Marvel Studios officially has a plan to clean up the mess Secret Invasion left behind, and it's putting the pressure on a brand-new Disney+ show. The 2023 spy thriller is remembered by many fans as not only the worst MCU Disney+ series, but the worst project the studio has ever touched. With that, of course, a Season 2 will never come, nor will there likely ever be any closure for the overpowered Super Skrull G'iah (Emilia Clarke). Luckily, it appears the espionage genre will get a second chance over at Marvel Television, with a new series just announced at New York Comic-Con (NYCC) 2026.
Marvel Television made things official during its NYCC panel, unveiling the first logo for Zodiac, a live-action global spy thriller coming to Disney+ in 2028. Marvel Television head Brad Winderbaum didn't hang out too many details on stage, but he did tease that there's "a lot hidden" in that logo:
"If you're a fan of the comics, there's a lot hidden in that logo."
He also confirmed they "start shooting in London this spring," with casting starting soon.
After clearing the runway on upcoming Disney+ live-action projects, Zodiac is now Marvel's next big bet on the small screen.
The studio scrapped Wonder Man Season 2 in July despite rave reviews and having previously green-lighted new episodes, and Daredevil: Born Again is closing up shop with its third and final season in 2027.
Once Born Again bows out, Zodiac is the only new live-action series Marvel has publicly lined up. And it will usher in a new era of the MCU, with many expecting a soft relaunch of the universe following Avengers: Secret Wars.
The biggest clue so far points straight at S.H.I.E.L.D., as the "A" in the logo resembles the agency's eagle emblem.
Some fans suspect Marvel is pulling from Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors, a comic run in which Fury secretly assembles a squad of young, superpowered agents to fight Hydra. Unlikely that Samuel L. Jackson comes back as Fury for this series, but he did recently say he's joining Secret Wars.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. borrowed from that Hickman run already, making Quake (Chloe Bennet), the squad's leader in the comics, one of its main characters. In theory, Zodiac could carry that show's torch, maybe even bringing back some of its cast, the way Born Again revived Netflix's Defenders.
For those who have defended Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s place in MCU canon for years, this could be a massive win.
This is where Zodiac starts to feel like a full-blown Secret Invasion do-over. Fury's Secret Warriors squad was literally born out of the original Secret Invasion comic event, so Zodiac could serve as the follow-up the show never got.
Even if it doesn't, Zodiac is an opportunity to replace Secret Invasion outright as the MCU's go-to spy story, after the 2023 series was teased as a major event.
That said, if Zodiac wants to wash away the bad memories, there's much to be done, and hopefully, the team will learn their lesson from a few critical mistakes Secret Invasion made.
How Zodiac Will Be Better Than Secret Invasion
Don't Waste Characters, Especially Fan Favorites
Fans were deeply frustrated by how Secret Invasion mishandled key legacy characters, and it started right out of the gate. In the closing moments of Episode 1, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), disguised as Nick Fury, shot and killed Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). This was supposed to set the stakes, but it ultimately just irritated fans and felt like a waste.
Executive producer Brian Tucker later explained that the writers needed to show how dangerous Gravik's rebel Skrulls were, and that not everyone could make it out alive.
The shock value wore thin fast, too. Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), Fury's longtime Skrull ally since they met in the 1990s in Captain Marvel, died at Gravik's hands in Episode 4 without any meaningful narrative payoff.
Zodiac can't fall into this same trap of setting stakes without making deaths feel earned, especially to notable characters. Deaths can raise the stakes, but only when they actually mean something. A new core group of characters could also help mitigate this type of issue.
Deliver the Paranoia & Stakes Secret Invasion Promised
Secret Invasion adapted a famous comic storyline centered on intense paranoia. In Marvel's 2008 event, Skrull impostors had been hiding among Earth's heroes for years, with characters like Spider-Woman and Elektra revealed as shape-shifting aliens. Anyone could be a Skrull, and it was such a scary thought.
The show, on the other hand, kept the MCU's superheroes almost entirely out of the picture. The closest it came was revealing that Rhodey (Don Cheadle) had secretly been a Skrull imposter, possibly as far back as Captain America: Civil War.
This, of course, was one of the most loathed aspects of the entire show, retconning key moments between Rhodey and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).
Zodiac is already being billed as a global spy thriller, so it has to live up to that label. That means a conspiracy big enough to keep fans guessing who they can trust, with stakes that mean something, but don't retroactively make the universe worse.
Stick the Landing & Avoid Distracting CGI
All of that built to a widely criticized finale, which became the lowest-rated Marvel Studios episode on Rotten Tomatoes at the time. Rather than paying off its "grounded" premise, Episode 6 completely abandoned it in favor of a CGI-heavy superhero disaster.
G'iah and Gravik both stepped into the Super Skrull machine and absorbed the Harvest, the DNA Skrulls collected from the heroes and villains who fought in Avengers: Endgame. Already, what an awful concept.
That left G’iah with powers from Captain Marvel, Thor, Hulk, Groot, and plenty more, which she used to finish Gravik off. For comparison, the original Super-Skrull in the comics was built around just the Fantastic Four's four powers.
Granting such overpowered abilities to characters like G'iah made the final showdown feel weightless and unearned. This new character seemed like the most powerful hero in MCU history, and not one person watching felt she deserved it.
If you're going to make an MCU show about spies. Make an MCU show about spies. It's really that simple, and likely WInderbaum and Kevin Feige know that, which is why they're putting so much confidence into the new Zodiac show.
