Headscratchers / Secret Invasion (2023)

No consequences for Fury's assault?

• So Rhodey fires Fury and tries to make him go back to America. Fury then attacks and breaks one of the security detail's wrist and then... he's free to go and drive around Britain?
  • Rhodey needs to keep up the plausible deniability of not knowing Fury's whereabouts for diplomatic reasons. This might have been possible if Fury had come with him quietly, but once it became clear that Fury could still take on his security team, this stopped being an option. Assuming Rhodey had attempted to detain him, the fight could very easily have spilled into the outside street, which would have publicly exposed the US government of meeting with Fury after the attacks.

Calling in the Avengers

• Nick Fury is worried about the Avengers being impersonated by Skrulls and thus them being framed... but the Skrulls should not be able to duplicate the superpowers and resources of the Avengers, right? Thus making it obvious that they're imposters?
  • Fury is probably referring to the non-powered Avengers like Falcon, Hawkeye, Rhodey, etc.
  • The fact that Skrulls do have Super-Strength means they could feasibly impersonate a few powered members, if they don't need to show off very much or show any other abilities. It could feasibly be possible for a Skrull to impersonate Hulk and Spider-man for example, although not easy.
  • The Avengers have also had a rough few years, with bad press for their members. The former Captain America, though not officially an Avenger, murdered a foreign national on live TV, Wanda mind controlled and tortured an entire town, and Spider-Man has been targeted and vilified by Jameson. Bringing them into an already incredibly delicate diplomatic situation could spell disaster. The fact that they don't seem to have a leader anymore would also make balancing out their personalities very difficult.
  • Also, of all the Avengers who would be the most useful in this situation, Wanda, Clint, Natasha, and Doctor Strange, they are all either dead, retired, or have no relationship with Fury. Wanda's telepathy would let her spot Skrull impersonators, Clint and Natasha would be ideal for the espionage, and Doctor Strange could probably find a spell to reveal imposters.

Calling in the Sorcerers

• If Fury asked Doctor Strange for help, the Sorcerer Supreme could probably single-handedly solve the Skrulls' homeworld problem by using his powers of clairvoyance to find a suitable planet and teleportation to get them there. Or even either find or create a pocket dimension for them.
  • Two reasons:
    • He's that stubborn.
    • He's repeatedly stated that the Skrull Invasion is "[his] fight", because of the promise he made. Someone like Nick would most likely view the act of involving Doctor Strange as outsourcing the problem and abdicating responsibility to a degree.
    • Fury is portrayed as someone who cares deeply about Skrulls' plight, so would he really put his pride first and let the Skrulls be stranded on Earth for years rather than ask for help from Strange?
  • The last time we saw Strange, he had become corrupted by the Darkhold and left with Clea to the Dark Dimension. It's highly unlikely Fury could get a hold of Strange even if he wanted to.
  • Yes, but that doesn't explain why Fury didn't ask for Strange's help during the years before that happened.
  • The Sorcerers of Kamar-Taj were keeping a very low profile pretty much until Infinity War, so Fury may not have even known about them, or known enough about them to know they could help. Even if he did know and asked for their help, the Ancient One would likely have refused, viewing it as a problem that is not theirs to deal with (they're focused on mystical and other-dimensional threats). After Infinity War and the Sorcerers becoming known, there's the Blip and its aftereffects to deal with, pushing the search for a Skrull homeworld lower and lower on the priority list, and by then most of the Skrull youth were disaffected enough to fall in line with Gravik anyway.

Current Avengers Roster

• What is the actual roster of Avengers as of Secret Invasion? Of the group entering Infinity War - Black Widow, Iron Man, and Black Panther are dead, the Scarlet Witch's fate is uncertain, Vision's location, after being revived and his memories recovered, is unknown, Captain America allowed himself to age, Thor is raising Love, Hulk is raising his son, Captain Marvel is still off in space, Hawkeye retired, and most of their replacements haven't formally joined yet. Is it just Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, and Ant-Man?
  • The roster is currently most likely what we saw in the post credits scene of Shang-Chi, plus the additions of the other existing members who are not retired: Okoye, War Machine, Captain America (Sam Wilson), Dr. Strange, Wong, Spider-Man, and Ant-Man. However, they seem to be scattered, and without Tony funding them, are all on semi-retirement. There clearly have not had a full group-call since No Way Home, because they would have all realized none of them remember Spider-Man's identity. It's also backed up by John Walker never joining them when he was Captain America.
  • They also have off-world members of Nebula, Rocket, and Captain Marvel.

