Disney Plus’s Marvel original series Secret Invasion, Season 1 Episode 3, called “Betrayed,” explores the story of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), and Gi’ah’s (Emilia Clarke) mission to stop Skrull General Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and his crusade of starting World War III to initiate the Skrulls’ war of conquest on Earth. The episode begins in New Skrullos with three Skrull Warriors, including Beto (Samuel Adewunmi), preparing their next mission. The mission is to infiltrate the Royal Navy and launch missiles at a United Nations aircraft. The missile attack would further ensure the Skrulls’ plan to initiate World War III. In New Skrullos’ laboratory, Gravik explains to the Skrull Council, except for Councilwoman Shirley Sagar (Seeta Indrani), the Skrull Warriors’ Royal Navy missile mission. Gravik continues to state that if the mission succeeds, the Avengers will likely react, but the Skrulls can counter the Avengers by becoming Super Skrulls, powerful Skrull metahumans. In addition, if World War III happens as planned, the Skrulls will wait for humanity to weaken during the war, allowing the Super Skrulls to simultaneously secure and occupy the Earth and commit genocide on the human race.
The next scene transitions to a flashback in New York City in 1998. A young Nick Fury heads to a cafe to meet with the Skrull Varra (Charlayne Woodard), who would later become Fury’s wife, Priscilla Fury. Varra gives Fury a file that would take down General Dreykov’s men. General Dreykov was the main antagonist of the Black Widow film and the former leader of the Red Room (Black Widow Program) until he died in the film’s final battle at the Red Room high-tech aerial facility. Following the file exchange, Fury grows to love Varra, and the scene transitions to the present day, with Nick Fury cooking a meal for his wife, Varra.
In the present day, Varra scolds her husband for leaving her to protect Earth in the S.A.B.E.R space station. Varra explains that Fury’s leave hurt her because she mourned his first death during Thanos’ Snap for five years. When Fury returned due to the Blip, Varra was happy but became sad again when Fury’s paranoia and distress caused by the Snap event made him too obsessive about protecting Earth. Fury’s growing paranoia led him to leave Varra again by monitoring internal and outside threats from the S.A.B.E.R space station between the years of the Blip to Gravik’s Skrull rebellion. In response to her husband’s behavior, Varra became an active Skrull agent again, but her allegiance to whom is questioned by Fury. Despite everything, Fury and Varra maintained their love for each other. The scene ends with Fury looking at who Varra called on her phone, a rebel Skrull high up in the U.S. Government in London later revealed to be Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle).
Later, in New Skrullos, Gravik meets with Gi’ah and subtly interrogates her by analyzing her responses and behavior, if she is another traitor in the Skrull Warrior ranks. Following the tense talk, Gravik orders Gi’ah to see him early tomorrow and to be close to him during their next mission. The Skrull General did this to test and ensure Gi’ah was loyal to his crusade against humanity. The next day, Gravik and Gi’ah head to Talos’ parlay in London’s National Portrait Gallery. While heading there, Gravik talks to a Skrull Warrior via phone about “The UN Plane at Neptune’s coordinates, 2200 hours.” After arriving at the parlay location, Gi’ah secretly messages the information to Talos.
The parlay begins with Gravik discussing the difference between leaders and soldiers while looking at a WWI Statemen painting. Gravik sarcastically explains how the British leaders got painted and remembered while soldiers died and bled for them. They continue in the gallery cafe, where Gravik threatens Talos with killing Gi’ah due to his defiance. Talos angrily grabs Gravik before calming down when he notices that all of the National Portrait Gallery cafe’s customers and staff are Skrull Warriors.
The conversation continues with Gravik hating on humanity for its flaws: discrimination and conflict. For their flaws, Gravik desires to murder all of humanity and ensure Earth is the Skrulls’ new home. However, Talos rebuts and warns Gravik saying, “You don’t understand the first thing about humans. They’re at their most formidable when they’re threatened by a common foe.” Talos then threatens to tell all of Earth of the Skrulls’ existence to end Gravik’s rebellion and his actions of taking the Skrulls down a dark path of conquest.
Following Talos’ threat, Gravik again threatens to kill Gi’ah. In response, Talos angrily stabs Gravik’s hand with a knife, but the Skrull General is unfazed and slowly heals his hands with his Extremis powers. Extremis, created by Maya Hansen and Aldrich Killian, is an advanced combination of genetic manipulation and nanotechnology, allowing its human hosts’ bodies to heal and regenerate from physical and psychological damages and deformities. However, Extremis’ weakness is that damaging the body too much will cause Extremis to overheat in the body and create a massive explosion, slowly and painfully killing the host in the process.
