Hot Take: Secret Invasion is a Big Step Towards Restoring My Faith in the MCU

WARNING: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Season 2!!!!!!

Look, I know I'm not alone in saying my faith in the MCU has been shaken, big-time, in the last fourteen months. After hitting its peak with the all-time greatest film of all time* in 2019, the franchise continued to ride high for three years, releasing hit after hit after hit, including but not limited to, WandaVision, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Moon Knight. I was even one of the few people who enjoyed Eternals, though I wish it had been a Disney+ miniseries instead of a film.

But even the greatest of empires decays, and with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the franchise seemed to hit a wall that was both sudden and had no shortage of plausible explanations. Had Marvel simply run out of good ideas? Had they run out of source material? Were they trying to do too much at once? Was it somehow the fault of Bob Chapek's short-lived chairmanship of Disney, even though most of these stories had their broad strokes planned out a decade ago? Was She-Hulk: Attorney at Law setting media portrayal of bisexuality back further than it's ever been set since Willow Rosenberg turned gay somehow heinous enough that almost everything released within six months on either side of it somehow became bad by osmosis?

All of those are reasonable explanations and will surely endure many more months of speculation amongst both the media and the K.E.V.I.N. (Except for the one about Mister Immortal. We might have to violate every law of narrative fiction again to bring that to his attention.) But while The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made us laugh and cry as only James Gunn can, they also seemed to kind of rub in the fact that the God of Jukebox Musicals** was flying up, up, and, crucially, away, to turn Marvel's main competitor into the best parts of the MCU and its sister Star Wars minus most of the overt homophobia, and all signs pointed to that being the final vibranium (or perhaps more accurately, Nth Metal) nail in Marvel's panther-shaped coffin. So when I started hearing rumors that the writer of some of the best Rick and Morty episodes (and also the first to use queerness as something other than a cheap gag) had left the next Avengers film, leaving the man who started this decline, Michael Waldron, as the heir apparent, I barely had any tears left to cry. (Yes, I cry about movies. And if you think that's objectionable, I say, "You think I'll cry less if I focus more on the real world?")

But while it hasn't been earth-shatteringly good in its own right, Phase Five's first TV series, Secret Invasion, has given me a lot of little sparks of hope, which I will list here, in the hopes of drawing attention to what Marvel needs to be doing more of, gathering more loyal followers of my own, and giving myself something to do while I avoid my obsessive-compulsions.

1. Along with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Secret Invasion has helped to retroactively soothe some of my concerns about the lonely, dead-inside Doctor Strange in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, by doing a better job of explaining why dying and returning to a radically changed world after five years was such a mindfuck***, with better-written character studies of Star-Lord and Nick Fury, the former of whom, like Doctor Strange, presents a face of dealing with the events healthily to the Universe at large but at home feels like a creep and a weirdo. But I still think Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness didn't even try to resolve the threads left by WandaVision and I shudder to think what Waldron will do to whoever gets top billing in Avengers: Secret Wars even if he's kept within the correct two-jump-point distance of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
2. Phase Five so far had been holding its breath in terms of killing off literally anyone who wasn't a villain or an only-in-flashbacks-and-as-a-shade-in-the-main-story character, but the number of characters who die in Secret Invasion was very nearly larger than the disappointing number of characters who appear in Secret Invasion.
3. It's not enough, but the flashbacks that appear in most episodes that take place not just before The Multiverse Saga but in some cases before Phase One are, along with the fact that Loki Season 2, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and Avengers: Secret Wars will probably be at least partial prequels to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a good step away from the crippling addiction to linear narrative that the MCU shares with every other media franchise that doesn't start with the word "Star". Not to mention the fact that Hill is confirmed to appear in Season 2 of Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, ensuring the show will be a prequel and tying together points 2 and 3 really nicely.
4. While Kate Braithwaite's appearance as Soren is both blink-and-you'll-miss-it and portraying a character that already involves heavy CGI and/or practical effects, let's just say that in the last month, it suddenly became a lot more important for the MCU to be willing to replace an actor who was unavailable. And while we're on the subject, the answer you're looking for is "Tituss Burgess".

