1x03 Betrayed

[7.4/10] So here’s the thing about Secret Invasion. You could wipe away the global threat, and I’d probably still be on board if it was just a show about Fury and Talos going back and forth about who owes whom from the old days. Throw two great actors together, have them bounce off some real shit, and I’m there. Maybe I’m an easy mark.

Suffice it to say, I like the concept behind this one. On a nuts and bolts level you have a big set piece to build to. A nuclear submarine might fire upon a NATO plane. The Skrulls want to use this event to cause World War III. It’s up to Fury and Talos to stop it. On the one side, you have the two of them holding the Skrull infiltrator with the power to halt the attack hostage in the hopes of getting an abort code. On the other, you have a hesitant seaman cajoled by his compatriot to follow orders despite his hesitation. The episode mines the tension from that well.

On the one hand, it gives Fury and Talos the win. It takes some drastic action, but they get the abort code in time. It takes different methods. Fry wants to torture the Skrull terrorist. Talos wants to find another way until the guy insults his daughter. But in the end, at the last minute, they’re able to avert disaster. The smart editing and ratcheting tension as the two vessels near one another works superbly.

What I appreciate is that it’s a win and a loss. The good guys stop the grand attack that would ignite geopolitical conflict. But there is a cost. Gravik leaked the details to G’iah to determine whether or not she was the turncoat. And when the day is saved, it confirms his suspicions, and he kills her. The blend of victory for our heroes with the silver lining (or whatever its negative equivalent is) that the simple act of winning burns G’iah as a double agent, is the kind of complexity and brutal poetic irony that good spy shows thrive on.

I dig it for multiple reasons. For one, Emilia Clarke has been oddly flat on the show to date. Maybe the idea is that she’s worn out from the costs of war. Maybe it’s that she’s feeding a cool head so as not to give anything away. But whatever the reason, the dampened presence means it’s no great loss for the show to see her depart.

More to the point, it’s made plain here that G’iah is one of the few things still potent enough to get Talos’ dander up. He’ll debate politics with Gravik all day, but it’s only when the guy starts threatening his daughter that he flies off the handle and gets stabby and choke-y. (Think of him as the reverse Homer Simpson.) He’s the one insisting on showing mercy to the Skrull who’s about to launch a nuke, but when the guy calls G’iah a traitor, he shoots him dead. Talos has been portrayed as a forgiving, merciful man, especially with his own people, but he has a red line, and Gravik crossed it with a dead body on the outskirts of his compound. I’m compelled to see the fall out from that.

But mostly I just want to see more of him and Fury needling each other. I don't know. I kind of hate Fury in this, but I also like that? He’s shar and presumptuous with the people who’ve helped him. But that’s also a kind of realistic depiction of how someone who’d devoted their life to the job might be. It’s not always fun, but there’s truth in it.

So seeing Tlos tell him that it was Talos and the Skrulls who set him up for success, who gave him his best intel, who helped him rise up the ranks, and he’s not even asking for gratitude, just acknowledgement, it hits home. Fury’s always been brutally pragmatic. It’s what spurred the Avengers’ mistrust in the first place. So seeing one of his closest allies feel put out by the guy, ignored and underappreciated, has weight.

Maybe it’s just Ben Mendolsohn killing it. But something about these two old war dogs going back and forth about who owes who, about what lies ahead, is enough for me. Secret Invasion isn’t a perfect show by any means, but seeing two great actors, through two well-established characters, hash out the past, is more than enough for me.

The only part I’m not really on board with is Fury’s surprise wife, Varra. It just feels so out of nowhere. And it’s barely established that they’re together before the show reveals her as an agent of Gravik. Woodard is good in the role, and there’s meaning to be wrung from the notion of a veritable war widow forced to lose her spy husband twice. But since it all comes so fast and so rushed, it’s hard for the relationship, or the betrayal, to come with much force.

Overall, this episode is pretty firmly the Fury and Talos show, and when it leans into that, the strength of the performers, and the old spook barbs they throw back and forth, is enough to carry the hour.