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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Does Zemo truly believe Steve's story that the "original history" had them as best friends and it was the Cube rewriting reality to make them enemies? Or is he just going along with Steve's delusions in order to finally get the power over the world he's long wanted?
    • Maria Hill's reasoning for dropping the parking deck on Deadpool: was it because she didn't want him to pull a double cross on her or was there another reason? As Deadpool pointed out, everything that happened here traces back to her creating Pleasant Hill — was Maria pissed off he rubbed that in her face again? As well, she had been on the run for awhile due to Pleasant Hill — was she taking a page from Norman Osborn's book and stealing the glory from Deadpool to get herself back into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s good graces? Or was it perhaps revenge for the death of Phil Coulson?
    • Allowing the death and destruction caused by HYDRA to remain when Kobik reset everything. The narration claims this is for the heroes as a reminder for what their constant headbutting would lead to, but was it also a reminder for Kobik herself that Reality Warping Is Not a Toy?
  • Anvilicious: Some of the dialogue and plot points are so blatantly meant as nods to Trump's America that it borders on comical. Sam Wilson: Captain America #22 has a scene where a group of working class diner patrons claim that HYDRA, a known terrorist organization that has tried to conquer the world multiple times, isn't evil, and that "the media" is using fake news to smear them. Said scene also has two guys basically admit they don't mind living under fascist rule as long as it continues to produce more jobs. The irony is that Spencer and Alonso claimed that this story was not meant to be read as political.
  • Arc Fatigue: By issue #6, a few reviewers have made it known that they feel the storyline has way overstayed its welcome due to the increasing use of Ass Pulls.
  • Ass Pull: There's plenty of people criticizing both Captain America #25 and Secret Empire #8 over "Barf" literally barfing up a cosmic shard into the hands of the heroes, and then using that shard to wish for a miracle; we get in quick succession Quasar waking up and then breaking the shield, the Darkforce shield around New York disappearing and Namor revealing he saved Bucky a while back. Even with Barf foreshadowed at the start of Secret Empire, it still feels completely out of nowhere and worse, unearned because it all happened with a wish.
    • The reveal that Hydra Cap isn't even a brainwashed Captain America but one pulled from an alternate reality.
  • Bile Fascination: Fans who follow the event despite still not being sold on HydraCap admit they only do so due to the increasingly bizarre plot twists.
  • Broken Base:
    • Because of the very nature of the storyline, there is a very distinct split within the base between the fans that like the story and where it may head and the fans who find it utterly disgusting that it's actually happening. There is also a third group who think that the storyline is great… for an issue of What If? and not an in-continuity story. Others think it would be better if it didn't launch when the political landscape of the world was in the state it was, passing it as something they might have otherwise enjoyed suffering from extraordinarily unlucky timing.
    • Killing off Phil Coulson in Deadpool 31 also divided people into those who thought it was poignant, on account of the character relationship between that character and Rogers, and those who thought it was a stupid ratings gimmick. And then there are those that think Coulson will be coming back soon anyway, on the account of his alternate-universe counterpart already cheating death once and comic-books being comic-books.
    • Hydra Cap is defeated by Sam Wilson (the last minority hero left after the rest are wiped away by Hydra Cap) kneeling before him, proclaiming 'Hail Hydra' and giving Steve the final cube shard only to reveal that Ant-Man and Bucky were shrunk on it and they enter the cube, saving Kobik and the memory of Steve, who defeats Hydra Steve. This bothers some since, in other words, the main black hero kneels before a Nazi after all other non-white heroes are removed from the universe and then wait for three white men to save the day. Others feel that this development had nothing to do with race, instead claiming that mainly using Bucky and the memory of Steve made perfect sense character-wise, and that Sam's deception played the biggest part in undoing Hydra Cap.
    • The fact that it ended with the original Cap miraculously coming back to defeat Hydra Cap has caused some discontent, with some saying it is a cop-out just to keep Cap's hands clean and not have him really atone for anything (the official press release swore that Cap was going to be the hero of the day… people obviously thought that he was going to do a Heel–Face Turn somehow). Now, he can just blame it on the other Cap. However, some state it was really the only way to end the story.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Miles Morales beating the absolute shit out of Steve after he abruptly kills Black Widow.
    • The real Steve being brought back by Kobik and defeating his false HYDRA self. Plus HYDRA Steve's reaction to being unable to lift Mjolnir, showing he really wasn't worthy.
