James “Rhodey” Rhodes is a Skrull and validating suspicions, Secret Invasion director Ali Selim has confirmed that the switch happened immediately after his accident in Captain America: Civil War. And that means fake Rhodey was not just fooling the Avengers, but based on an early Avengers: Endgame scene, he also majorly betrayed Gravik and the rest of the Skrulls.
The Disney Plus series — which drastically failed to put forward a compelling story — established how Fury’s inability to find the Skrulls a home is the sole reason behind the not-so-secret invasion and Gravik’s single-minded yet messy mission to overtake the planet. Fury pretty much rejected the idea of Skrulls ever co-existing peacefully with humans on Earth, and Captain Marvel was too busy saving other planets to fulfill her promise to the very beings who helped her 30 years ago.
Gravik bombed, shot, stabbed, got Skrull-beefed, and then hunted for the Harvest, and killed his own people, all because the Skrulls never got a home. But…
… what about the fact that Skrull Rhodey actually knew about an uninhabited but perfect-for-residence planet for years, and never bothered to inform Gravik?
Unless you just had one “Aha!” moment, let us remind you that at the beginning of Avengers: Endgame, the Avengers track down Thanos to an empty planet and confront him. You know what happened next, but what needs serious pondering is why did Skrull Rhodey see an empty planet, free of any threat and very habitable, and didn’t report it to his people who were desperate to have a home of their own? Had they shifted to this planet, the disappointed residents of the Marvel fandom would have been saved the trouble of suffering through Secret Invasion.
As this anomaly will probably never be answered, like the countless other inconsistencies in Secret Invasion that will forever not make sense, it is on us to think of plausible reasons. Maybe Skrull Rhodey did inform Gravik, but by then he was too focused on his revenge against Fury to remember his original mission?
Or perhaps the Skrulls were afraid the Kree would attack them there, as even though Captain Marvel has been practically MIA (save for her Battle of Earth appearance after the Blip), Earth-616 has formidable superheroes (who strangely all sat out the widely publicized Skrull-orchestrated chaos).
*Sigh* … Alas, Marvel is more into creating nonsensical situations instead of providing logic these days. Best to go with the flow and wait for The Marvels to both mend Secret Invasion’s pitfalls, and erase its pressing disappointing aura.