Fury's concerns about Humans accepting Skrulls

• Fury makes a decent argument that Earth cannot serve as the Skrulls' new permanent home because humans have not learned to tolerate differences in other races and learned to live in harmony, and learning to live with an alien race would be beyond us. Except, humans have learned to live with an alien race among us, the Asgardians, who have an entire thriving town in Norway, with a population that seems to be spreading as far as LA. Now, obviously Asgardians look like humans, so this might be slightly easier than Skrulls, but there has been zero indication that they have not been adapting well to their new home. Even if you factor in the possibility that Skrulls being able to shapeshift could cause humans to distrust them, there is already a precedent for the opposite as well. There aren't just Asgardians living in New Asgard, but other alien species as well, including the Light Elves, who can shapeshift and have already been brought to court over it. So basically, there are already shapeshifting aliens that publicly live on Earth, and humans are cool with it for the most part, but they wouldn't be cool with the Skrulls?
  • For Fury, it might be the line of thinking as follows. For better or worse, Asgardians and Elves aren't just human-ish or human-looking. They're also, by human standards, good looking human analogies with only a few exotic traits like pointy eyes. They're the 'sexy' aliens people like to think about. Skrulls in their default forms are a bit more alien in appearance and require a bit more of an accepting mind to be okay about. Also, while Asgardians and Elves have a hometown and diaspora communities, we don't see a ton of what that means at large and in practice. Time and time again, there's been the argument that immigrants are stealing jobs or whatever. A much more alien looking people combined with comparable technology (unlike Asgardians who are functionally gods) means it's easy to see them more like poor desperate immigrants who don't offer much compared. Is any of this correct? No idea, but it also isn't a huge leap for Fury to see the connections and be very cautious about it.
  • Asgardians have also been part of Earth mythology for centuries, were once worshipped, and their leader publicly fought alongside humanity against green-skinned aliens in the battle of New York. If the Skrulls had a public face as good as Thor, maybe it would be different.
  • The Skrulls aren’t just another alien race. Their ability to convincingly impersonate humans, and their willingness to do so for trivial reasons, makes them very hard for humans to trust. Fearing Skrulls is more similar to the (completely unjustified) prejudice of trans people than it is to fearing people of color. Most people today will admit that it’s wrong to hate people of color for \their appearance, but many people have a deep seated, though completely unfounded, suspicion towards trans people due to the perception of them taking on identities that the prejudiced person believes are not their own. (For the record, trans people don't "impersonate" people of other genders. They are that gender, and are just expressing it. Skrulls DO impersonate other races AND steal people's identities.)
  • Except Light Elves can convincingly impersonate humans when they care to. The one we saw was simply stupid and lazy.

What happens when Skrulls in hiding die?

• It's been established that Skrulls revert to their natural form upon death, likewise for severed body parts. So what happens if a Skrull hiding out in, say, Cleveland suddenly dies in an accident, gets murdered, or any other untimely death that would leave behind a green alien body in full view of witnesses? We can't even say that Nick Fury would be on top of it because even he didn't know exactly how many Skrulls were on Earth. It just seems unlikely that they'd be able to keep a lid on that for over 30 years.
  • That’s when Agents J and K show up with the flashy thing.
  • At least as far as the past 10-20 years in the MCU, it's possible that it has been noticed, but just gets swept into the tabloids and buried. As far as government agencies are concerned, that's another question.

Skrulls vs HYDRA

• With the revelation in Episode 3 that a number of Skrulls have been aiding Fury rose through the ranks in SHIELD by doing espionage and dirty works, this begs the question of why and how HYDRA uprising still went on undetected. Considering the Skrulls' shapeshifting nature as a perfect espionage agents to virtually infiltrate ANY organization combined with Fury's intelligence and skills in espionage, it is near impossible to imagine that NONE of the Skrull-agents that he employed never catch a whiff that a far-reaching shadowy organization is manipulating global events for the past few decades or so. Even if HYDRA was already deeply rooted enough within SHIELD and other organizations to avoid detection during the time Skrulls started doing Fury's espionage in the 90s, we are talking about agents who can literally shapeshift into ANYONE and impersonating them with minimal effort (they can go so, so far just by reading the target's public files). Fury will definitely place them in or at least very close to the top levels of the organization he wants to gain intel from, the same positions in which HYDRA sleeper agents should already be embedded. At the very least, there should be a scenario where a Skrull-in-disguise noticed that some random people from random, unrelated positions or organizations is whispering "Hail Hydra" to them while nobody else is around. Are we really to believe that HYDRA was even more invisible than the Skrulls in the espionage world?
  • Talos says in episode 3 that there were only 20 Skrulls actively working under Fury since 1995 and as the series is revealing, not all of them were even loyal to Fury for that entire time. It's possible that one or more did figure out HYDRA existed, but chose to sit on that information for their own reasons. After all, if one of them who wasn't supposed to be on Earth discovered this information, they might not have wanted to give themselves away to Fury.

