Television Review

Secret Invasion: Limited Series (2023) — dull espionage drama lacking thrills

Nick Fury and Talos try to stop the Skrulls, who have infiltrated human society to start a world war.

Easily the worst television series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Secret Invasion uses the title and basic premise of a popular 2008 comic-book run and does nothing of interest with it. Quite how a Samuel L. Jackson-led espionage thriller about shape-shifting aliens conspiring to provoke nuclear armageddon could be this boring is a remarkable feat. It’s hard to imagine Disney will continue bankrolling these expensive yet divisive shows much longer. Where they once felt like a creative flex from the indomitable Marvel machine, recent efforts have felt like death rattles.

Ostensibly a six-part sequel to Captain Marvel (2019), Secret Invasion finds Nick Fury (Jackson) returning to terra firma from an orbiting space station to help with a threat of his own making. A disgruntled faction of Skrulls, the alien refugees who fled to Earth in the mid-1990s and were promised a new home by Fury…