Disney Investor Day 2020 revealed that a live-action adaptation of the Marvel Comics miniseries Secret Invasion would be coming to Disney+. No release date has been projected, but the announcement confirmed that the series would bring back Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos.
Ever since the shapeshifting Skrulls were introduced into the MCU via Captain Marvel, Marvel Comics fans have predicted that a Secret Invasion adaptation would eventually be made. This seemed all but certain after the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which ended with the twist that the Nick Fury and Maria Hill that Peter Parker had been working with were actually the Skrull general Talos and his wife Soren in disguise. While the two Skrull refugees were in Nick Fury’s employ, the twist still put forth the central idea behind the Secret Invasion storyline of the comics: anyone could secretly be a Skrull.
While the MCU Skrulls differ from their comic-book counterparts, it would still be fairly easy for Secret Invasion to be adapted for the MCU. There are relatively narrative bears that would have to be established to setup the story, compared to other Marvel Comics storylines that have already been adapted for the big screen (such as Civil War). What’s truly exciting about the adaptation, however, is what it might introduce (or perhaps reintroduce) into the MCU.
The Skrulls have been a part of Marvel Comics history since before The Avengers existed. The alien race first appeared in Fantastic Four #2, where Reed Richards managed to thwart the Skrulls’ first attempt to invade the Earth through open conquest by hypnotizing the Skrulls into believing they were cows. The Skrulls took on a more threatening role as one of the sides in the Kree-Skrull War, when Earth became caught in the crossfire of the conflict between the two empires. This resulted in the Skrull Empire being left in disarray after their homeworld was devoured by the world-eating Galactus and ultimately set the stage for Secret Invasion; the big Marvel Comics event of 2008.
Following the destruction of their homeworld, the Skrulls came to be ruled over by Veranke; a princess who predicted the disaster based on an ancient prophecy in one of their holy books that seemingly foretold the coming of Galactus. Veranke was silenced and imprisoned by the former Emperor, who was overthrown when word of Veranke’s warnings came out. Elevated to the throne, Empress Vernake decreed that the Skrulls would follow the path preordained by the prophecy, which said the Skrulls would come to reach new heights by claiming “a world of blue” as their new home. Presuming this world was Earth, Veranke proposed a bold plan whereby the Skrulls would use their shapeshifting powers to kidnap and replace key figures among Earth’s elites, including their superheroes.
To aid them in this, these agents underwent special training and biological enhancement that would render them undetectable to psychic scans, super-senses or any of the other means by which Earth’s heroes might distinguish a Skrull agent from a human. The conditioning was so intense that many of the agents were unaware of their nature as Skrulls, only resuming their original identities when a key phrase was spoken to them. Only upon dying would the Skrull revert back to their natural form; a fact Earth’s heroes discovered after the assassin Elektra was revealed to be a Skrull. This led to a period of intense paranoia, as the heroes wondered who among them might be a secret Skrull agent just waiting for the right moment to strike.
The end result of Secret Invasion was that the heroes of Earth, already divided after the events of the Civil War event, became even more dispirited. Several heroes who had been abducted and replaced were returned to Earth to find their lives drastically changed by the choices their doppelgänger had made. Perhaps the most painful example of this was the heroine Mockingbird, who had been abducted while in the middle of reconciling with her estranged husband, Hawkeye, and returned to find her Skrull double had died saving his life and that her husband had mourned her and moved on.
Ironically, the one person who benefited from the Secret Invasion was one of Earth’s villains, Norman Osborn. The notorious businessman, best known to Spider-Man fans as the secret identity of the Green Goblin, managed to manipulate some stolen intelligence to develop the weapon needed to kill the seemingly invincible Veranke and shot her on-camera before the eyes of the world. Osborn managed to parley this good publicity, coupled with the public distrust in SHIELD and the Avengers after it was revealed that they failed to see the Secret Invasion coming, into a job leading a new peace-keeping force called HAMMER, which replaced SHIELD. Naturally this was all part of Osborn’s larger schemes to further divide all the Marvel superhero teams and acquire more wealth and power behind a mask of respectability, even as he continued to live a villainous life in secret.
Captain Marvel established a number of facts relevant to a direct adaptation of the Secret Invasion storyline. Chief among these was that the Skrull homeworld had been destroyed, though it was the Kree who were responsible rather than Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. This left the surviving Skrulls, who numbered a few thousand scattered around the galaxy, using their powers to blend-in and build new lives for themselves on other worlds. This played into the propaganda of the Kree Empire, who painted the Skrulls as an insidious race who sought to conquer other civilizations from within. Spider-Man: Far From Home expanded upon this, showing how much damage Talos was able to cause accidentally with his impersonation of Nick Fury, which indirectly raised the question of how much trouble a saboteur might cause intentionally with a Skrull’s powers.
The simplest way for Secret Invasion to play out in the MCU is for a rogue faction of Skrulls, unknown to Talos and his followers, to be revealed to have been on Earth actually doing what the Kree accused them of out of desperation. They may be led by a fanatic like Empress Veranke from the comics, but it seems likely Disney will ignore the prophecy angle for fear of offending the religious. However, whether their motives are driven by prophecy or simple survival, this will create an interesting conflict for Talos, who will be divided between his loyalty to his race and what may be best for them and his loyalty to Nick Fury and the organization that helped him and his people in their time of need.
The aftermath of Secret Invasion could prove interesting depending on how closely Marvel Studios sticks to the comics. While there is no organization like the Illuminati in the MCU, a similar group could come into being despite the absence of Tony Stark and T’Challa and could be used to introduce Reed Richards ahead of the new Fantastic Four movie. A less likely idea is that Secret Invasion could introduce Norman Osborn as a villain capitalizing on the void left by Tony Stark’s death, independent of the Spider-Man movies. It could also bring back dead heroes like Black Widow, who could be revealed to have been Skrull agents, but that seems unlikely as the MCU has largely avoided resurrections apart from undoing the Thanos snap.
Originally from https://screenrant.com/secret-invasion-marvel-mcu-event-story-explained/