Secret Invasion
Disney
The “what happened with Secret Invasion” stories do not seem to want to end, as director Ali Selim just…loves talking. He’s commented on the length of Rhodey being a Skrull, which he doesn’t even seem to know. He says he feels “great” about its mixed reviews due to Marvel’s “rabid” fanbase. Now he’s deflecting on one of the show’s most controversial moments.
Director Ali Selim has revealed that the season (series?) finale Super Skrull fight was Kevin Feige’s mandate from the start.
“It starts with Kevin Feige, who says ‘We’re gonna have a Super Skrull fight and all superpowers are fair game.’ I think that is actually best communicated in the moment where Gravik takes the vial from Fury and puts it in the computer for analysis. We see oh, it is all the superpowers scrolling up here.”
This makes it seem like it was definitely Feige’s idea personally rather than them coming to him and asking permission.
The fight itself between G’iah and Gravik has been mocked for both its CGI, including a widely circulated shot of Emilia Clarke flexing a “Drax arm,” and for its wild shift in tone. The joke is “truly, this is Marvel’s Andor,” a reference to the grounded, critically acclaimed Star Wars series. This was supposed to be a Cold War spy series set in the Marvel universe, and yet here we are, with two CGI creatures slugging it out with laser powers in the finale.
I think the best part of all this is that this is exactly the final sequence that She-Hulk was making fun of in its own finale. It’s practically the same plot too, someone bad was trying to harvest Hulk DNA to use on themselves which would lead to a massive villain-Hulk-She-Hulk fight that the show broke the fourth wall to erase and rescript. That is…quite literally the end of Secret Invasion here. Not to mention the show has now broke universe rules and let G’iah live as the most powerful person in the entire universe.
The end result is the single lowest rated episode of any Marvel series ever. Nothing is even close, even the review-bombed She-Hulk. It currently has an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not an 80%, an 8%. That is…genuinely hard to accomplish.
So, I’m not sure you can blame the MCU’s recently missteps on untested directors or writers. If something like this came straight from Feige itself, it seems like the main architect himself may be losing the plot.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.