Plot Hole in MCU? (Or Nick Fury Is Lying)

The core problem with the plot, until Captain Marvel is that the MCU had consistently been stressing that they didn’t know about existence of aliens before the New Mexico incident. In one scene in The Avengers, Nick Fury claimed that Thor’s arrival on Earth was an absolute game-changer for the organization. “Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet,” he explained, “who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.” The existence of life on other worlds had been proven, S.H.I.E.L.D. now knew that alien technology was far in advance of our own, and aliens had their own agendas that could be dangerous for any humans who crossed their paths.

The World Council’s response to the Thor incident was to demand S.H.I.E.L.D. find a way to level the playing field as quickly as possible, and so S.H.I.E.L.D. began pursuing advanced technology.

Tie-in comics have suggested that Fury had a bigger agenda in his head with the Avengers Initiative because of which he was constantly struggling to get a sign-off from the World Council. He viewed the Tesseract project and the Destroyer experiments as little more than backup plans, to be used in the event the Avengers failed.

Until now, Fury has consistently claimed that the first aliens S.H.I.E.L.D. encountered were Thor and the Asgardians. The organisation’s strategic priorities have strongly supported this statement, suggesting he was telling the truth.

But, Captain Marvel reveals that Nick Fury encountered his first aliens way back in 1995. He crosses path with both the Kree and the Skrills, two galactic empires with advanced technology and superpowers.

For Skrulls, he discovered that they are shape shifters who have the power of to infiltrate into power structures. It’s already been confirmed that the war-leader, Talos, has replaced Fury’s boss. The trailers even suggests that Fury will learn how powerful these alien races are. With the scenes shown in the trailer its evident that Fury will learn that aliens exist and also get a sense of their power and gauge how dangerous they can be.

This raises two difficult questions. Firstly, why does Fury wait so long before he begins to prepare a defense for the Earth? He only seems to have prioritized the Avengers Initiative after Tony Stark outed himself as Iron Man, and even then he doesn’t appear to have been in much of a hurry about it. Nor does he seem to have begun the process of upping S.H.I.E.L.D.’s technology until after the encounter with Thor in New Mexico. So Fury’s inaction seems rather odd. Secondly, why did he lie to the Avengers and claim that Thor’s arrival was such a game-changer?

How can this Plot Hole Be Fixed?

Tony Stark acknowledged in The Avengers, “Even his secrets have secrets.” We know Fury has serious trust issues, and he prefers to keep his cards close to his chest. The trust issues are explained in the events of Captain Marvel where his superior officer was replaced by a Shapeshifter (read Skrull imposter). The events also explain why he lost an eye which according to Fury was the last time he trusted anyone.

Here’s a question which requires more attention: Even though Fury knows about Skrulls, Kree & Captain Marvel, do S.H.I.E.L.D bosses? The most explosive cosmic action in Captain Marvel appears to take place in orbit, and back in 1995 Earth’s satellite systems weren’t quite so effective as they are today. The lost eye adds to all the more reason for Fury to not report to his superior officers about the events from the outer space wars. However much he wanted to prioritize defending the planet — predominantly through the Avengers Initiative — the World Council wouldn’t share his agenda. The only way he could get them on-side would be to admit that he’d been deceiving S.H.I.E.L.D. for years, and that would risk his position.

That would neatly explain why S.H.I.E.L.D.’s priorities changed after the events of Thor, the World Council was never really persuaded by the Avengers Initiative; they were much more interested in proven technology like the Tesseract Project. With the Tesseract now active — and tied to the Asgardians by legend — they wanted S.H.I.E.L.D. to finally develop those Hydra-style Tesseract weapons.

This perfectly explains Fury’s lie to Thor. For S.H.I.E.L.D, the New Mexico incident was the first time they’d encountered aliens, So Fury’s lie in The Avengers more of a Half-truth than a outright lie. Fury had not reasons to over-clutter the situations by the mention of the aliens species in the middle of the threat of Loki.