Why wasn't Hill wearing body armor?

• No, seriously, why wasn't she wearing at least some sort of bulletproof vest underneath her clothes? You'd think someone with her experience would know there's a good chance of getting shot on a mission.
  • Body armor tends to get rather clunky during stealth missions. Hill probably decided to forgo armor in exchange for blending in and/or moving around easier, which cost her her life.

Talos using Keller's face

• Why is Talos still using his Director Keller disguise as his default human form? There's no indication that the real Keller is dead or retired from S.H.I.E.L.D, and if any news camera picks him up, it would only further sell the Skrulls' illusion that America is attempting to provoke war with Russia.
  • Talos' "Keller" form still looks roughly the same as it did when he first assumed it. The real Keller is roughly 27+ years older than Talos' current appearance (he was in his mid 50's in 1995), and potentially deceased at that. Looking like someone did from the mid 90s isn't going to raise too many red flags because it's not going to look much like the real Keller anymore. The accent probably helps too (Mendelsohn used an American accent when Talos was posing as Keller in Captain Marvel; here, he uses his own Australian accent). The tradeoff, though, is that Talos has been using the Keller appearance for so long that it does make him easy for other Skrulls to identify (as seen when he and Fury interrogate the fake Proprishchin).
  • I think the implication is that Talos originally took the form on because Keller is someone that Fury could meet with semi-regularly and not arouse suspicion. Who would be suspicious of Fury occasionally getting dinner with his boss. Talos then held on to the form as a courtesy to Fury, who had become comfortable interacting with him in that appearance. It's the same reason that Varra still looks like Priscilla, and has let herself age. Fury was comfortable with the form, so his Skrull companion kept it to be nice.

Bad odds for the Skrulls

• There are only 1 million Skrulls present on Earth, and billions of humans who live there. How can the Skrulls possibly hope to kill that many people and occupy the planet without getting found out and defeated? Furthermore, even if they were to succeed in killing all the humans, what's to stop the Kree from carpet-bombing the Earth and finally exterminate the Skrulls once and for all?
  • New Skrullos is in the shadow of a Chernobyl-like melted down reactor and their first plan is to use a dirty bomb, with the note given that Skrulls are immune to radiation (this bodes quite ill for the humans locked in their fracking pods, but that's another story). Gravik's plan is to trigger a thermonuclear exchange which would kill all the humans and leave the Skrulls free to walk among the irradiated planet.
  • That's the whole point of the show. The Skrulls can't kill us all on their own, so they're manipulating us into destroying ourselves. It's one of the oldest asymmetric warfare tactics in the book.

Gravik's plan for avoiding the Kree?

• For the past 30 years, the Skrulls have been looking for a new home where they can be safe from the Kree. Now Gravik’s plan is to start a nuclear war that will eliminate humanity, leaving the Skrulls free to inhabit a now-irradiated world where humans can’t survive. How is an event like that supposed to escape the notice of the Kree?
  • The Kree haven't been very interested in Earth since the Inhumans drove them away. They have only had minimal contact in the years since, and don't seem to have surveillance of the planet set up. They might not immediately realize that humans had been wiped out, and the planet doesn't become interesting to them if it is irradiated. There has been no indication the Kree are immune to radiation. Therefore, if the boring and inferior humans wiped themselves out AND made their planet uninhabitable, they would probably dismiss it as human idiocy and not investigate further.
  • Except there's no Inhumans in Earth-616 as far as we know, and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show being canon is debatable. Until someone from Marvel confirms that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is canon, the last time the Kree were on Earth was in 1995 and they considered the planet as a shithole then. Also, in the first Guardians of the Galaxy the Kree didn't seem anywhere as powerful as they were in 1995 (in 2014 they had an ambassador, and they didn't seem to have the strength to publicy back Ronan), and now Earth had better technology and weaponry (derived from the Tesseract, the Chitauri's tech, etc), the Asgardians live there, and they probably didn't want to attract Carol Danvers's attention.
  • The Kree also don't necessarily know the Skrulls are still on Earth. Carol Danvers left Earth with the Skrulls in Mar-Vell's laboratory with a lightspeed-capable engine. It's not unreasonable that they assumed the Skrulls never returned to Earth after that.