Since the parlay failed, Fury meets with Talos and begs for the latter’s help which the former succeeds. Talos accepts, and both begin their next mission to stop the Skrull Warriors, who infiltrated the British submarine, Neptune, from launching missiles at a United Nations aircraft. Since Neptune is a British submarine, Fury calls high-ranking MI6 Agent Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Colman) for help. Falsworth tells Fury the person who can stop the missile launch is Commodore Robert Fairbanks (David Bark-Jones), the Naval Command Headquarters officer in charge of the Neptune submarine. Before meeting Fairbanks, Talos reminds Fury that the Skrulls are the reason the latter was able to quickly ascend the ranks to rise as Director of SHIELD because of the vast intel and dirt the Skrulls gathered for him. Soon, Fury and Talos infiltrate and capture Fairbanks, a revealed Skrull Warrior. Fury and Talos tried to interrogate Fairbanks but it failed when Fairbanks provoked Talos to kill him. For this reason, Talos contacts Gi’ah for Fairbanks’s authorization code to call off the submarine missile attack. Gi’ah’s help aborted the missile launch and ended the Neptune submarine’s missile attack on a United Nations aircraft.
Following Gi’ah’s betrayal, Gravik notices Gi’ah attempting to escape New Skrullos on a motorcycle and confronts her. Suspecting Gi’ah of betrayal, a disappointed Gravik orders Gi’ah to return to New Skrullos. When Gi’ah refused, Gravik “fatally shoots” Gi’ah leaving her fate unknown. Soon, the scene moves to Varra entering an unknown location and attempting to contact a rebel Skrull who took on Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes’ identity. Varra wants to talk with Gravik only to be refused by “Colonel Rhodes” in the process. Nevertheless, “Rhodes” agrees to talk with Varra at St. James Church in one hour.
Gravik, An Extremis Super Skrull
In Secret Invasion, Director Ali Selim and writers Roxanne Paredes and Brian Tucker created a third episode with so much tension, mystery, and betrayal in the new Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series. The third episode reveals the full extent of Skrull General Gravik’s war of conquest plan on Earth. Gravik plans to start and weaken humanity in World War III and later have the Super Skrulls secure and occupy Earth once humanity is fully weakened. The bombing in Moscow, Russia was the beginning while the British submarine missile attack on a United Nations plane is the next step to ensuring World War III happens. Gravik’s desire to start World War III is a betrayal to Talos and what the Skrulls stand for as the Skrulls are gradually becoming oppressors and warmongers like the Kree Empire, the empire that destroyed the Skrulls’ home and forced them to become secret refugees on Earth.
Regarding Super Skrulls, Episode 2 revealed that the Skrulls were experimenting on powerful alien and meta-human genetics and DNA. They did this so Skrulls can become Super Skrulls, gaining meta-human abilities in the process. Becoming Super Skrulls will allow the Skrull race to be near invulnerable against threats like humanity and humanity’s heroes, the Avengers. However, the negative effects of inserting metahuman and alien DNA in Skrulls are yet to be seen as science experiments on superpowers do tend to have side effects on the human host.
The theme of betrayal continues to Talos when a Skrull Warrior, in the guise of the Naval Command Headquarters officer, Commodore Robert Fairbanks, felt betrayed when Talos did not ally with Gravik during the rebel Skrulls’ crusade to conquer Earth. Talos would reveal to Fury that the only reason he betrayed the Skrulls for humanity is to not only prevent the Skrulls from falling into corruption and the ways of warmongering but to protect his daughter, Gi’ah. Talos also has a grudge against Gravik due to the latter killing Talos’ wife and Gi’ah’s mother, Soren, in an unknown incident.
The episode also reveals that Talos and the Skrulls are the reason why Fury became Director of SHIELD in the first place. The Skrulls gathered valuable intel and dirt on SHIELD’s enemies and this helped Fury to become an invaluable leader of SHIELD. Despite the Skrulls being the reason for Fury’s past ascension, Talos does compliment Fury being a great and hard-working leader who protects both humanity and the Skrulls from past world-ending threats: Thanos, Loki, Ultron, etc. The revelation is mindblowing because HYDRA controlled SHIELD ever since the beginning of the Cold War and the Skrulls managed to hide themselves as Fury’s personal agents and help him rise to a high-ranking position that even HYDRA leaders allowed and respected him to take some time before Project Insight and the HYDRA Uprising.
Gi’ah’s unknown fate is shown in Episode 3 as Gravik shot her and left her corpse in the forest near New Skrullos. However, there is likely a high chance that Gi’ah secretly made herself into a Super Skrull and faked her own death considering how Gi’ah did tell Gravik that she is a really good liar. If she can lie to anyone perfectly, she can deceive others of her fake death. This is supported by how some scenes involving Gi’ah in the Secret Invasion trailers have not been shown yet to the audience.
Rating: 9/10