Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Secret Invasion.
In the run-up to its release, the cast and crew of Secret Invasion kept on stressing that it would be the darkest Marvel Studios TV series we had yet seen, promising it would be much more mature than its fellow Disney Plus brethren and maybe even the MCU’s answer to something as gritty and morally complex as Star Wars: Andor. Well, now that it’s here, we can confirm that wasn’t hyperbole as the show wastes no time in getting daaark.
Specifically, Secret Invasion looks set to have a higher death-count than we might expect from an MCU show. Especially one that’s coming after perhaps the lightest Marvel series of them all, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. As the weeks go by, the Samuel L. Jackson vehicle has taken out both familiar faces and untold unknown civilians. Here’s everyone that has died in Secret Invasion, from beginning to end.
Episode 1: “Resurrection”
The Secret Invasion premiere starts as it means to go on with two deaths in its opening first five minutes. The show begins with Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) meeting with seemingly paranoid CIA agent Prescod (Richard Dormer), who believes Skrulls are infiltrating society and creating widespread international tension. Prescod then turns on Ross who shoots him dead.
Ross himself is then chased by Talos and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) for running off with the blueprints to the dirty bombs Gravik, the Skrull insurrectionist leader, is after. To escape, Ross attempts to leap off a building, but only succeeds in falling to his death. Dying, “Ross” is revealed be a Skrull imposter, leaving the fate of the real Everett K. Ross up in the air.
By the end of the episode, Nick Fury and his team have uncovered the plot to stage a terrorist attack on the Unity Day festivities in Vossoyedineniye Square, in the hopes of provoking a war between the United States and Russia. Tragically, the team fails to stop the bombs, which no doubt cause the deaths of many innocent civilian lives.
Much worse for viewers, though, is that Maria Hill is shot at point-blank range by Gravik, disguised as Fury, before dying in the real Fury’s arms. Her body is left behind as Fury and Talos were forced to flee, however it should be noted that her corpse remained human, and so it seems unlikely she is a Skull duplicate.
Episode 2: “Promises”
On the face of it, Secret Invasion‘s second episode is less bloodthirsty than its predecessor as it only features one death during its 58-minute runtime. However, if you pay attention to the dialogue, you’ll see that it kills a ton of people off-screen. When Rhodey admonishes Fury for his failure to prevent the Skrulls’ attack in Moscow, he confirms that 2,000 civilians, including children, died in the terrorist incident. To put that in perspective, only 74 people died during the Battle of New York in The Avengers.
As for the individual killed during the episode’s events, that is the unfortunate Brogan (Ben Peel). Though a loyal lieutenant of Gravik, he is tortured by Sonya Falsworth into giving up some info on his leader’s plans to enhance the Skrulls’ powers. Even though it looks like he’s escaped with his life, once Brogan is rescued by Gravik and the Skrulls, he is driven out to an isolated area and shot, as punishment for betraying the cause.
Episode 3: “Betrayed”
Two characters die in Secret Invasion‘s third episode, one minor and one extremely major. First, the Skrull duplicate of Commodore Robert Fairbanks (David Bark-Jones) is killed by Skrull when he refuses to give up the codeword to avert a nuclear launch that will, you know, kickstart World War III.
This then leads Talos to task his daughter G’iah with searching the memories of the real Fairbanks, held in stasis at the New Skrullos compound in Russia, in order to find the code. It works, but with her cover as a double agent blown, G’iah is forced to flee. Tragically, she is tracked down by Gravik and seemingly shot dead.
It seems rather hard to believe Marvel is going to recruit a star of Emilia Clarke’s caliber and then give her the boot just three episodes in, but SI certainly does its best to convince us. The shot even lingers on her prone, bloodied Skrull form, just to confirm it’s not a trick. Even so, there is cold, hard evidence to support the fact that we haven’t seen the last of Clarke in the MCU.
Episode 4: “Beloved”
Yes, as expected, G’iah is not killed by Gravik in episode three, with it revealed via flashback that she went and Super-Skrulled herself up before her fateful meeting with the villain. In a tragic twist, however, it’s G’iah herself who suffers a grave loss by the episode’s end, although she doesn’t realize it yet.
When Skrull-Rhodey gives away President Ritson’s (Dermot Mulroney) position to Gravik, the Skrulls attack in a Russian helicopter, waging a full-on battle between Skrulls troops and the President’s enormous security detail, turning the road into what Talos describes as a “kill zone.” And he should know as, alongside numerous presidential guards, Talos is first gravely injured with a shot to the shoulder and then stabbed by Gravik, this time apparently fatally.
We’ve been here before, of course, but Talos’ death is a whole lot more convincing than his daughter’s, so this may well be the second time Gravik has murdered one of Nick Fury’s closest friends. R.I.P. Talos.
Episode 5: “Harvest”
In contrast to the reveal of his daughter G’iah’s survival at the top of last week’s episode, Secret Invasion‘s penultimate installments opens by confirming that Talos really is dead. Later on in the episode, his body is burned in a traditional Skrull funereal ceremony by G’iah and Priscilla/Varra. So, yup, it looks like there’s no coming back from this for Talos.
From there, the Skrull death count keeps on racking up. For starters, as dissent starts to sow in the ranks, Gravik kills his once-loyal lieutenant Pagon (Killian Scott), by “Grooting” him in the chest. This then shocks the rest of his Skrull compatriots, and brave Beto (Samuel Adewunmi) — introduced in episode one as a homeless but idealistic refugee — stages a surprise attack on him. Sadly, Gravik ultimately gets the better of him and slits Beto’s throat, at least temporarily cowering the rest of the Skrulls into submission.
Meanwhile, Sonya gets her crazy on again as well when she tracks down the Daltons, or at least the Skrulls impersonating the scientist couple who have made the Super-Skrull process possible. When the Victor Dalton Skrull (Mark Bazeley) threatens to kill the Rose Skrull in order to protect Gravik’s secrets, Sonya shoots him in the head before he can get the chance, which may just turn Fake-Rose into a useful ally.
Episode 6: “Home”
Now that we’ve seen all of Secret Invasion, it’s easy to argue that Nick Fury has left the Skrull situation in much worse state than he found it, and the amount of deaths that occur in the finale — even after Team Fury has supposedly “saved the day” — is Exhibit A for this argument. On the one hand, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is finally killed by G’iah in an epic Super-Skrull vs. Super-Skrull battle with a bolt of Captain Marvel Power through the abdomen.
What’s more, Raava aka Skrull-Rhodey (Nisha Aaliya/Don Cheadle) is finally bested when Fury and Sonya out them as an imposter to President Ritson, with Fury shooting them dead during a stand-off. Likewise, a hidden Fury also takes out a number of Rhodey’s presidential security detail earlier in the episode (I’m guessing they’re Skrulls too, but it’s left unclear). But the Skrull casualties only pile up once their fearless leader is killed.
After Ritson opens hostilities on the Skrull population of Earth, we see in a blood-soaked montage that this incites violence around the globe. One of the arguably guilty victims of these vigilantes is the Skrull impersonating political commentator Chris Stearns (Christopher McDonald) while one of the innocents is U.K. Prime Minister Pamela Lawton (Anna Madeley), who had already been freed from Skrull control.
No doubt countless more Skrull and human deaths occur as Ritson’s war continues, but, hey, Fury’s washed his hands of it and is back in space so it’s all good.
All six episodes of Secret Invasion can be streamed on Disney Plus.