Three years ago, Marvel Studios reached a low point that forever altered how many fans viewed the MCU. After dominating the 2010s with truly unmatched success in the genre under the leadership of Kevin Feige, the studio's streaming onto Disney+ brought a flood of interconnected series that produced mixed results. While several shows found success, one 2023 release became the clearest example of the franchise's streaming-era struggles and has clearly changed Marvel's strategy, looking back years later.
Secret Invasion premiered on June 21, 2023, and by the time its finale aired on July 26, it had done something no MCU show had managed before: get critics, audiences, and basically everyone who watched it to agree it was a massive failure.
It's easy to forget now, but the hype leading up to it was substantial. Marvel Studios officially billed Secret Invasion as the franchise's first "crossover event series," a label no Disney+ show had earned before, selling it as the MCU's biggest non-movie ever.
It starred MCU alums Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), and Rhodey (Don Cheadle), and newcomers Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and G'iah (Emilia Clarke), a roster that felt like a guaranteed strong start to Phase 5 on Disney+.
Then the show actually started, and there was an immediate gut punch. Maria Hill was shot and killed by Gravik in the first episode, while disguised as Fury. This was meant to be a moment of raising the stakes for the series, killing off a long-time MCU character, but it landed flat for most audiences.
That put a lot of pressure on Fury to carry the show, and that's where things fell apart. Fury's refusal to call in the Avengers for a planet-level threat never got a great explanation, besides just the threat of the Skrulls shape-shifting into the heroes.
Viewers also learned that Fury has been secretly married for years to Priscilla, a Skrull whose real name is Varra but who assumed a human identity to build a life with him. While this unraveled one of Fury's biggest secrets, it did very little to make the series any more watchable or to sustain the level of investment that Marvel Studios wanted.
The series main villain, Gravik, started as a sympathetic figure, a Skrull soldier furious that his people had been denied the home Earth's heroes once promised them.
By the back half, though, he'd flattened into a generic, mustache-twirling threat leaning on his mission to create his race of Super Skrulls after the events of Endgame left a lot of Avenger DNA on Earth. For a show literally called Secret Invasion, very little of it felt like one.
Clarke's G'iah had the ingredients to become one of the MCU's most compelling new characters, but Secret Invasion rushed through her arc. Instead of any real, meaningful development, the series transformed her into an almost omnipotent Super Skrull by giving her the powers of nearly every major MCU hero and villain.
That decision undermined the grounded espionage tone the show promised, replacing the finale with an over-the-top CGI spectacle while leaving the MCU with one of its most overpowered characters for no clear narrative reason.
But nothing caused more backlash than what happened to Rhodey. The finale revealed the real James Rhodes had secretly been replaced by a Skrull since the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, years before anyone realized it.
The retcon rewrote his history: he wasn't the one standing beside Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) when he died in Endgame. A Skrull was. And for that, many fans will never forgive how Secret Invasion recontextualized Rhodey's story.
By the time it wrapped, Secret Invasion had broken a 15-year streak, the first MCU project to go "Rotten" with both critics and audiences. The finale alone crashed to one of the lowest scores in franchise history.
The Future of Skrulls, Nick Fury, & Rhodey in the MCU
Nick Fury returned later that year in The Marvels, but the film barely touched on Secret Invasion. Fury was back on his space station, fighting a Kree threat, with almost no follow-up on the Skrull storyline the Disney+ series spent six episodes building.
The Marvels became the lowest-grossing movie in MCU history, and between that box office collapse and Secret Invasion's reception, Marvel Studios appears to have quietly moved on from any Skrull-related stories.
Emilia Clarke wasn't among the dozens of returning actors announced for Avengers: Doomsday, so G'iah may end up being the most powerful character in MCU history who never gets used again.
Don Cheadle's Rhodey might have it worst of all. The backlash to his Skrull retcon was severe enough that Cheadle hasn't played the character since Secret Invasion aired. He's absent from the Doomsday cast list, with no confirmation he'll turn up in Secret Wars either.
Originally a planned Disney+ series before becoming a film, Armor Wars sat without a release date for years, and recent reports increasingly suggest Marvel has quietly shelved it, with the Secret Invasion disdain clearly a reason for Marvel Studios not moving forward.
Three years later, Secret Invasion hasn't just aged badly; it still stands as one of the worst MCU projects in the eyes of many fans, and forced Marvel Studios to adjust its plans.
