Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 6 Recap and Ending Explained – How Does Gravik Die?

As we reach the ending of Secret Invasion Season 1, I think we can all agree that almost everything about the reaction to this show has been bizarre. Episode 6 doesn’t move from the strangeness.

After years of lamenting the lack of seriousness and direction in recent MCU endeavors, fans got a murky, paranoid, character-driven story adapting an iconic crossover limited series — and they said it was boring. The title sequence was created by AI, so Twitter lamented the death of art as we know it. When characters didn’t die, they said the storytelling was cowardly. When they did die, they said the character had been wasted and treated unfairly.

Almost irrespective of what happens in Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 6 and how it sets up other films and TV series down the line, one gets the sense that the MCU has gotten too big for its own good. It means too many different things to too many different people with wildly differing expectations. It matters so much on a wide cultural scale that it barely matters at all on the level of the individual.

To be fair, at least the stakes are pretty high here. After the events of Episode 5, “Home” finds the world on the brink of nuclear war. Rhodey/Raava is still trying to convince President Ritson to authorize a military offensive against Russia, with real-time satellite footage showing the Red Army stationing troops on the Finnish and Ukrainian borders as justification.

Meanwhile, Fury stumbles around the carcass of New Skrullos, popping pills to try and stave off radiation sickness on his way to confront Gravik for what will be — presumably — the final time.

How does Sonya trick Rhodey?

In the hospital, Sonya Falsworth, having presumably teleported all the way there from Finland, calls Rhodey to warn him that a deranged Fury is about to make an attempt on Ritson’s life and the president needs to be moved. He takes the bait immediately. 

As Rhodey wheels the President upstairs, his Secret Service detail is quietly taken out. Eventually, he opens a door and finds Sonya behind it, pointing a gun at his face.

Whose appearance is Gravik using?

Fury finds Gravik in a chatty mood in the bowels of his great machine. With his Geiger counter chirping and his hands shaking, Fury settles for a swig of his nemesis’s hip flask and a longwinded, somewhat overacted story — Gravik suddenly sounds very Welsh in this scene to me — about how Gravik adopted the appearance of the first human he killed at Fury’s request. 

And this seems to be the problem. Fury used the Skrulls. He pimped them out, in Gravik’s words, to further his own agenda on the false promise of finding them a new home. Fury finally confesses to Gravik what he has presumably been denying to himself ever since — that he knew he couldn’t. No other planet would do, and the people of Earth would never accept them. “It’s easier to save eight billion people,” he says, “Than to change their hearts and minds.”

So, he’s happy to give Gravik the Harvest — the collected DNA of Carol Danvers and the rest of the Avengers — in exchange for him and the Skulls leaving Earth behind. Gravik takes the Harvest, puts it in the microwave — I know it’s not really a microwave, please don’t comment — and uses it to activate his machine, turning himself into the most super Super-Skrull yet, which you can tell because he emerges from the machine looking like he’s followed Dwayne Johnson’s supplement plan.

What is Fury’s real plan?

But — big twist! — Gravik left Fury inside the machine during the process, and when a suddenly energized Fury left hooks him with the Hulk’s arm clear out of the building and through a nearby chimney, he realizes his grievous error. Fury was really G’iah all along!

The real Fury is back in the hospital with Sonya. Fury used G’iah to essentially be in two places at once. So, this whole sequence splits its time between the two locations, with occasional reminders that a nuclear weapon is about to be launched in the direction of New Skrullos, not only provoking a war with a superpower but killing the various well-positioned government officials the Skrulls have kidnapped and replaced over the years — including James Rhodes.

The fight between Gravik and G’iah is fun because they both have the various powers of all the Avengers, but it’s also a little silly because the main way of visually signifying which power is being used is to have their arms individually morph into Drax’s, or the Hulk’s, or Captain Marvel’s, or whoever’s, and it can be difficult to keep track while doing that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing-at-the-TV meme.

How does Gravik die?

G’iah kills Gravik — using Captain Marvel’s energy blast to blow a hole in his guts — fairly easily, all things considered, and sets about freeing the officials, including the real Rhodey and Everett Ross. Fury is able to shoot Raava-Rhodey through the head, exposing him — or her, technically — as a Skrull and convincing Ritson to call off the strike.

But in the aftermath, Ritson also addresses the nation to declare open war on the Skrulls, which isn’t a great recipe for geopolitical stability or indeed cultural acceptance. As we see, indiscriminate violence pops up all over the place, with vigilantes taking out both innocent Skrulls and innocent humans they believe to be Skrulls in a spate of attacks. Ritson doubles down on his policy, as all politicians necessarily must.

Sonya, spying an opportunity, pitches a deal to a now-superpowered G’iah — she’ll use her, G’iah can use Sonya in return, and together, they’ll help to make a world that’s safe for both of their people.

I’m skeptical, but we’ll see how it goes.

Secret Invasion Season 1 Ending Explained

Secret Invasion ends with Fury returning to S.A.B.E.R. to broker a peace agreement with the Skrulls and the Kree, and Varra, in her true form, goes with him to help him get started. After a long smooch — yes, I admit, I laughed at Samuel L. Jackson snogging that big green rubber head — they leave Earth hand in hand.

Unusually, there are no mid- or post-credits scenes in the Secret Invasion finale. What you see is that you get, and while this marks what seems like it’s going to be a fairly major turning point in the current MCU, it’ll do as an ending for this particular story — for now, anyway.

What did you think of the ending of Secret Invasion Season 1 Episode 6? Let us know in the comments.

Additional reading:

• Will there be a Secret Invasion Season 2 on Disney+?