Secret Invasion – Harvest Review

So help me if Sonya Falsworth turns out the be a Skrull at the last minute in next week’s Secret Invasion finale (although I certainly wouldn’t be shocked with the way the series has kept her character and her motivations shrouded in some secrecy). But, at this stage of the game, with one episode remaining in a wholly disappointing series that never made the Skrull threat as all-encompassing as it should have been to sell this particular storyline the way it needed to be sold, I’m assuming we’re going to get one more gut punch of a reveal that makes sense but was also not at all set-up in a way to feel fully earned. Much like Fury’s explanation for why he hasn’t called any of his super friends, the story continues to rely on the audience openly agreeing to suspend its disbelief and accept that Fury is openly choosing to martyr himself with the fate of the planet at stake rather than do the smart thing and ask for actual help. And don’t get me started on how dumb he was to steal DNA samples from all the heroes at the Battle for Earth. Oof, Fury.

When it comes to determining if Fury’s lost a step, I think the real conversation is if Fury has wholly overplayed his hand not only in trusting the Skrulls but in trying to control all possible outcomes of the future on Earth. Naturally, the one thing he apparently didn’t anticipate was the Skrulls getting mad that they’ve been jerked along by him for decades and trying to rise up and take the planet for their own. Which, again, doesn’t quite track. Yes, Fury was lost in the Snap (and lost five years of planning), but wouldn’t he have some fail safes in place in case he was indisposed? Either Fury is a mess and off his game or Fury just needed that kick from the fridged Maria Hill (love that Cobie Smulders gets credit each time Hill’s death gets replayed) to get back on the horse and become Fury the spy again. But the hubris in keeping a serum that contains the DNA for every hero in the MCU? Well, that’s another level of irresponsible. Now, I know Gravik won’t get his hands on the proper version of the Harvest. (And how is a single vial able to house separate elements of DNA? I’m sure there will be some Marvel-ease explanation for that one.) But wow, I genuinely can’t believe that Nick Fury would do something like that – so perhaps it’s all a lie and there isn’t a Harvest?

Because the one thing Secret Invasion has been short on is viable answers to key questions. Sure, we’ve been told things – like why Fury needed to keep the Skrulls around, who some key Skrulls are impersonating in the world governments, why Fury refuses to call any of the Avengers to help – but none of the answers have felt all that satisfactory. Could that be a part of the “spy” nature of the series? I guess, but we’re down to a single episode and that’s not the time to pull back the curtain and reveal all. Rather, for a well-constructed series, that time starts with breadcrumbs early on that can ultimately be followed to the conclusion. We’ve been shown breadcrumbs from some pretty stale bread that doesn’t add up to much in the way of a compelling story or with the creation of compelling characters.

Take the Gravik heel turn this week, where the Skrulls under his control try to stage a coup because he killed his right-hand man Pagon when he questioned Gravik. Totally makes sense, and I was impressed the series went there. Gravik has shown almost no charisma, no ability to lead from anything other than anger, and no secondary playbook to follow when his main plan gets interrupted by Fury. He’s an awful leader who led solely on the strength of his righteous anger. Of course that strength and command would start to crumble once things started to go wrong. And of course he would use his super powers to try to instill fear to keep leading. But, again, all we know about the character is that anger, that rage. The series has done absolutely nothing to humanize Gravik. We don’t get what made him ultimately decide he wanted to craft World War III other than his desire to get a home world now. Perhaps we’ll get a villain speech during his final showdown with Fury to explain more, but we should have been shown much more of his background, his relationship with Fury, to help understand his choices. As Gravik stands now, he’s an angry man who wants to take what he believes to be his because he didn’t get what he was promised. Which is all well and good as a villain motivation, but without the humanity behind the character, we lose so much in terms of making us care even a little bit for him.

One other thing that has been conspicuously missing from the narrative thus far is any real blame placed at the feet of Fury for starting this entire boulder rolling down the proverbial hill. Sure, he’s said this is personal. He’s made it clear he feels he is responsible for taking care of the mess. But he’s never expressed that he fucked up. He’s never said the words – not to Talos, not to G’iah, not to Priscilla, not to Maria Hill. He’s still blaming Gravik for what’s happened, but really, Fury has manipulated the Skrulls since day one and is directly responsible for the situation the world finds itself in. A mea culpa wouldn’t be remiss – and yes, we might finally get one at the last minute. Until we see Fury truly accept that he’s the reason this is happening – and admit it to someone (I’m guessing he tells Gravik next week in their showdown, but it’s couched in sarcasm and doesn’t feel genuine), we’ve missed a key element of this story.

You know what would have been super interesting? Actually dealing with the moral implications of taking an alien race who you made a massive promise to and using them as your personal army to do your dirty work. Because that’s what this is a story of, and Marvel has opted to gloss over those elements and not dig deeper. Think of what it would have been like to see Fury wrestle with his morality – to have Talos really throw it back in his face (or Priscilla). To see what happens when someone we’ve been conditioned to see as a no-nonsense hero has to grapple with a massive error in judgment that has all but doomed a race of people to live in the shadows. Think of what Samuel L. Jackson could have done with a story like that. Man, that would have been great to watch. But instead we only get surface lip service to that element of the story and Jackson just gets a couple good monologues and a lot of quips and nothing much deeper than that. Just one more disappointment in this story that could have been so compelling.