Secret Invasion Episode 4 Puts The Best And Worst Of The MCU On Display

Unfortunately, the sense of mixed results that pervades throughout much of episode 4 continues to hold things back from their full potential. Much like in episode 2, the best moments here derive from characters simply sitting down and talking to one another. The discussion between Fury and Priscilla over Raymond Carver’s poems (including her favorite, “Late Fragment,” which gives the episode its title and just so happens to unfold as a conversation between two people) provides the emotional backbone of the episode, even as we know from last week’s cliffhanger that Priscilla has been recruited into Gravik’s service, along with a Skrull-impersonated Rhodey (Don Cheadle). All anyone wants to feel in this life is “beloved,” as the two reconfirm in the later scene when it becomes clear they each have reached a critical impasse and must kill the other. But even as this plot line resolves dramatically with neither taking a bullet, the pesky demands of a typical MCU plot keep getting in the way.

This provides an excuse to grouse about maybe the most disappointing revelation of the entire series so far, which is that Rhodey is, in fact, a Skrull infiltrator. Never mind that the highlights of episode 2 came from the blisteringly tense and perfectly motivated dynamic between James Rhodes and Fury. Both of their respective duties put them at direct odds with one another, adding a refreshingly grown-up conflict between them and the implicit suggestion teased all-too-infrequently in the MCU (last explored in “Captain America: Civil War”) that good guys can, in fact, be at odds with one another for perfectly legitimate reasons without having to become outright villains.

Well, there goes that, because of course only an evil Skrull under Gravik’s sway could be rude enough to give our hero Fury such a hard time. Remember all that lip-service in the premiere about the SHIELD director having lost a step? That all feels like a distant memory now, as he’s since settled into the standard Marvel groove of simply being right about everything. One would think the goal of a paranoid thriller series would be to capitalize on self-doubt and mistakes, even by our protagonist, but this one twist undermines whatever attempts “Secret Invasion” once made to throw a little grey into the black-and-white world of the MCU.