Episode six of Secret Invasion heralds the finale of the latest MCU project, bringing to a close the conflict between Nick Fury and the sinister Gravik. And I have some thoughts. The show had the compulsory CGI slugfest that we’ve come to expect from an MCU finale on Disney+, something I was hoping the show would avoid. But it also felt empty and now that the show has concluded, I’m not too certain what the point of this show was.

In the comics, the writers had built up Secret Invasion for quite some time, making the revelations on the page seem more impactful and unexpected. But nothing felt earth-shattering in this show. Rhodey being a Skrull wasn’t a surprise to anyone and it’s unclear as to when he was taken. His legs don’t work, but is that because they replaced him when he was in the hospital during Civil War, or because they took his leg braces? So it’s not like we, as an audience, were watching Skrulls hiding in plain sight over the course of years. Even Martin Freeman’s Evert Ross, confirmed to be alive in his pod in the finale, doesn’t reveal when he was taken, leaving us in the dark if we’ve ever seen the real Ross. So everything feels hollow and lacking in consequence.

Fury marches on over to Gravik, fighting off the radiation of the nuclear site and surrenders the DNA of Carol Danvers, allowing Gravik to become a Super Skrull with the DNA of all the Avengers and even Thanos and his top lieutenants, like Ebony Maw. Gravik gives an impassioned and honestly, captivating speech about how he blames Fury for making him a weapon and that each kill he did for Fury chipped away at his soul and that he opted to wear the face of this first victim. But it wasn’t actually Fury who was with Gravik, it was G’hia, which ended up undermining that speech a bit as it wasn’t delivered to Fury. Being in the chamber as well, G’hia also got embedded with Danvers’ powers to complement the host of powers she already has from earlier in the season. I did not need this personally and I didn’t care at all what was happening during their big fight. I think it would’ve been much better to have G’hia reveal herself and simply kill Gravik, rather than having a CGI slugfest. Considering the tone of the show, the CGI fight at the end feels out of place. Is Marvel afraid of not having a CGI action fight scene as their finale? A better question now is does G’hia make all the Avengers obsolete now? She has the powers of nearly every single Avenger who was at the Battle for Earth, at once. So she’s the single strongest person basically in the universe and it just feels so uninspired and takes away from the uniqueness of our heroes.

The real Fury was with the President, pleading his case that Rhodey was in fact a Skrull and that he needs to call off the nuclear strike against Russia. First off, why are nukes the immediate reaction? Why isn’t the President not considering just an airstrike or boots on the ground? That’d be like Russia nuking Ukraine on day one of the current invasion. The MCU needs a global conflict to unify the narrative and a world war would be something that would segue nicely into Captain America: Brave New World and The Thunderbolts. While the President did declare all aliens persona non grata, which will likely carry over into those movies, I still didn’t feel a sense of urgency or chaos for the larger narrative. It doesn’t help that the world seems relatively fine, as in not burning or chaotic, in the trailers for The Marvels, which by the way, way to kill all suspense about Fury’s fate by having him in the marketing material. He starts and ends the project on the space base, coming down to Earth to tackle this conflict, but if you skip over this show, I don’t think you’d be missing out on too much in the overall MCU, which is wild for a show based on Secret Invasion. I wish that the show gave us the conflict set up in the ending far earlier, as paranoia and fear took over, which would have created a ticking clock for Fury to complete the mission. If the mob was unleashed after the bombing in episode one, this show likely would’ve felt much different.

Also, just a quick nitpick, but the G’hia Fury (using his memories) stated that when he was dusted in Infinity War, he felt relief, but he was in the middle of uttering a famous Samuel L. Jackson cuss word in anguish as he thought he failed to contact Carol Danvers. Not exactly seeing a sense of relief here, which leads me to think that the writers wanted to do their own thing while kind of disregarding the canon events.

I wanted to like Secret Invasion. Heck, for the first three episodes, I really was. The slow-burn spy thriller where you can’t trust anyone was a neat and fresh angle. But the house of cards quickly crumbled and I couldn’t help but think the show got lost along the way. It’s by no means a bad show, it’s got some great acting from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn and Olivia Coleman (who steals every scene she’s in) and some competent action scenes, but the show just didn’t make me care enough as it went on. World War III was being threatened all season and I didn’t feel the urgency or the real risk of danger. In the end, the show ends up feeling like just another Marvel show, which seems to be par for the course for the company as of late, especially on Disney+.