    • For the fans that were sick of the Never Live It Down treatment Hank has been put through, it is extremely satisfying to watch him not only tear this whole thing to shreds but also tear Tony a new one and call him out on some of the downright stupid and destructive mistakes he'd made that had left readers soured on Tony in general.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Far and away, the key criticism of the storyline. While HYDRA and the brainwashed Captain America are supposed to be villains, the evil Cap is portrayed as an Evil Is Cool figure of Villainous Valor, in ways such as being framed as the Lesser of Two Evils next to the Red Skull and being deemed worthy of Mjolnir, and the marketing has heavily emphasized HYDRA over the actual heroes, to the point comic store employees have been given HYDRA shirts to wear. This has caused many to question if Marvel knows just what kind of message they're sending.
    • Hydra Cap using Mjolnir and implied to be worthy was especially criticised given the way real-life Nazi groups use Norse mythology and iconography. It was later revealed that the incantation for the hammer had been changed so the strongest rather than the worthy can wield it, but that was after months of implying that a Nazi was worthy. The revised incantation is also problematic as it still plays into Nazi propaganda about their strength.
  • Fandom Rivalry: Fans of the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. love to take potshots at this series for 3 primary reasons: One, Marvel promoted the hell out of Secret Empire and seems increasingly dedicated to trying to get the TV series cancelled, two, the fourth season of S.H.I.E.L.D. featured a similar storyline about a world where HYDRA won, and theirs won near-universal critical acclaim while Secret Empire is currently the Marvel fandom's number one punching bag, and three, Secret Empire was kicked off with the death of Coulson. It doesn't help that the writer of Secret Empire played damage-control by claiming that while HYDRA are villainous, they're not Nazis while S.H.I.E.L.D. went out of its way to say that "a Nazi is a Nazi, and don't you ever forget it."
  • Fan Nickname: Numerous ones for HYDRA-fied Steve Rogers. Including Hauptman Hydra, Captain Hydra, Captain Nazi, Fuhrer, Captain Hitler, Scumbag Steve, Crazy Steve, and HydraCap. Even gets done in-universe. Rocket Raccoon lists off Captain Octopushead and his personal favorite, 'Stevil.'
  • Harsher in Hindsight: HYDRA's greatest crime within the story is the gruesome murder of the entire population of Las Vegas with a microwave weapon. Only a month after the storyline ended, Stephen Craig Paddock went on a killing spree in the Vegas Strip, killing fifty-nine people and then taking his own life, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
  • I Knew It!: Many people figured that the Cosmic Cube would be used to set things straight in the end.
  • Like You Would Really Do It:
    • You didn't seriously think Miles Morales would actually kill Steve after the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in Secret Empire #7, did you?
    • Steve Rogers didn't remain a fascist thug. People just hoped that it wouldn't have required Kobik magically creating a "good" Steve clone, though. And technically, one Steve Rogers still remains a fascist thug. note 
    • Yeah, as if anyone thought that Black Widow would really stay dead.
  • Memetic Mutation: Deus Ex Barfinanote 
  • Narm Charm: Pretty much the entire thing, for people who actually like it, given that basically every new plot twist that occurs seems to be written purely for maximum clickbait value.
  • Older Than They Think: A common rejoinder to the accusation that, in turning Steve Rogers into a HYDRA fascist, Marvel is insulting the memory of Jack Kirby is to point out that there was a previous storyline in which Steve Rogers was brainwashed into supporting fascism. Which was illustrated by Jack Kirby, even if that storyline didn't last for more than one year or led to a Crisis Crossover event.
  • Only the Author Can Save Them Now:
    • The only way for the Ultimates to take down the Shield and come to save the day is for Quasar to wake up from her Convenient Coma. Starbrand, Spectrum, Blue Marvel, and a host of others dedicate pages upon pages trying to break it and failing, Galactus won't help and the Silver Surfer is presumed not to exist for the purposes of the event, as he got sent back in time in the most recent issue of his book, as of August 2017, the month Secret Empire concluded.
    • The main title itself has this effect as the heroes are no closer to winning and it seems that they're suffering some sort of set-back every time they get close to victory.
    • And when the author does save them it's by means of a Deus ex Barfina. Not only the heroes accidentally come across a character with the convenient power of barfing out useful objects, in this case the last shard of the Cosmic Cube, but also the Cosmic Cube shard grants their wish and voila! Quasar wakes up from her coma and breaks the shield, the shield around NYC gets broken as well and Bucky is found to be alive.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Avril Kincaid for Phyla-Vell, the second Quasar, due to the Character Shilling she's been given, the lack of explanation for her selection as the new Quasar by Wendell Vaughn, and her obvious role as a Plot Device stuck in a Convenient Coma until the time comes for her to take down the planetary shield.