What did Skrulls shapeshift for on Skrullos?

• In the present day, the use of such shapeshifting for espionage and warfare purposes is obvious. But when the Skrulls lived on Skrullos, what would they have used their shapeshifting abilities for?
  • Artifact of their origins in the comics. The Celestials experimented on the Skrulls, and these are one of the results. The Deviant Skrulls killed off the Prime Skrulls and Skrull Eternals to become the dominant people of Skrullos, and they are the ones known as the Skrulls today.
  • Imagine having to hunt a deer (or whatever), you can make your legs longer and leaner for speed and catch up to it, and having caught up with it you can then morph your arm into a battle-axe and deal the killing blow, and you are now a successful hunter. Likewise, imagine you need to gather fruits from a tall tree, so you stretch your arm to three times its original length and pick them from the tallest branches. Say you wanted to quarry heavy rocks to build your dwelling, you can give yourself more muscles and are now able to lift them, and now you can build a dwelling in half the time. You're being chased by an enemy or a predator, you see a narrow crevice to hide that won't accommodate you, so you make your body smaller and are able to hide to. The seasons change, conditions get cold, so you grow a fur coat to keep your body warm in the winter. Infinite uses really.
  • Except Skrull shapeshifting isn't shown to work that way in the MCU, and if it did Gravik's need for the Harvest would be significantly less. Skrulls instead are able to imitate anything they see of roughly equal mass, and "sim" recent memories of that creature. Which is still a massive advantage for a hunter, mind — imitate a deer-like creature, move among the herd as one of them, understand how they think and move, then spring a trap, for instance. Or shapeshift into a predator specifically adapted to hunt the deer-like creatures. Or, yes, shapeshift into a creature adapted for an environment you aren't adapted for. Still an amazing survival trait.

The gun in the bank vault

• In episode 3, why did Varra need to go to a high-security bank vault just to pick up one handgun? This becomes even more baffling after episode 5, which shows she had several guns hidden inside her house.
  • Because Fury is an uber spy. He most likely keeps tabs on every weapon in the house and would know if one was removed. Varra probably has her own stash to try and maintain an element of surprise for the day when Gravik orders Fury's death.
  • Could be that handgun was important in some way, ie it belonged to Talos and Gravik wanted the dramatic irony.

Ghost and Abomination were present at the Battle of Earth?

• It is confirmed that the Skrulls obtained the DNA sample of the Avengers and other characters in the Battle of Earth, the names of Ghost and Abomination were seen among the list of names... Were they two in the Battle of Earth? But we didn't see Ghost and Abomination in Avengers: Endgame.
  • Ghost could have been off-screen, and she probably would have been able to be there. Abomination, though, is much harder to explain, since he was still locked up in Damage Control's custody. You could explain it as Wong bringing him in, but a giant reptile man is pretty hard to miss.
  • Alternately, maybe Fury collected their DNA separately, to augment that from the Battle of Earth. Ghost in particular would be a valuable get, as her intangibility isn't something that any other heroes can really replicate (the closest one possibly being Vision, who is an artificial human).

Where did some of Gravik and G'iah's powers come from?

• In the series finale, Gravik and G'iah started duking it out, using powers from many characters throughout the MCU such as The Hulk, Groot, and Drax. However, Gravik also started using Ebony Maw's powers and G'iah was also using what seems to be Jotun. But there are some problems with this. How could Gravik get Ebony Maw's DNA when Thanos's Herald was thrown out into the vacuum and turned into dust in his last appearances? Also, Jotuns have not been on Earth for thousands of years. Skrulls may be able to transform into anyone but they are not magic, they need to have access to the people they want to turn into. How did they manage that?
  • Ebony Maw may have spilled blood before one or both of his deaths. The ice blade powers were probably Frost Beast, which appeared on the computer G'iah accessed earlier in the season.
  • The ice blade powers can also be from Loki. After all, he's a Frost Giant, not an Asgardian.

