Secret Invasion recap episode one – it’s true, the world has been invaded by reptilians disguised as humans!

This recap contains spoilers for episode one of Secret Invasion. Do not read on unless you have seen it

Sometimes conspiracy theorists are right …

We opened with Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) skulking around present-day Moscow and arriving in the office of Agent Prescod (Richard Dormer). Prescod was on to something – the wave of terror attacks around the world was not being carried out by individual groups, but by the same band of Skrulls, merely disguising themselves as different groups in order to sow the maximum amount of chaos.

Ross, however, didn’t believe him. “That’s precisely what they want you to think,” Prescod told Ross, sounding like a pub conspiracy theorist at last orders. Only he was correct, and got a bullet for piecing together the truth. After a frantic foot chase, we realised that Ross was not Ross at all, but a Skrull.

(If you’re not sure what a Skrull is, they are a race of technologically advanced reptilian humanoids, who used to live on the planet Skrullos until it was destroyed by a militaristic alien race, the Kree, during an invasion. Skrulls are strong, age slowly and, crucially, can shapeshift, which allows them to look like any other life form. Watch Captain Marvel if you want more background.)

Skrull Ross called Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) for a lift, but was chased through the streets of Moscow. He eventually fell from a roof where it became clear he was the bad kind of Skrull and his pursuer was, in fact, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), leader of the Skrull refugees and a good sort. Roll credits.

The Return of Fury

Having not been seen on Earth for some time, Nick Fury had some catching up to do. The exact amount of time he’d spent on the Saber space station is not clear – “a few years” was the closest we got from Hill. (Samuel L Jackson, meanwhile, hasn’t made more than a fleeting appearance in the MCU since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. That film was set in 2024 and the She-Hulk series ended in 2025, so Secret Invasion’s “present day” is mid-2025, suggesting Fury has been off-planet for a year. Something doesn’t quite add up.)

More significant still is the feeling among certain Skrulls that Nick Fury has reneged on the promise he made in 1995 during the events of Captain Marvel to find the refugee Skrulls a permanent home. This feeling is what has been driving Gravik and his rebel Skrulls – they haven’t been given a safe haven, so they will just take Earth, instead.

Troubled by what he heard, Fury went for a walk. A bad idea late at night in Moscow …

Nice intro, Olivia Colman …

Welcome Olivia Colman to the MCU. She is playing Sonya Falsworth, an MI6 agent and old friend of Fury’s with a good line in intros. “This is so exciting: a large Black man in Moscow – well, it could either be Nick Fury or the ghost of Paul Robeson,” she said, before telling one of her thugs to take off Fury’s hood. “Oh damn … and I was hoping for a command performance of Ol’ Man River.”

Colman looked as if she’s having a blast in this scene, and her and Jackson’s quality really shined through – it was thoroughly entertaining.

Right now, it’s unclear if Falsworth can be trusted – Fury was on the fence, too, bugging her office to keep tabs on her.

Double-agent Khaleesi?

Then we met Emilia Clarke’s G’iah for the first time, welcoming Beto (Samuel Adewunmi) to New Skrullos, the rebels’ temporary home in an abandoned nuclear facility (Skrulls are immune to radiation).

She pointed out that there are 500 Skrulls in the resistance, and while it’s not mandatory to become a warrior, those who choose to fight are rewarded with the chance to leave the compound. Crucially – I think this will be a big plot point in future episodes – Skrulls whose missions involve taking on human form stay that way, even in the compound, as the longer they are in disguise, the better they become at maintaining it. Convenient, perhaps, for any human that wants to infiltrate the resistance base? We shall see.

G’iah was then sent on a mission to retrieve two bags from an art dealer in the city, but was intercepted on her way back to base by Hill and Talos. G’iah, it turns out, is Talos’s missing daughter, and was unaware that her mum had died. G’iah wasn’t the most convincing of rebels before finding this out – Pagon (Killian Scott) and Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) looked as if they had their suspicions about her – but that kind of news will have her questioning the cause even more. (She told her dad about the attack later in the episode, but I predict a more permanent double agent has been born.)

Fury and Hill talked about his crisis of faith, the reason he was hiding in space. His crisis followed him up there, he said. The reality is that he hasn’t been the same since the Blip – I’m sure turning to ash would leave you with some sort of PTSD – and probably still hasn’t come to terms with the deaths of Iron Man and Black Widow.

Attack, attack, attack

G’iah disguised herself to meet Talos and tell him about the attacks Gravik has planned. Three bombs in rucksacks, to be detonated in the square. Only Fury, Hill and Talos couldn’t stop the bombs going off – the rucksacks were decoys anyway.

Despite the square being devastated and ice-cold Gravik completing his mission, there was worse to come for Fury. Maria Hill was shot and killed. And by a Skrull posing as Fury, no less. Following Fury into his spy capers was always going to be dangerous and likely to lead to her death – but I bet she never thought it would be him actually pulling the trigger. How’s that crisis of faith coming along now, Nick?

Notes and observations

• Farewell Cobie Smulders. The Canadian actor had played Maria Hill since 2012, appearing in all four Avengers films, as well as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spider-Man: Far From Home and in the TV series Agents of SHIELD Despite Hill never being given a storyline worthy of Smulders’ talents, I wasn’t expecting her to bow out like this.

• Who was Sonya Falsworth talking to in that intercepted meeting? Surely not … Agent Prescod? That would mean Falsworth was talking to a Skrull impostor.

• At least three sugars in that tiny cup of tea, Gravik? What are you, a lazy caricature of a builder?

• I always enjoy hearing non-standard accents in the MCU, following on from Erin Kellyman’s Nottingham twang in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Gravik sounds to my ear like a man from Pontypridd, while Killian Scott as Pagon appears to be talking in his native Limerick brogue. It’s about time we got away from generics.

• Getting the Avengers on a midlife crisis shopping spree certainly beats a sports car, hair implants or a fancy watch.

• A shame Richard Dormer won’t be sticking around as Agent Prescod. I would watch him in anything – that voice! Those wild eyes! He was terrific in Blue Lights, wonderful as Game of Thrones’s Ser Beric Dondarrion and, best of all, as Terri Hooley, the owner of a Belfast record shop during the Troubles in the shamefully underrated Good Vibrations. (You may have seen Hooley as a talking head in the brilliant BBC documentary series Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland.)

• You may also recognise Kingsley Ben-Adir from his time in ITV’s Vera, as a private eye in the second season of The OA or as the doomed Col Ben Younger in Peaky Blinders’ fourth and fifth seasons. He’s been busy – playing a version of Ken in the forthcoming Barbie film and starring in a Bob Marley biopic due for release next year.

• What’s the little girl with the brightly coloured ball got to do with it?

• Secret Invasion is on Disney+.

What did you think? Did you like the darker, gritty tone? Good to see Samuel L Jackson back on Earth? Have your say below …