  • The Scrappy:
    • HYDRA Steve Rogers, mainly for the massive pile of Unfortunate Implications surrounding his very existence as a character (being a tone-deaf mockery of a beloved anti-fascist icon created by Jewish writers and artists) during a time when authoritarianism was on the rise throughout the world, but also because of the incredibly poor attempts by the writing to try and paint him as a Grey-and-Grey Morality Well-Intentioned Extremist and have the reader sympathize with him, which more often than not amounts to "he does a lot of horrible tyrannical things but occasionally feels bad about it sometimes".
    • Barf, the unfortunately-named, barely foreshadowed Deus ex Machina with a superpowernote  widely viewed as incredibly stupid. Him being a NuHuman, a group already widely despisednote  for being a Executive Meddling-pushed attempt at replacing mutants, does not help his reputation.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Broken Base aside, most reviews rate it more positively than previous Crisis Crossovers Marvel has had like Civil War II and Inhumans vs. X-Men. Although both of those arcs were poorly-received, so that's not saying much, and commercially, it ultimately faired worse than both, being the second worst selling major Marvel event comic in the last 10 years at the time of its release.
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • Sally Floyd is incarcerated by Captain America after an interview gone wrong. It is meant to be a despicable moment for Cap, but considering the cruel and insensitive way she tried to demoralize Cap in Civil War, it was easy for quite a lot of readers to take some satisfaction at the predicament. Adding insult to injury, Cap taunts her to go to Twitter and complain about it.
    • The current predicament of the Inhumans can garner this reaction from others because of their recent push at the cost of the mutants being sidelined. Now, the mutants have their own land and are relatively safe from HYDRA while the Inhumans are being hunted.
    • Miles Morales snapping and nearly killing Rogers with a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown single-handedly (which also put him this close to fulfilling the future Ulysses predicted for him on Civil War II) feels very much like this after many issues of Cap being an Invincible Villain.
    • In the climax the real Cap is brought back by Kobik and fights his HYDRA self one on one, ending with him using Mjolnir to land the final blow. Plus HYDRA Cap's attempt to wield the hammer fails, due to Elisa's Cosmic Cube shard's tampering with the Hammer having been reversed.
  • Tear Jerker: By the end of Deadpool's tie-in, he's back to being a villain. All of his hard work to try to be a hero is utterly ruined because Maria Hill decided to pull the Reformed, but Rejected card and drop a parking deck on him, thus keeping him out of the final battle.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Elisa Sinclair had a lot of potential to be interesting, especially since much of her past was shrouded in mystery and she seemed to have her own ulterior motives for supporting Steve. But she died in Secret Empire 6 and nothing about her character was resolved.
    • Similarly, Baron Zemo was built up as being a potential foil for Rogers, his best friend and closest ally who nonetheless could disagree with him on things. But the two almost never interacted during the event, and Zemo didn't even appear in the finale when Rogers' regime began falling apart.
    • The Thunderbolts, a team of villains trying to reform who ultimately failed and joined back up with Zemo in the 'Opening Salvo' prologue, could have added depth and complexity to HYDRA's side. They never appeared again after the prologue.
    • Frank Castle's allegiance to HYDRA was a significant plot point in Secret Empire 3, and it looked like he too would be used to flesh out the villain side—especially since his morally ambiguous nature puts him in a position where he could more plausibly accept HYDRA's arguments than other heroes that could have been used for the same purpose. He had no significant contribution besides losing a fight to Black Widow in issue 7, and by Secret Empire Omega, has turned on HYDRA while bluntly dismissing his prior actions as a "Big mistake". This has led many to accuse Spencer of derailing the Punisher's character merely to anger his fans, as he didn't affect the story in any significant way.
    • The new Kraken. When he was introduced, Spencer made a point to keep his identity a secret. He was also given his role and a position in the Hydra Council by Elisa, who loved the previous Kraken and seems to consider the new one as "family". It seems like it's building up to an unexpected reveal. But when when the event came around, his identity was never brought up, he seemed to have no reaction to Elisa's death and never actually did anything to advance the plot or Hydra's goals than an above-average Mook wouldn't be able to accomplish and overall could have been cut from the story.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Some reviewers have noted that, while it could be interesting to see what could tempt a classic hero like Captain America into embracing the fascist positions he takes in Secret Empire such as censoring the media and executing potential threats to national security, the actual story undercuts that by attributing his embrace of such actions not to any of his own character flaws but to the fiat of the Cosmic Cube. As such, the scenes in which he does evil things don't develop his character or reveal previously unexamined flaws; they just reflect how he was magically altered by an outside force, and correspondingly are less dramatic and interesting.
    • Since the story is about deconstructing Steve Rogers' Big Good status, this would've been good for Peter Parker to step up and be a voice of inspiration since it's agreed among the fanbase that if there's any other Big Good in the MU besides Steve it's him, but he's only made few scant appearances in the actual event without doing anything of note, and it really doesn't help matters that Miles Morales has had a bigger part than him.