Radiation in New Skrullos

• In the finale, G'iah as Fury makes a show of how deadly the radiation levels at New Skrullos are to humans and Gravik delights in explaining how radiation poisoning will progress and destroying the iodide tablets "Fury" drops. Yet, the human hostages have been there for years in some cases and walk out without exhibiting any signs of radiation sickness. Were the levels being overblown by the characters when the characters discussed the issue or is it something ignored on a meta level for the sake of moving the story forward in the show's final minutes?
  • The humans are probably kept in an area protected from the radiation.
  • And there are anti-radiation drugs. "Fury" pretended they weren't working all that well, and Gravik was willing to believe it because he thinks Fury is weak, but it wouldn't have been that hard to make sure everyone gets a dose before she takes them out of the shielded area.
    • There's no such thing an anti-radiation drug in real-life. Maybe SHIELD's ultra-advanced fictional technology has come up with an anti-radiation drug...but "Fury" was just taking plain old iodine pills, which can protect your thyroid gland somewhat against radiation but not the rest of your body.
• Re. previous points - the hostages walk out through the same radiated area that 'Fury' was dying in, and also the DNA samples he had on him from the harvest should have been just as damaged as the DNA in 'his' cells from the radiation, so Gravik really scored an own goal there.

When was Rhodey replaced by a Skrull?

• We find out in Episode 3 that Rhodey is actually a Skrull, and G'iah frees the real Rhodey from his fracking pod after Gravik is defeated. This does beg the question of when did this happen? G'iah says Rhodey was there for a long time and some people even dare say that Rhodey was replaced after being shot down in Captain America: Civil War, due to him wearing a hospital gown. But that makes no sense. Are you telling me a Skrull willingly put themself in danger through the Battles of Wakanda and Battle of Earth to save a species they wanted dead to begin with? It is more likely that the switch happened after Endgame, with Rhodey actually being a Skrull in his appearance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier due to walking normally without leg braces. What do you think?
  • The war against Thanos wasn't just to save humans, it was to save half of *everyone*, Skrulls included. Setting aside that "Rhodey" ditching the battle would have blown his cover, the Skrulls definitely had a dog in the fight.
  • Still, that is an incredibly dangerous position for a Skrull to be in as one of the Avengers. What if Rhodey got injured in combat, that would give the Skrull away because they bleed green blood. And from a Doylist perspective, it would be a great disservice to Tony Stark's death if it turns out his best friend was secretly a Skrull all along.
  • In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the lights of his leg braces can be seen shining through his pants, so he wasn't walking normally there either.
  • So are you saying that Rhodey wasn't a Skrull either? It also begs the question of whether Skrulls can even copy the disabilities of their targets? If a Skrull copies Nick Fury (as Talos did in Far From Home, and as Gravik and later G'iah do in this show), do they lose an eye or can still see out of it? Will a Skrull copy Rhodey's damaged spine or do they have to pretend to be crippled?
  • Based on what was established, it seems Gravik didn't turn on Fury until sometime after the Battle of Earth, so the Rhodey swap likewise probably didn't happen until then.

Dead Skrulls in finale

• In the finale episode, why is Gravik the only Skrull apart from a pair of gate guards left? Why were all the Skrulls inside the compound massacred and by who?
  • It's possible more Skrulls revolted and were killed by Gravik than we saw. He may have left their bodies behind (as was the case with Beto and those who attempted to mutiny alongside him) and sent everyone else away so they wouldn't die in the strike if it went ahead.
  • That seems fair, although it is clear that when Raava (as Rhodey) protests Gravik's orders to make sure the compound is bombed, Gravik seems more than willing to let everyone die. It's also possible that he just let them leave if they wanted, since his endgame was at hand, or maybe he had the remaining inhabitants imprisoned somewhere in the facility just to make sure they died as planned.
  • Gravik claims that they were "locked away." Whether that means safely in a bunker or chained up in a prison is unclear.

Copying people powered from Infinity Stones?

• In the finale episode, Gravik and G'iah were able to use the powers of everyone in the Battle of Earth which includes Groot, Drax, Thanos, and Mantis. But they were also able to use Captain Marvel's powers and technically Wanda Maximoff as well. But how? Their powers come from being exposed to Infinity Stones and I don't think just drawing their blood would transfer that to you. That is not even beginning to cover whether Wanda's Chaos Magic is even genetic. Won't copying Carol's DNA just give you Kree powers?
  • Wanda's magical abilities are innate, as WandaVision established that, unlike sorcerers, witches are born with magic. The only thing the Mind Stone, with the more than likely intervention of Chthon, did, was transform a completely ordinary witch into the Scarlet Witch. It's possible that G'iah can only use common witchcraft, not the Scarlet Witch's Chaos Magic. In Carol's case, the Space Stone probably mutated her DNA, in a case similar to Wanda's Hex mutating Monica's DNA.

