Secret Invasion

As we peak into phase 5 Marvel tempts us with many set up storylines that fans are hoping that they pay off. Among the open ended storylines we have Secret Wars, Secret Invasion, Midnight Sons and Young Avengers. In this first article we will be discussing Secret Invasion.

Marvel’s Secret Invasion was an 8-issue mini series that focuses on the invasion of earth by the Skrulls (introduced in Captain Marvel). In the MCU they are reassured that the Skrulls are still involved at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home and again at the end of WandaVision. We saw that Nick Fury had been up in space on a Skrull ship though we do not officially know for how long.

Now in the comics this takes place after the Kree-Skrull war which was vaguely depicted in Captain Marvel. The Skrulls were confronted by the Illuminati which was something we got a hint of in Multi-verse of Madness though the likelihood that we see them in the main continuity is very small, and even if we do there is 0 chance of it being the original comic book line up which consisted of; Iron Man, Doctor Strange, BlackBolt, Charles Xavier, Namor and Mister Fantastic.

Now this storyline was very clearly the Skrulls vs earth’s mightiest heroes so it will be interesting to see where they take the story considering that as far as we know, the Skrulls in the MCU are allies and not enemies. That said, what I can come up with is that the Skrulls are going to be revealed as allies and some heroes are gonna have a problem and it's going to turn into a civil war like situation. That or they are just going to lean into the Skrulls being allies and after our heroes encounter the next big bad from space they are going to have to rely on the Skrulls for help and to save earth they are going to need to do some shape shifting. This is also a massive crossover event with 22 Skrulls taking super-hero form and we only have in the MCU 6 of them, however we know more are going to be introduced at some point.

If you want to read the series to catch up on what you will most definitely be missing in the MCU there are also several tie-in comics that aren’t 100% necessary to the story but they will in fact help with the worldbuilding and depth of the material. Start with Secret Invasion: The Infiltration, there are 14 issues from various titles with this tag. Now post Secret Invasion there are 87 issues from various titles that deal with the aftermath of the actual storyline events, none are necessary! However if you are interested simply read anything with a Secret Invasion tag that pertains to any character you are specifically interested. Most of the titles were in fact compiled into volumes to make it less time consuming for you.

This storyline already exists in the animated universe in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes but as they have set it up in the MCU I will be very disappointed if it is not mentioned again as we dive into phase 5. Like I said it will be harder to pay off the story because of how they have chosen to do it but I’d love to see what they come up with. Also doing it as a show and not a movie is certainly an interesting choice considering the scale of the event in the comics. The likelihood of them doing it to the same level is very small.