‘Secret Invasion’: Fury’s Connection to Gravik Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Secret Invasion, Episodes 1-5.

As a spy series featuring shape-shifting aliens, Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion puts a lot of effort into shocking its audience with major plot twists. This gives the series a nice air of mystery and makes it refreshingly unpredictable. However, the series has also waited too long to reveal one of its major secrets. Throughout the five episodes that are now streaming, there have been frequent hints that spy master Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Skrull resistance leader Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) share a significant personal connection. However, the latter has committed so many atrocities that even finding out what this connection is will not make him sympathetic, so the storyline has become rather pointless.

Who is Gravik?

A flashback revealed that Nick met Gravik in 1997, when he was making his promise to Talos’ (Ben Mendelsohn) group of Skrull refugees that if they helped him with covert operations to protect the Earth he would help them find a new home planet. An adolescent at the time, Gravik had already lost his parents to the Kree-Skrull war and had to escape Kree space on his own. Nick was introduced to Gravik by Varra (Charlayne Woodard), Nick’s future wife, who believed he would be a valuable addition to Nick’s secret Skrull unit. Although Gravik seemed unconvinced by Nick’s promise, he did serve on the unit until at least immediately after the Battle for Earth in 2019 shown in Avengers: Endgame. He was part of a team sent by Nick to collect samples of the Avengers’ DNA left on the battlefield. Between then and the present-day, however, he grew disillusioned and started the violent resistance, with plans to take over the Earth as the Skrulls’ new home planet after wiping out the human race by starting a world war.

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Throughout the series Gravik has been shown to hold a grudge against Nick even more intense than his general hatred of humanity. He speaks of Nick’s personality and habits with a level of knowledge that suggests that he knows him personally, with a connection more significant than that of a commanding officer and his soldier. The few times they have encountered each other in the field, Nick has been visibly emotional, and, as Gravik’s right-hand Pagon (Killian Scott) noted, Gravik has refrained from killing Nick despite having multiple chances to do so. It is also revealed that he stayed in contact with Varra after his radicalization. This has led many viewers to speculate that Nick and Varra had a significant personal relationship with Gravik in the intervening years, with many assuming that the couple served as the young Skrull’s adopted or surrogate parents. This would have added an extra layer of tragedy to the series and paralleled the other damaged family relationships shown throughout. However, it’s yet to be confirmed whether Gravik actually is Nick and Varra’s son and with only one episode left in the series a lot of the dramatic potential of such a revelation has been lost.

‘Secret Invasion’ Has Missed Multiple Opportunities

If the viewer knew early on that Gravik was Nick’s son the conflict between them would have been more complex and interesting. Suspense would be created from the question of whether or not their relationship would allow Nick to get through to Gravik and dissuade him from his violent ways, much as Talos did with his daughter G’iah (Emilia Clarke). The viewer’s investment in Nick, which has been built up over his 15 years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would ensure that they were rooting for his son to come around, even if only for his father’s sake. With the nature of their relationship still shrouded in mystery, this investment was never able to form. And nothing in Gravik’s current behavior or personality suggests he can be redeemed.

The trope of a villain being related to the hero typically relies on the villain being a reluctant one. Secret Invasion viewers saw this with G’iah. She joined the resistance to make a better future for her people, but it was immediately apparent that she was uncomfortable with the group’s brutal methods. This made it clear that she was misguided rather than actually evil and encouraged the viewer to believe she could choose good, just as Talos did. Gravik doesn’t revel in the cruelty he engages in, but he also hasn’t shown any hints of remorse or conflict. In the series’ first episode he murdered MCU fan-favorite Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and triggered a bombing that killed more than 2,000 people, and he’s only become more ruthless since then.

He’s even turned on his own people. He killed Talos and an underling he suspected might have betrayed him and tried to kill G’iah when he found out she was giving information to Talos and Nick, though she survived since she had given herself some of the same superpowers Gravik now has. When Pagon questioned him, Gravik killed him, leading more members of the resistance to turn on him, before Gravik used his powers to kill them. His current plan is to manipulate U.S. president Ritson (Dermot Mulroney) into launching an attack on the Skrull city of New Skrullos, in the hopes that this will inspire more Skrulls around the world to join his cause. This all shows that Gravik doesn’t really care about making a better future for Skrulls, he just wants power, and places him well beyond the possibility of redemption. He’s not a villain the viewer feels bad for, he’s one they want to see taken down harshly, and a last-minute reveal that he’s Nick’s son, or that they share some other kind of special connection, won’t change that.

The series has also missed the opportunity to use Varra’s relationship with Gravik to strengthen her storyline. At the end of the third episode, she attempts to contact Gravik. The Skrull who replaced James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) answered the phone instead and told her that Gravik wanted her to kill Nick. Nick overhears this while surveilling them, leading him to have a confrontation with Varra while both hold guns on one another. Ultimately, they both fire away from each other and Varra acknowledges that by refusing to kill Nick she has made herself a target of Gravik. This was already a tense portion of the series, but it would have been much more suspenseful if the viewer knew more about Varra and Gravik’s dynamic. If the series had confirmed before this point that Gravik was Varra’s son it would seem more possible that she might actually go through with killing Nick and the extent of her split loyalties would be clearer.

Lastly, revealing a significant connection between Nick and Gravik in the last episode could have damaging effects on the series’ tone. Secret Invasion has been a dark and sad series, especially in comparison with most other MCU projects. It has spent a significant amount of time making Nick more flawed than he has previously been presented as, and he has lost a tremendous amount throughout the first five episodes. Now is the time to build him back up and the series needs to give him a decisive victory to end on an uplifting note. Revealing that Gravik is his son, or is important to him for another reason, now would make his inevitable downfall depressing rather than satisfying and would imply that Gravik’s villainous turn is Nick’s fault, showing him as guilty of another failure, in addition to not living up to his promise to the Skrulls.