion might not be Marvel’s Andor, it might at least be something more daring than we thought.
You can stream Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 2, “Promises”, exclusively on Disney+.