Why not destroy the Harvest?

• Gathering the DNA of countless metahumans is insanely dangerous and it's not clear that Nick Fury was engaging in any super-empowering mad science himself so why take that risk?
  • The man kept a spare eyepatch in a hidden safe in a Norwegian cemetery. He is nothing if not over-prepared. He may not have wanted to do the super-empowering himself, but he may have simply wanted to have the DNA just in case he needed one of them turned against Earth and he needed to find a weakness. There are, after all, a lot of *other* super-empowering projects going on (Extremis, the project that created Abomination, the project that created Jessica Jones and her mother, the project in Seagate that created Luke Cage, the project that the bros were trying on She-Hulk, etc) so better to have it and not need it.
  • Except that is exactly what Gravik demanded from Fury in order to make him and his Skrulls strong enough to overthrow the human race. Imagine what would happen if G'iah did not have a change of heart and replace Nick Fury. The same exchange happens except Gravik immediately kills Fury after getting what he wants and then proceeds with instigating a nuclear war between the Humans. I don't know about you but if you have a Macguffin that only the Big Bad will benefit from for his plans, you are better off destroying it. Also, Fury contradicts himself. So he doesn't want to involve the Avengers, but he's willing to give G'iah all their powers? Why would Fury place all his hopes on a turncoat who has been working for the enemy the entire time and only recently had a change of heart instead of calling in the people who 100% percent will work for Fury to protect the planet from alien threats?
  • G'iah replacing Fury was an essential part of his plan, so it's not like the same exchange would have happened without her. If G'iah had refused to work with the plan, there's no way Fury himself would have taken the actual Harvest to Gravik and confronted him. In that case he would have had to come up with an alternate plan, which possibly would've involved calling the Avengers. Also, while G'iah did work for Gravik earlier, Gravik had just killed her father, whom she clearly loved deeply despite their estrangement. So Fury could be quite certain G'iah would want revenge on Gravik and would not change sides again.

The marriage

• Isn't it super damning that Varra even had to ask if Fury would have loved her if she kept her own face? Are we supposed to still think Fury was a good husband despite either not knowing she was happier with her own skin or not caring and being happy for her to change herself for his benefit?
  • It seemed to encompass more than that: After all, she took on the personality, history and (it's implied) at least some of the interests of the woman whose face she copied. Although Varra's original/genuine self undoubtedly emerged more over time, it's fair of her to wonder if she would have caught his eye at all had she never assumed another identity, not just physically but without all the trappings of a human life that she, as a Skrull, never had.

Seriously? Not ONE uninhabited planet?

• Off the top of my head, there are no less than three uninhabited planets we've seen in the MCU that could function as the Skrulls' new homeworld. There's Morag, the planet where the Power Stone was kept. There's Titan, which yes, may be desolate and damaged, even moreso after Thanos fought the Avengers there, but nothing an entire species can't work together and build a new society on. And most of all, there's the planet Thanos retired to after erasing half of all life. Captain Marvel says that the planet's entirely uninhabited aside from the now-dead Thanos. It's a spacious ecosystem capable of gardening food. And now that we know Rhodey was a Skrull when they went there, he should have absolutely taken note of it. How were none of these considered as options?
  • Rhodey wasn't a Skrull in Endgame yet. Given we can see the lights of his leg braces in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Rhodey was kidnapped after that.
  • It wasn't just an uninhabited planet, they needed one that would be safe from the Kree, who were still looking to exterminate them. Perhaps all those failed that test for one reason or another.
  • They've also been using Humanity as a literal human shield, initially to blend in and avoid Kree detection; now, due to Earth's rising prominence (comparatively-speaking), it's potentially too risky to attack Earth solely to try and wipe out any Skrulls hiding among the populace. Earth is actually a really convenient planet for Skrull refugees, which is probably why so many of them made their way to Earth despite the risks, or at least part of the reason why.
  • Especially since Skrulls are so adaptable and can take lethal-to-humans levels of radiation without inconvenience, it really seems like they could have found an inhospitable planet nobody else wanted.