Eh? Eh?

5. While I understand that, after the death of their star, the Black Panther solo films needed the steadying deep breath of a film that was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it's nice to see other MCU projects doing what little they can to pick up the slack around being unapologetically political when the situation calls for it.

6. FXN News, the network Varra criticizes Fury for watching, originates from an episode of Marvel's Daredevil and is therefore the first time Marvel Studios has referenced a Marvel Television series beyond just reaffirming the way they portrayed a character from the comics, which was especially welcome after Disney pulled the shocking and overtly homophobic move of removing Marvel's Runaways from all of their streaming services despite the fact that even its least acclaimed season has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than the highest-ranking installment in Phase Five so far.

7. You can never go wrong with literary references. If you ever write a story and you're like, "This is missing something, but I can't put my finger on it", you're probably either missing a literary reference, or you're over 20 and you forgot that for your story to be realistic, it should acknowledge the existence of people who are female, of color, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and/or differently abled. My general advice: Try both.

8. EXTREMIS IS BACK! How long's it been since something from a completely unrelated part of the MCU was casually brought back as a plot point, rather than just an Easter egg? I think it was like, when Hawkeye fought the Kingpin! (Was that really only a year and a half ago? It feels like it was happening around the same time we were all arguing about Tilda Swinton playing the Ancient One.) We're putting the "Universe" back into "Marvel Cinematic Universe"!

So, are there reasons to be pessimistic about the future of the MCU? Definitely. Are there more reasons to be pessimistic than optimistic? Probably. But thanks to Kyle Bradstreet, Brian Tucker, Brant Englestein, Roxanne Paredes, and Michael Bhim, the light at the end of the tunnel is the brightest it's been in a good long while. So, Marvel, on the off-chance that you're reading this, to paraphrase a song I'm ~88% sure your bosses can't sue me over,

Just walk toward the Light,

Stumbling blindly through the night,

Take a step,

Step again,

It is all that you can to do the next right thing.

Did the Frozen II reference get away from me? Yes. Yes, it did. I've noticed that my pop culture references get more or less dated depending on how nervous I am, so apparently blogging about Disney's homophobia makes me exactly November 22, 2019 nervous.

*Did I write "all time" twice on purpose, or did I notice it and leave it in to mess with you? I'll never tell.

**Or maybe the "Juke Box Hero"?

***I mean, seeing it written out like that, it seems like it should've been self-evident, but I guess Waldron is just that bad.

Image credit: Sony Pictures, Disney+, Marvel Studios, Apple TV+

POST-CREDITS SCENE! Remember what I said about not resolving the threads left by WandaVision, and including people who are of color and/or LGBTQ+? Well, OH MY GOD, Joe Locke, star of one of Netflix's Top 10 most-watched TV series in three countries where same-sex relations are illegal, Heartstopper, will not only be playing Billy Kaplan in Agatha: Coven of Chaos, but... And I CAN'T believe I'm saying this... Miles Gutierrez-Riley will be playing Hulkling. They're even saying they'll be a couple, but they also said that Valkyrie would be looking for a Queen in Thor: Love and Thunder, so they'll probably be like, briefly holding hands in the background of one scene at most. But it's a big step in the right direction! What if everything bad about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was only bad before we knew it would all make sense in the end? Is it one of those things that are hated when it comes out and then becomes good in hindsight? Is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness The Shining? (If true, this does not make Michael Waldron good, it just means Kevin Feige's still got it. Do not let him near Avengers: The Kang Dynasty even if Loveness is too good for Disney [kinda like Dana Terrace, and Victoria Alonso, and James Gunn... I'm starting to see a pattern here]. And everything would only be resolved if Wanda and Vision got to say hello again, either because her death was undone or because Marvel recovered from their linear narrative addiction.)