Marvel Directors Worried About Death Threats After Horrible Secret Invasion Ending
It’s no secret that Marvel’s Secret Invasion wasn’t well-liked by a good portion of the fanbase. Director Ali Selim is well aware of this, as he recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the show and his decision to make Rhodey a Skrull, seemingly for so long that he would have missed Tony Stark’s funeral in Avengers: Endgame. In reference to this, Selim said, “I’m worried that I will get death threats because of that, and also because I’m the guy who took out Maria Hill.”
Secret Invasion director Ali Selim is worried about Marvel fan reaction to the death of Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill, as well as the reveal regarding how long Don Cheadle’s Rhodey has been a Skrull.
While Selim is being sarcastic (hopefully, Marvel fans aren’t unhinged enough to actually send him death threats), many people have more issues than just Rhodey’s Skrull status in Marvel’s Secret Invasion. In fact, most people are more upset with the overall storytelling of the series. For one, Rhodey’s Skrull status was telegraphed from the very start, and people were hoping the show was going to make it more difficult to tell who was a Skrull and who wasn’t.
In the Marvel comics, Secret Invasion is a major event where almost no one can be trusted, including the Avengers. With Don Cheadle’s Rhodey being the only Avenger in the whole show, it was pretty obvious who would be getting the Skrull treatment. In short, many people felt like the show was a bit of a waste of time and that Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury deserved a better spotlight than this.
“I’m worried that I will get death threats because of that, and also because I’m the guy who took out Maria Hill.”
–Secret Invasion director Ali Selim
In the end, Marvel’s Secret Invasion seemingly didn’t have a massive impact on the MCU at large. By the end of the series, Emilia Clarke’s G’iah is a massively superpowered Super-Skrull who will seemingly be working with Olivia Colman’s MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth. We also learned that there are millions of Skrulls living on Earth and that the US has declared war on them, which will hopefully have some more interesting consequences in the MCU’s future.
As Selim mentioned, another consequence of Marvel’s Secret Invasion is that Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill was killed in the first episode. While this was undoubtedly raising the stakes, it sort of was a fridging trope to motivate Fury, and it obviously wasn’t a satisfying arc for Hill.
We also learned that Fury has a Skrull wife who is going to help him with peace negotiations with the Kree back in space.
Rhodey And Armor Wars
Fury and his wife trying to negotiate peace with the Kree will presumably be a part of the upcoming The Marvels film, as Samuel L. Jackson is set to reprise his Secret Invasion role in that movie. As for the Rhodey revelation, it will undoubtedly be a major plot point of Armor Wars.
While Selim joked about people being upset about Rhodey being a Skrull for so long, that plot point might actually be the most interesting thing Marvel’s Secret Invasion set up for the future of the narrative.
If Rhodey has been a Skrull since he was shot down in Captain America: Civil War, as people suspect, then there’s enough potential there for the originally planned Armor Wars series.
However, Marvel decided to make Armor Wars into a film instead.
Hopefully, the film will give Don Cheadle’s Rhodey storyline enough time to really explore the repercussions of being out of commission during Infinity War and the blip and not short-shrift him as Marvel’s Secret Invasion did to Fury.