So Captain Marvel is off the hook?

• Captain Marvel ended with Carol helping to find a new world for the Skrulls. Fury was more or less along for the ride. They ended up being furious with him, especially after a spent a year or two on his space station but somehow, they aren’t mad at Carol for leaving them after 30 years?
  • They should be, but doylistically it's Fury's show and Watsonianly, Fury is the one who put them to spy work in exchange for a planet and didn't live up to his promise and Fury's the one at hand and realistically Fury is the only one they could hope to take direct revenge upon.
  • That and the fact that the Skrulls probably didn't think they're able to overpower Carol even with the Harvest. After all, the Harvest can provide a lot of superpowers, but she has 30+ years of experience using hers.

Skrulls can copy clothing as well?

• Something I just noticed during the battle between G'iah and Gravik, not only do they copy the abilities of the people they transform into, they also copy their clothing as well. Gravik copied not just Ebony Maw's arms but also his rings in using his abilities, the same when he turned his legs into the Hulk including his pants. What happens if G'iah or Gravik turn into Captain America or Thor, do you think they would be able to spawn Captain America's shield and Mjolnir? Or would those technically just be parts of their body.
  • The clothing that spawned was form-fitting, so it might be handwaved as something like how characters in the Animorphs series can retain their clothing when transforming from human to animal/alien and back, but only if it's skintight; that said, since the Super Skrull abilities are DNA-derived and clothing shouldn't be part of that, there's no logical reason why

The Skrulls have spaceships and Fury doesn't.

• In the flashback in episode 2, it's confirmed that Gravik was off-world and they flew him over, presumably in a spaceship. In the same episode, Talos reveals that over a million Skrulls have come to Earth over the years and again, this would have to involve space travel. The Skrulls are a space-faring race who have had their own ships since the 90s. Why are they relying on Fury to find a planet when he is a lowly human who knows nothing about space travel and has no access to a ship? They should have gone off on their own and found their own planet decades ago.
  • Fury promised beyond his ability to deliver, despite his best intentions, and the Skrulls are holding him responsible for that. He probably believed Carol would find them a home pretty quickly, and SHIELD likely has access to Earth's extrasolar research and observation data to try and help her narrow down a good potential homeworld. But in the end, that just didn't pan out, and the Skrulls are pissed at Nick for breaking his promise.

All aliens are no longer welcome on Earth?

• Due to actions of the Skrulls, President Ritson has officially declared Skrulls and other aliens as a national threat. What does this mean for the Asgardians, Talokans, and the Guardians of the Galaxy if they try to visit Peter Quill? The Talokans may be born on Earth but Ritson likely means anyone not human is to be killed on sight. Namor already hated the surface world for how they persecuted his people in the past and this declaration of war would pretty much provoke him to try and destroy the Surface world again. What would Thor do if he saw humans attacking his people? As much as he is fond of humans, he still must protect his people no matter what. And what would Rocket do if the first thing humans do when he visits Earth is try and shoot at him and his friends? It feels like the humans are just accelerating their own extinction at this point.
  • "You took a bad situation and made it worse. That's real one-term president stuff." Note that there's no sign Congress actually approved this action. We only see vigilantes attacking suspected Skrulls, which was likely his intention; he wanted to make it so that there was no way to unring the bell and put the secret back, making the planet too hostile for Skrulls to remain. It's doubtful any actual law passed.
  • Ritson's act isn't just evil, or impractical. It's outright delusional: During both battles against Thanos' army, the bulk of the force were the Wakandans, who won't have to abide to a foreign law, and the Sorcerers, who aren't also a government force. Ironheart is also in Wakanda, Asgardians are in Europe (Maybe they are their own country) and everything he has is... S.W.O.R.D. and the young avengers? Scratch that last one: The Young Avengers are just a kid's gang. Should a hostile force try to enter the USA, he woulnd't be able at all to enforce that policy
    • That, and the fact of any ship saying "So, we cannot land on American soil? All right then, we will take all our alien tech, science and discoveries to another country and leave you stranded in the past."

Why didn't G'iah just kill Gravik instead of giving him the Harvest?

