(Photo credit: Marvel Studios)
I am excited about Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion, even though so far, the MCU has faced a slump. Here are three reasons why I am willing to watch the show.
Back down to Earth
With the exception of a couple of successes such as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Wandavision, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Werewolf By Night, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Loki, Hawkeye, and Black Widow, Marvel’s Phase 4 has been a mediocre start for The Multiverse Saga. Phase 5 started off badly with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, further proliferating superhero fatigue in cinemas due to its bloated story and lackluster acting.
Secret Invasion might be the series to put the franchise back on track and possibly skimp off some excessive CGI, a trend which will be the inevitable future regarding the next batch of Marvel media. It’s going back to the grounded-realistic spy/paranoia akin to my personal favorite out of all the MCU movies besides the Black Panther films, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. After introducing new and familiar superheroes through a blasphemous amount of CGI, hopping across multiverses, the quantum realm, space, and time itself, I think we all deserve to have a breather and get back to something more down to Earth.
The Multiverse Saga’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier
This is going to be a stretch, but this series might be The Winter Soldier of this superhero sequel saga. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a dark-paranoid political thriller/spy series with a chance to twist things up in the MCU again. Ever since the events of The Winter Soldier, its effects had rippled through Agents of SHIELD, and the rest of the movies and Disney+ shows. The revelation of HYDRA’s seven decades-long infiltration of SHIELD and its subsequent dissolution led to the creation of other agencies in its place such as Damage Control, S.W.O.R.D., and SABER, soon to appear in The Marvels later in November.
Instead of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania influencing Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, Secret Invasion should be like The Winter Soldier by having a massive shakeup that will reverberate toward the MCU, leading to the Avengers movies going forward. The idea of a new revelation of Earth’s governments, leaders, intelligence agencies, and maybe the Avengers and other superpowered people being infiltrated by a rogue faction of Skrulls will lead to total distrust of anyone in the world leading toward total anarchy, perfect for The Kang Dynasty to have Earth as the broken world in the center of every universe, ripe for the Kangs’ assault across all of time. Of course, we do have next year’s superhero political/paranoia thriller Captain America: New World Order to possibly expand on the aftereffects of the show since Harrison Ford is playing Thunderbolt Ross who is going to be the next President of the United States after whatever bad is going to happen in Secret Invasion.
The studio’s Avengers: Endgame “portal scene” moment
While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is trying to deviate from all the negative attention Marvel Studios has been getting in the media and the ongoing abusive case trials involving Johnathan Majors, Secret Invasion is the studio’s true Endgame portal moment.
What I mean is this is the studio’s shot at winning back its fans. What better way to win them back is by reintroducing the grounded-spy genre to the MCU since it resonated well with The Winter Soldier in 2014? Sure, it is a Disney+ show, but it has the chance to put faith in Marvel Studios again. If not, then it might herald the beginning of the end of the Marvel Studios’ reign in Hollywood, making way for the imminent James Gunn DC Universe to take over, which at this point already sounds exhausting to even think about.
Jones is a sociology graduate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He writes about sci-fi and pop culture at HyperSpace.