    • For the X-Men fans, it would be New Tian, the mutant-controlled nation in the state of California. The readers don't get to see what life is like for the relocated mutants in New Tian. The readers were also left disappointed when New Tian was destroyed by the U.S. Military and the Sentinels in the epilogue.
      • The Omega issue even featured a bitter Emma Frost noting that "everybody" was likely to instantly forget that she had given the mutants a homeland, a rather large achievement to sweep under the rug. There were also strong hints in the X-Men: Blue tie-in that Frost's New Tian was a dictatorial state itself; at the end of the day an enormous amount of ground was left uncharted due to the shortage of creative talent willing to take on high-level X-Men stories in 2017.
    • David F. Walker had an incredible premise for a Secret Empire tie-in in Occupy Avengers: The team rallied ordinary Americans in a popular, violent insurrection against Hydra. This was hamstrung by several factors. Because Occupy was posting hideous sales figures, Mr. Walker had to tell the entire story in two issues which also served as the series finale. Marvel also apparently coughed up an art budget of $3.50 to get his scripts illustrated, producing some woeful visuals. In a final indignity, Nick Spencer robbed Occupy of one of its protagonists so that Hawkeye could play an incredibly minor role in the main event. What could have been an epic "Green Dawn" story ended up as a bittersweet or possibly just bitter conclusion to an under-loved title.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The main title is an 11-issue weekly-released mini-series. The tie-ins run on a mostly monthly basis with a handful being bimonthly. Despite being advertised as a "good guy vs. bad guy" event, the first month (which includes half of the mini-series) has essentially been "The Bad Guy Wins: The Event" with only not even a handful of victories for the heroes. The Big Good of the Marvel Universe is a fascist leader and his Legacy Character replacement pulled a Rage Quit. And, surprise, the citizens of the United States have once again decided they like the villains ruling over them outside of a handful. If the idea of Steve Rogers being a fascist ruling America hasn't turned you off, the complete Downer Beginning of the first month throughout all titles will. Worse yet, Nick Spencer is adamant that the usual tropes that could solve this problem will not be used to end this (although on the press release Marvel Comics actually had to cave in and spoil the arc by insisting that Captain America will go back to be a hero (somehow) and save the day... and this they said in an attempt to convince people to stop burning issues). Finally, the Nazi comparisons and the event being written and released during a particularly turbulent time in American politics where Godwin's Law was thrown around did not help it at all. The revelation in Champions #11 that HYDRA used a microwave weapon to literally cook hundreds of innocent people during the razing of Las Vegas, ultimately roasting those people alive, contributed to this as well. When Ultron himself no longer cares about destroying humanity because he believes they are doing a good job at it themselves, you know things are bad.
  • Uncertain Audience: Any autopsy of Secret Empire almost always acknowledges what a severe identity crisis it had. It tried to mix bleak dystopian imagery with deep character study and black comedy, and undermined all three in the process. It tried to blame the situation on the faults, divisions, and failings of the superhero community, commenting on and criticizing past stories in the process, but it also wanted to blame things on the complacent and apathetic American people, but also the entire story premise hinges on the bad guys using Cosmic Retcons and mind control to blur the lines in both directions. It wanted to have a dark and dramatic plot full of shocking twists, prioritizing spectacle, iconic imagery, and big emotions over making every plot detail fit together, but it also wanted to tell an intricate story with a lot of moving parts, prioritizing scope over pace. And most infamously, it wanted to make bold political commentary about modern American politics and about what the disillusioned populace finds appealing about the lies of fascism, but also didn’t want to offend potential customers and didn’t seem to fully understand what makes fascist ideology more than generic authoritarianism in the first place. The ultimate final result was a confused and sludgy book for no one, even before overwhelming negative reception may have forced a thematically confused and narratively underwhelming ending.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Despite how sorry Kobik claims to be, the fact that she is the one who started this whole mess to begin with and for no reason and already having the power to do it, decides to not want to restore Las Vegas back to normal nor bring back all of the people who died by her indirect actions including Rick Jones and Natasha Romanoff back from the dead really rubs the readers the wrong way.
    • The book seems to want to portray Hydra Cap as still having some nobility, with some of the worst excesses of his regime shown not to be his idea and him genuinely believing he is worthy of Mjolnir, that Hydra's rule represents the true course of history and that it's in the interests of the country, as well as implying he planned to undo all the deaths it caused with the cosmic cube. The attempt to humanise a Nazi and implication that he was misguided but had good intentions did not go down well.
  • Writer Cop Out: One of the more scathing criticisms against the series is that the finale doesn't really work with the rest of the story and Marvel had to do some damage control when they realized fans hated how the story was playing out.

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