• Nick Fury confronts Gravik at New Skrullos. They make a deal where Gravik is given the Harvest in exchange for abandoning his plans on Earth and going to another planet. Gravik gets the Harvest and, of course, reneges on his deal in favor of trying to kill Nick Fury and every human on the planet. But then it is revealed to be G'iah disguised as him who also used the Harvest on herself. But why did she even bother with that deal in the first place? G'iah knows Gravik is a homicidal son of a bitch who killed her parents and does not care if his own people is wiped out as a result of his plans. At that moment, G'iah has powers and Gravik doesn't. Why didn't G'iah just kill him on the spot and save herself the trouble? Nick Fury pretty much stopped Gravik's plans at that point.
  • As seen in the previous episodes, Gravik had already given himself the more limited Super Skrull powers which G'iah also got. So it's not like G'iah is overpowered when they meet at New Skrullos, they are pretty much on equal footing. Either G'iah thought that getting all the extra powers from the Harvest would make it easier for her to defeat Gravik, or she wanted to get those extra powers out of selfish reasons.

Why did G'iah use her human face while fighting Gravik?

• I know Actors want to show off their faces for as long as they can to justify their screen time. But sometimes that just gets in the way of suspension of disbelief. When G'iah faces off against Gravik, he uses his Skrull face while G'iah keeps Emilia Clarke's face but why? I was under the impression that G'iah hated disguising as a human and just wanted to be herself. So why didn't she go green meanie like Gravik is during their fight? Did she suddenly develop a fondness for those humans after all?
  • The easier explanation? The showrunners wanted us to easily identify both Skrulls.
  • Emilia Clarke didn't like the make-up process for her Skrull form because of how uncomfortable it was, which is why she spent most of her screen time in her human form. Jennifer Lawrence had a similar complaint when she played Mystique in the X-Men films.
  • Some actors work really well under makeup appliances, some don't. Some find working under heavy prosthetics liberating, adding options to their performance, others find it constricting and hindering. Some are allergic to the common chemicals in prosthetic makeup, or just find the appliances uncomfortable and claustrophobic. And the Skrull makeup is really extreme, completely covering all of the actor. If Emilia Clarke found it uncomfortable and difficult to work in, it's better for everyone to just leave it off. And yes, it does provide the advantage of easily being able to tell who is who in their fight.

Why doesn't Falsworth just shoot "Rhodey" to prove she's a Skrull?

• In episode 6, Falsworth has "Rhodey" at gunpoint. She tries to convince President Ritson that "Rhodey" is a Skrull, so that Ritson will call off the attack on Russia, and later Fury joins them and tries to convince Ritson too. They both know that they have only minutes to make Ritson call off the attack, so instead or trying to argue their point to him, why doesn't Falsworth just shoot Raava so she'll revert to Skrull form? If for some reason she doesn't want to kill Raava, she knows (from her interrogations of Brogan and the Skrull who impersonated her boss) that even a non-lethal gunshot will make Skrull body parts revert back to their original form. So what's the point of trying convince Ritson with words when there's a much more effective way to do that?

Why is Agent Ross involved?

• In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he was arrested for spying for the Wakandans and freed by Okoye. He's still a fugitive, though, so why is he (or a Skrull pretending to be him), in contact with Fury, who has an official position with the US government?

The Skrull Council make no sense before they gave Gravik their blessing

• Before the Skrull Council voted 4-1 to lend their support to Gravik, their official stance peacefully remaining in hiding. Thing is, they have actively been kidnapping and replacing public figures like Chris Stearns and the UK prime minister, and possibly the rest. So how did the token good guys on the council, Shirley and the NATO Secretary General, reconcile that with their supposedly peaceful stance?
  • There's nothing to suggest the two council members who disagree with Gravik are necessarily "token good guys". The council's original long-term plan was probably to replace important public figures, then use their political and media clout to create some kind of permanent home for Skrulls on Earth. Gravik's plan is way more drastic and risky, since it entails a full-scale global war, so Sagar and Caspani are against it, but that doesn't mean their own alternative plan isn't morally dubious as well.

What if Gravik won against G'iah?

• As thrilling as the battle between G'iah and Gravik was, I can't help but consider that Nick Fury is still taking a massive risk by having G'iah give Gravik the Harvest in the first place. Has Nick Fury considered the possibility that Gravik would be able to kill G'iah? They both have the same powers after all? What is stopping Gravik from just blowing G'iah's head to pieces with Captain Marvel's lasers when his hands are wrapped around her throat? All Nick Fury could have accomplished was making an alien who wants humanity dead, one of the strongest in the world. What would Nick Fury do then if the worst came to happen?

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