The Marvels is a great new addition to the MCU, but the fact that it’s enjoyable may be a surprise to people who watched its prequel Secret Invasion. Secret Invasion is bad, you see.
Many things happened in this overstuffed, overblown mess of a show, and most of them are things you’d have expected to make a huge impact on The Marvels. Maria Hill is dead, Carol Danvers’ Skrull friend Talos is also dead, the Skrulls are pissed at humanity, Talos’ daughter G’iah is walking around with all of Carol’s powers (and those of many other superheroes), Rhodey has probably been a Skrull for some time (ugh), Nick Fury has reconciled with his wife and taken her to space with him, and the Skrulls—along with all non-Earthlings—have been declared enemy combatants by the United States.
Now, most of this doesn’t make a lick of sense in the show either (Earth, uh, already has a substantial alien population in New Asgard? Since Endgame? Remember that?!) but try to transplant it over to the events of The Marvels and it completely falls apart.
Spoilers for The Marvels ahead!
The Marvels poses many questions
It’s great to see Valkyrie again, but why does she think she can take the Skrulls back to Earth with no issues? Why aren’t the Skrulls angry at Carol or Fury for failing to come through for them? And shouldn’t the death of Talos be brought up at least once?! He was a major character in the first Captain Marvel film!
It’s not even just on the Skrull-refugee side of things that we run into difficulties. If G’iah has all of Carol’s powers, why isn’t she also switching places with Carol, Monica, and Kamala? And why doesn’t Fury think to call her and ask for assistance? Maybe she’s off the grid and can’t be contacted, but if this were a truly connected universe, her existence would be at least mentioned.
There’s other people who should be mentioned and aren’t. Fury’s wife Varra was a huge part of Secret Invasion and should be with her husband on the SABER space station, but she’s not there. And the deaths of Maria Hill and Talos don’t seem to have affected Nick Fury at all. He’s happier and funnier in The Marvels than he’s ever been before, and it really sticks out.
Problems behind the scenes
There’s a good reason why this part of the MCU is so out of place, and it’s all to do with the absolute chaos that happened behind the scenes of Secret Invasion. The Hollywood Reporter touched on this in a feature about the current mess Marvel’s Disney+ shows are in. According to THR, original writer Kyle Bradstreet was “abruptly replaced after Marvel decided on a different direction” and this was, to put it mildly, not a move that worked out. After that, “factions became entrenched and leaders vied for supremacy during Secret Invasion’s preproduction in London” and eventually “by early September, a good portion of the Invasion team had been replaced.” Add to that the fact that The Marvels was originally supposed to come out before Secret Invasion and you have a recipe for disaster.
So it seems the answer to all the questions posed by The Marvels is simply “bad management at Marvel.” But you know what? I’m happy to ignore Secret Invasion from now on and I think doing so makes the MCU better. The next project that directly follows on from Secret Invasion is likely to be War Machine, and you know what, they should just forget that whole Rhodey-was-a-Skrull business, too.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
