Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Secret Invasion finale.
Secret Invasionintroduced a large group of Skrulls who were trying to take over the Earth by replacing influential humans in governments from all over the planet. But even when their fearless leader, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) was close to killing Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson),there wasn’t any real sense of danger in the air, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Fury is confirmed to appear inThe Marvels. Just like the Flag Smashers inThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the antagonists failed to demonstrate why they would be an actual threat to the heroes trying to stop them.
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‘Secret Invasion’ Has a Villain Problem
After the events ofCaptain Marvel, Fury promised the Skrulls that stayed with him on Earth that he would find them a new home. He came to an agreement with the aliens, in which the Skrulls would help him with his espionage missions while he and Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) looked for a planet where they could live. The youngest of said survivors would turn out to be Gravik, who believed in what Fury could do for their future when he was a kid. But as he grew up and realized that the former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t be able to bring them to a new place, he felt betrayed.
Gravik’s plan to make Fury sufferfor what he lived through consisted of slowly replacing people in high positions of power with Skrulls. When enough politicians and intelligence operatives were successfully swapped with rebellious Skrulls, the aliens would reveal themselves, and they would claim Earth as their new home. However, this would’ve been an extremely complex idea to pull off, considering how outnumbered the Skrulls would’ve been by the time they announced their arrival. In addition to the logic Gravik came up with for his plan, the impact it would have on the life of anyone outside the main characters was hardly explored.
Since the effects that Gravik’s plan would’ve had on the human population weren’t given time to be explored, it came down to the personal stakes between him and Fury. But even if he claimed that he had plenty of reasons to unleash his wrath on Fury, Gravik didn’t take advantage of all the opportunities he had to kill the resourceful spy. When he got rid of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), or even before he discovered G’iah (Emilia Clarke) was tricking him, Gravik never displayed a convincing will to kill Fury. An unknown amount of spies, the powers of an entire Avengers team, and the ability to shape-shift didn’t allow this warrior to kill a mortal man while he wasn’t at his best.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldiersaw Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) going up against a terrorist group with a seemingly convincing ideology. They were angry at the Global Repatriation Council, an organization dedicated to helping the people that came back to life after the events ofAvengers: Endgame. The Flag Smashers' leader, Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), believed that the world was a better place when half of the population disappeared, given how people from all over the world began helping each other without any condition.
And just audiences as could start believing that her message of unity could actually be spread with humanity’s best interest in mind,Karli and the Flag Smashersbegan bombing innocent people while trying to take the GRC down. In addition to their evil methods, they never represented an actual threat to Sam or Bucky, just as Gravik killing Nick Fury wasn’t a believable idea. And death doesn’t have to be the ultimate punishment for the heroes of the MCU in any given story. Even breaking their spirit by making them stop believing in themselves, or provoking a deep change in the heroes' personalities would be enough, but the antagonists ofSecret InvasionandFalcon and the Winter Soldiercouldn’t deliver on that front, either.
The failure to affect the heroes of their stories in any meaningful way besides a costume change or a new location to live in not only makes these villains look weak but could also hurt the audience’s perspective on theDisney+ television shows connected to the greater franchise. If these stories are merely small updates for the characters that can be read in a short amount of time, viewers won’t be compelled to follow these MCU characters across their journeys on television, driving them away from the interconnected aspect of the franchise that they enjoyed a few years ago.
What Can These Marvel Shows Learn From More Successful Projects?
After more than a decade of saving the multiverse from non-stopping threats, the Avengers can only be defined by the emotional journey they go through on the screen, instead of the number of aliens they can defeat or how fast they can fly. A good example of a worthy villain came during the first season ofLoki, whereTom Hiddlestonreprised his role as everyone’s favorite trickster in an adventure that took him across time and space. The Prince of Asgard had a difficult challenge ahead of him, as his television series had to introduce the villain that would shape Phase Five and Phase Six of the franchise.
In the 2021 series about the Loki variant who stole the Tesseract during the events ofAvengers: Endgame, a version of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) created the Time Variance Authority to prevent his variants from fighting in an endless war. This problem was way too big for Loki to handle by himself, and the sense of imminent doom raised the stakes for the story, as the protagonist had no idea of where to go next, or how to stop the villain before it was too late. By placing Loki in tangible danger, the series gained strong viewership numbers and high anticipation for its return later this year.
Whether it’s another political thriller or a new adventure set in theunknown depths of outer space, the Marvel Cinematic Universe must focus on the strength of their villains if they ever want to recover the consistency they showed during Phase Three. Perhaps if Gravik had represented real danger for Nick Fury, or if Karli Morgenthau had made Sam Wilson believe that he couldn’t win the fight in front of him, the Disney+ series would be the pop culture events the studio wanted them to be when they were first announced in 2019. Until then, no amount of Avengers DNA can cure the franchise’s villain problem on the small screen.
