The invasion has begun, and looks like some of my predictions were right, and others were not.

We have an interesting opportunity with this new format, and the release dates of the episodes for “Secret Invasion”, that allows me to review these episode to episode. I’ll be taking a break from the usual rating system and save my full grade of the series for the finale. As such I don’t plan to go too into depth with spoilers for these reviews, but there maybe some minor spoilers along the way that are a necessary part of the breakdown.

So there is your warning. As with many of these Disney+ Marvel shows, the first episode is incredibly strong and a good hook for the series. Let’s just hope it continues because thus far, most of the finales for these shows have not been as good as their openers.

The show wastes zero time starting the tension and paranoia over who may be a Skrull, the shapeshifting aliens introduced in “Captain Marvel”, as we learn that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has been working with the Skrulls for over 30 years since the events of that movie, and now a splinter sect of Skrulls has formed that are dissatisfied with their present situation and want to take the Earth for their own.

This leads to Fury returning to Earth to work with Skrull ally Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), and Fury’s right hand, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) in tracking down this rebel group that is hiding out in Russia and making plans to cause the United States and Russia to go to war with one another.

I’ve seen several people make comparisons to this show and “Andor”, and that is not unwarranted. Both have a gritty realism in settings that are otherwise fantastical science fiction pieces. This show’s focus on espionage and acts of terrorism is definitely coming from a more mature place than previous MCU-fare, and honestly feels like a better execution of what “The Falcon and the Winter Solider” was trying to do within its entire six episode run.

A bit of backlash online has been the use of AI art for the opening credits of the series. We’ve discussed this subject before, namely, how AI art is generated by “training” itself on pre-existing images without consideration for copyright or trademark. I understand why they chose to do this, thematically, having shifting images of something fake pretending to be the real thing is a novel idea. But I can’t help but agree with most of the discourse that utilizing AI in the place of artist, especially while the industry is in the middle of a strike, seems a little skeevy. The first Skrull reveal definitely helps to set up the show, but I feel those paying attention to the MCU continuity could play “Spot the Skrull” relatively easy and guess who it was going to be.

And speaking of the Skrulls, I think breaking from the usual sci-fi trope of having an alien race be a monolith, and presenting them as various factions with different approaches and ideologies makes them feel more like real individuals and not a species with one trick and persona (see “Star Trek” with Klingons and the proud warrior race guy attitude, or Romulans and stab you in the back for political gain guy attitude). I also enjoyed that the series explains why some Skrull stick around in human form so that they can feel more comfortable in the form and make it more difficult for people to tell that they are Skrulls. Which also happens to be a clever way for the showrunners to save on the make-up budget.

Samuel L. Jackson is always a delight to watch in anything he is in. I could complain that it feels like Samuel L. Jackson is playing Samuel L. Jackson rather than embodying a character, but the MCU’s Nick Fury is based on the Ultimate Marvel version of Nick Fury, who was based on Samuel L. Jackson (everybody got that?), so this is easily forgiven.

Mendelsohn felt a little low energy throughout the episode, but that seems to be Talos’ primary character trait, and not to mention, the character reveals they recently had events occur that could have painted this attitude for him.

Our lead antagonist, Gravik, is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, and I honestly don’t have too much to say about him. We get the bare minimum throughout the episode, and what I saw I liked, especially in implication that he showed up in a disguised form way earlier in the episode then expected which, if my that is the case, sort of makes the growing paranoia for the character and audience all the more interesting.

The episode also ends on a really solid cliffhanger, but whether what we saw was authentic or a misdirection remains to be seen until next week.

Overall, the first episode is a solid entry and I hope the series can keep up this sort of momentum moving forward into future episodes.