You really couldn’t make it up that Samuel L. Jackson – one of the very few remaining Marvel Cinematic Universe stars to have appeared in the franchise’s very first installment that’s still going strong – was finally given center stage for his very own showcase in Secret Invasion after 15 years lending support, and it was just awful.
For six weeks, Disney Plus subscribers and MCU fans alike – or at least, those who even bothered to watch given the disappointing viewing figures – have been bored out of their minds seeing Nick Fury unravel one of the weakest conspiracies the political thriller arena has experienced in quite some time.
There was a shred of optimism heading into the finale, though, seeing as even Marvel’s underwhelming streaming shows have tended to pull out all the stops for a blockbuster-sized finale, but Secret Invasion couldn’t even do that. It was a damp squib dropped on top of a wet fart, and at the time of writing the sixth and final episode is the MCU’s single worst-rated piece of content ever on Rotten Tomatoes with a 10 percent score.
This time yesterday, it wasn’t quite the nadir of the Marvel Studios era, with Inhumans a sliver ahead on a 13 percent approval rating. However, now that Fury’s disastrous final chapter has plummeted even further over the course of the last 24 hours, Secret Invasion has officially been designated as worse than even the diabolical series Kevin Feige would rather pretend it didn’t exist given its ties to the offshoot Marvel Television that he was all too happy to shutter when arch-nemesis Ike Perlmutter was ousted from the company.
If there were any lingering doubts that the MCU might really be in trouble this time, then the sixth and final installment in a $212 million TV show ending up as the franchise’s lowest-rated offering ever is sure to blow them away once and for all.