Last week’s Secret Invasion felt like a Marvel version of a spy thriller. This week’s episode, “Promises,” felt more spy thriller, and I’m hoping that keeps happening.

It’s the second episode of the series, and it’s a great one in that it continues what I feel is the overall arc of the whole thing. What I like is how congruous it feels with everything else going on. The entire story is coming together like an espionage film. I feel like I’m watching a spy thriller, and in a lot of the best ways.

But I’m not going to get ahead of myself.

1995, 1997, and a De-Aging Problem

The episode starts in 1995 with a quick talk-through from Nick Fury, and it looks wonderful. I know why they did it. It’s designed to set us up for the very next scene, which takes us to 1997.

1997 is where it falls off the rails a little bit, because the de-aging for the series isn’t as good as it was for the movie. I mean Captain Marvel, where we were first introduced to the Skrulls and to a younger Nick Fury in that era.

So now we’re in 1997 and he’s recruiting. There’s a female Skrull there, you can tell she’s very proud, and she’s introducing the character of Gravik. Gravik’s obviously the villain of the season, or at least as best we can tell at this point. And it’s a very compelling story they’re building. He’s young, he wants to engage, he wants to be a part of what’s happening, and he seems very hurt. Come to find out his parents were killed in an action against the Kree.

Nick Fury does a little forehead thing with him, the whole I-feel-you bit, and he makes a promise to them. We’re going to work together. When we make promises, we keep our word, period.

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

Then we jump to the present, and a lot has happened since we first met the Skrulls in Captain Marvel. You’ve had the entire episode that was the Blip, or what they’re calling the Blip. The snappening.

In that time we find out that Talos, who was the general of the Skrulls, has been replaced. I don’t want to say dethroned, because he wasn’t their king. He’s been ousted, rather. And Gravik is now part of the council that runs the Skrulls. That council is the Prime Minister of England, the guy on their shock jock style pseudo Fox News network, the French Prime Minister and other folks. They’ve set themselves up as world leaders, with the exception of the American president.

Remember, everyone’s reeling from last week. So we get this moment on a train, where Talos is helping Nick Fury get away, and Fury introduces a game. “Tell me something I don’t know.” It’s like 20 questions, or the ABC game, any of those games you play while you’re traveling. A travel game. Very simple. He explains the premise, which goes back to his mom.

So he says to Talos, tell me something I don’t know about the war on Skrullos. Talos begins to explain a little bit. Then Fury whittles it down closer. Tell me something I don’t know about the Skrulls who were displaced.

And dude says, “They’re all here.”

Fury’s like, what do you mean they’re all here? That’s impossible. It’s only supposed to be a handful of them on the planet. And Talos explains that while Fury was gone, what else was he going to do? Promises were made. Fury disappeared, and as soon as he got back he went up to his little space station. His boots hadn’t hit Earth two seconds and he was gone. He’s been gone for years.

They have a little argument, and finally Nick basically kicks him out. Just go.

I like what they’re doing here, because Fury is clearly someone who needs to understand what’s happening, he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, and he’s learning it right in front of us.

Maria Hill Comes Home

We also get the moment where Maria Hill’s body is brought home, and her mom has an encounter with Nick Fury. She’s basically saying Maria trusted you and believed in you, and what happened? He tells her they were ambushed. Somebody knew they were coming. They’re coming for him.

She’s mad at him. And she tells him, you make her sacrifice mean something.

Samuel L. Jackson is playing a very nuanced Nick Fury here, and it’s one I really appreciate, especially when we’re going for that espionage feel.

Rhodey Fires Nick Fury

Then we get Rhodey again, Don Cheadle reprising the role. He’s sitting at what I believe is essentially a UN Security Council meeting, being questioned, and he’s doing the thing he does. You want me to believe Russian espionage information, you want me to believe their evidence, but I don’t see a shred of actual evidence. I’m willing to look at it and investigate it. He’s putting them off, because the president’s not there. And he essentially tries to flex, because that’s what we do, apparently, as Americans. We flex.

When he’s leaving he gets a phone call. It’s Nick Fury, and they set up a meeting.

Rhodey and Fury have this really good, very engaging back and forth that I enjoyed hearing. Nick Fury tries to play the race card. Aren’t you supposed to help me? Aren’t we supposed to be the people who did this and that? And what it boils down to is Rhodey saying, I’m the guy that does this, I’m the guy that does that, and I’m the guy they sent here to fire you.

