There is simply no denying that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the undisputed box office king. With over $32 billion and counting to its name, the franchise is the single most dominant force in Hollywood history. And yet, there is also no denying that that it has seen better days - mainly due to some creative missteps throughout the Multiverse Saga.
From overexposure due to the expansion of the MCU onto the Disney Plus streaming service, to a bunch of lacklustre titles that didn't do its previously-untainted Rotten Tomatoes record any good, there have been some hurdles to overcome - which Marvel Studios is planning to overcome with both the highly-anticipated Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer and the saga-defining Avengers: Doomsday this December. But, despite some shortcomings from the Multiverse Saga throughout the past few years, there is one single defining point when it all went wrong for the MCU.
June 21 marked the third-anniversary of Marvel's infamous Secret Invasion premiere
It's hard to believe but it's been officially three years since Secret Invasion premiered on Disney Plus. The Samuel L. Jackson-led spinoff series premiered on the streamer back on June 21, 2023, and there were some pretty high expectations heading into it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the biggest misfires in MCU history.
Some fans were sceptical about it - the Secret Invasion storyline is one of the biggest Avengers stories in the Marvel Comics, so it could have made a great Avengers movie - but the focus on Jackson's gripping Nick Fury, as well as the star-studded cast, which included Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Ben Mendelsohn, and Cobie Smulders was enough to entice us from the get-go. And then it got going, and everything went awry.
While the first episode was admittedly pretty solid, its controversial ending squandered fans' goodwill right out of the gate when long-running fan-favorite Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) was shockingly killed off. It was a cold, callous way to kill a character who had been part of the MCU since the very beginning and, although the moment itself was certainly shocking, Marvel couldn't successfully produce aftermath that felt worthy of such a moment. Honestly, we were all hoping that it might have been a twist and that the character killed was actually a Skrull in disguise, but that unfortunately wasn't the case.
The serious tone that the show was going for - similar to that of a British crime drama - prevented any kind of uplifting, heroic moment from ever coming to pass. And therefore, Hill's disappointing death remained as it was: Disappointing, cruel, and completely unnecessary. What's even worse is that Secret Invasion somehow managed to outdo itself in the episodes after that.
With that in mind, here is a list of everything that fans hated about Marvel's Secret Invasion and why, three years later, it is still widely regarded as the worst Marvel series ever made:
- Maria Hill's shocking death
- The revelation that Nick Fury secretly had a wife
- The disappointing aftermath of that reveal
- Talos' unnecessary sudden, disappointing death
- The misfire of Emilia Clarke's character G'iah
- Underuse of Olivia Colman's brilliant Sonya Falsworth
- The Rhodey is a Skrull reveal
- The CGI-heavy, poorly-executed series finale
- Poor overall pacing, making a 6-episode show feel a lot longer
- Lack of Avengers in a storyline that really needed them
Did that list sum it up for you? Secret Invasion was honestly one big mistake after another, and its very existence just doesn't align with the rest of the franchise. That's a pretty crazy statement to make considering it was arguably expected to be the most "must-see" of the all the MCU shows, featuring a legendary MCU character (Fury) and dealing with a long-standing MCU storyline (the Skrulls), wrapping up Captain Marvel's lingering plot threads, but it just couldn't pull any of it off. And it ended up making a case for completely ignoring its existence altogether.
Aside from the fact that it is objectively not good, it harms some of the MCU's most important storylines. Not only is it a poor sequel to Captain Marvel, the deaths are completely unjustified. Hill still had a purpose in the franchise, so wiping her out here was extremely short-sighted - especially as it didn't even land in the series itself. And then you have Fury's secret wife, which simply doesn't line up with everything we had learned about the character before (where was she during Captain America: The Winter Soldier?!). Like with Hill's death, the aftermath never justified such a big swing.
We also can't forget about the reveal that Rhodey was a Skrull all along - or at least since the events of Avengers: Endgame. Initially, fans thought the show was trying to tell us that he had been a Skrull since the events of 2016's Captain America: Civil War (which would have meant that the real Rhodey would have never known about Tony Stark's death), but after the overwhelmingly negative fan response, that was altered to a post-Endgame event.
All in all, Secret Invasion was a blemish that the MCU simply can't snap away. There is a pretty decent chance that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars might try to erase the events of it, because any storyline tied to this show is forever tainted by just how poor it was - and, more importantly, how disrespectful it was to the MCU's lore. But there is no denying that the release of Secret Invasion three years ago is where it really went off the rails for the MCU - with that finale understandably receiving the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score for any MCU project ever.
Here's hoping that the franchise does find a way to move on from this one (and we'd even forgive them for pretending that it never existed). Marvel fans, Nick Fury, Samuel L. Jackson, Maria Hill, Cobie Smulders, Talos, Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke all deserved better than this.
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