Warning: this article contains spoilers for Secret Invasion‘s final episode.
If you were wondering just what went wrong with Secret Invasion‘s final episode, which now boasts the notorious reputation of being the single worst-reviewed piece of Marvel Studios content ever, it turns out the problem may have come from the top.
Specifically, fans and critics alike have lambasted the climax of the show for reverting to one of the worst examples of an MCU cliché gone horribly wrong. Two beings with similar superpowers flying through the air and shooting CGI energy blasts at each other is something we’ve seen a million times in the franchise at this point. However, the baffling plot point that the dueling Super Skrulls have adopted every Avenger’s superpower for the battle made it feel like something a little kid came up with while playing with action figures. So, who is to blame for this?
When the finale’s director, Ali Selim, was asked point blank how he figured out which Avenger’s powers he wanted to showcase in the epically asinine battle between Emilia Clarke’s G’iah and Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik, he revealed the direction for the scene came from Marvel boss Kevin Feige himself. As Selim explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:
“The word came down from Kevin Feige: ‘Use them all.’ What’s fun is you watch these powers reveal themselves not only to the audience, but to G’iah, who is a little bit unaware that she has all this power. She knew she had power, but not exactly how and when to use it — and why it works better for her, a strong powerful woman, rather than a deluded male. [Laughs] But in terms of MCU lexicon, Kevin just said, ‘It’s all fair game.’ You see that when Gravik puts the test tube in the machine and sees [all the names] there.”
In the show, both Gravik and G’iah are given an absurd list of abilities thanks to The Harvest, a collection of DNA taken from the site of the Battle of Earth from Avengers: Endgame. Through the use of a machine, the Skrulls can become superpowered with this spilled blood. This includes granting G’iah a muscle-bound Drax arm at one point, sprouting antennae and using Mantis’ “sleep” ability, and even flying and shooting energy beams by way of adopting Captain Marvel’s powers.