So his big security agent tries to help Nick Fury up, and Nick turns around, breaks his wrist, and says, “You think you can fire me?”

Yeah, it’s pretty dope. I was like, all right, Nick. I got you. I got you.

Gravik Gets the Council

Meanwhile there’s a meeting of that council I was just telling you about. The Prime Minister of France, the Prime Minister of Britain, the head of their in-universe version of Fox News, all of them Skrulls.

Gravik walks in and tells them, look, y’all have got to understand, revolution’s coming. Who’s going to stand with me? And the British Prime Minister, who apparently has been working with Gravik the whole time, nominates him to be the new Skrull general.

Everybody accepts except for one lady. She’s allowed to leave peaceably, because he doesn’t want to get into a fight with his own kind. She leaves and she calls up Talos. He’s just been voted in as the new general. We’re in trouble.

Then we cut to one of the guys from the bombing, who the Russians captured. Olivia Colman, the head of MI6, walks right in. The Russians tell her he’s not giving up anything, and she’s like, that’s all right, why don’t you guys go ahead and pop off. One of them gets a phone call very quickly from the head of his department, and they clear out. She uses something that’s blood boiling or whatever, gets some information out of him, and then gets out, because she knows they’re coming.

We do understand G’iah a little better now, too. Apparently G’iah did turn on her father at one point, and now she’s using that relationship. It’s very reminiscent of Ant-Man and the Wasp, how the character of the Wasp was against Hank originally, voted him out of his own company, and then she was helping because she realized the truth. Same exact idea. When G’iah was young and idealistic, she wanted to rebel and she wanted to see something happen, and then all of a sudden she realized, oh my gosh, Gravik’s crazy. So now she’s communicating back and forth with her father.

The Wedding Ring

Then we cut to a very interesting end scene button.

You see Nick Fury arriving at a house. They show, briefly, the Skrull woman who introduced Gravik to Nick Fury back at the start. She’s chopping vegetables. He walks in the house, and when he comes around the corner, she’s got a human body on. And she says, “Are you forgetting something?”

He goes and picks up a wedding ring, and he puts it on. He’s married to her.

He clearly knows. She’s the same person introduced in the beginning, so clearly they built a relationship over time. It’s a cool twist. Anybody who read the original Secret Invasion storyline knows there’s obviously nothing like it in there, but it is kind of in that spirit, in that there are more Skrulls on Earth than we thought.

I never would have imagined it, though. One, you don’t imagine Nick Fury being in love with anybody other than himself, because his mission is his wife. The mission. That’s it. And two, it’s one of those things where you go, oh, wow. Okay. Nick has layers.

I like that. I love what Samuel L. Jackson’s bringing to the character. I’m assuming that by next episode, now that he’s come home for even a brief moment of rest, he’s going to be the Nick Fury we know. Probably going to trim the beard off, put the eye patch back on, and be the man. Even though he’s been fired, he ain’t out.

The Verdict

Secret Invasion Episode 2, “Promises,” is a solid 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It’s an excellent episode. It really is. As a continuation of the arc that began in the first episode, it feels very good, and I do feel like it’s much improved in how it carries that espionage feel. That’s with the visual effects notwithstanding, and really that’s only the de-aging. Everything else looks consistent and solid. The transformations look decent.

About That AI Intro

Last week there was a big hoopla about the opening titles being an AI-generated intro. There are two narratives running around. The first is, well, it must be AI, people are losing their jobs, and this and that and whatever else. The other one is, who cares, it’s just another tool in their tool bag.

I fall on the other side. The entire intro was done by a company called Method Studios, and Method Studios has a long-standing history in Hollywood of doing visual effects, specifically openers and things like that. I read and went through all of it, and it seems very much like they trained their own AI models and worked closely with the concept artists to feed in those visuals.

And where people say it’s off-putting, it’s supposed to be off-putting. It’s supposed to look like now you see me, now you don’t. It’s supposed to look like things that are off, just like the Skrulls looking like humans. If you feel a little off looking at it, that’s the job. That’s the point.

I’m not a naysayer or a sky-is-falling person who thinks everything’s terrible because AI is going to destroy the world. I disagree vehemently. I don’t think that’s the case at all.

I can’t wait to see where this series is going, because it’s actually got me very interested. I’m enjoying it. It feels very much like the spy and espionage series they promised us.

Tell me what you thought of “Promises,” and tell me where you land on that AI intro, because I’d love to talk more about that too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.