Secret Invasion - Betrayed / Beloved - Review

Betrayed

Episode three starts at the skull compound, with Gravik’s thugs preparing for something, as Gravik enters the lab, we have a better look at the machine he’s trying to build. The skulls, members of the Council, join him in the lab and he briefly explains he wants to create Super-Skrulls, stealing powers from super-powered species (Daniel Whitehall theories? What?).

With a flashback, we see Fury meeting with a woman in NYC, in 1998…later we learn he was meeting his wife, Varra, who changed her identity. In the present, we see them having breakfast together (I LOVE this domestic Fury scene, we deserve this too, to be honest), as they discuss his role in all this, and he says he considering getting revenge. ( He asks Varra if she’s working for Gravik, she says she cried for him after the bill, and she considered herself a widow. )

Back at the compound, we see Gi’ah in her room (?) as Gravik talks to her, asking who could possibly have told the police where they were headed, and what was going on. He implies Gi’ah was involved, as she tells him the problem was Brogan, not her.

Gi’ah and Gravik go out of the compound together, and Gi’ah alerts Talos about their location, to let them meet. Talos meets Gravik in a museum, and Gravik continuously brags about he would only choose war all the way. He tells Talos he should be grateful he didn’t send Gi’ah back to him in a body bag, and as Talos fights back, we learn every people surrounding them is actually a Skrull. Between war talks, Gravik brings Gi’ah up again, and Talos attacks him, stabbing him with a knife. Thanks to this, we see Gravik has absorbed Extremis (Iron Man 3), which makes him almost unkillable at this point.

In the next scene, Fury joins Talos at a pub and says he has a lead about a Skrull being up high in the US government. He is, of course, talking about Rhodey, as I suspected. Talos says he’ll help him only if Fury says he’s useless without him, and he does (I got a little emotional about this friendship). In the car, Fury calls Sonya asking for help to contact someone to stop Rhodey, and she gave him the ID of some Naval Commander. During the ride, they discuss who helped who (I’m not gonna go into that because they always repeat the same stuff and, as much as I love it – as I said – it’s not even worth repeating it.) After arriving at Bob’s house – as they call the naval commander – Talos bypasses the security and ends up in the house where he gets captured by Bob, as Fury threatens to kill his son, pointing a gun at him. As Bob lets Talos go, Fury ties him up and asks him how to stop the missile that’s gonna strike Earth (thanks to one of Gravik’s tugs who turned into an operative)… Bob resists, of course, but as he starts talking about Talos being an awful general and Gi’ah being a spineless mole, Talos shoots him.

After his death, Talos calls Gi’ah, asking for a password to stop the launch. She fights against some Skrulls to get to the room where the humans are held, she searches in the Commander’s mind for the password and communicates it to Talos, who stops the launch once and for all.

As Gi’ah tries to escape, Gravik stops her and kills her in the woods.

At the end of this episode, we see Varra – Fury’s wife – going out to a Train station to recover a safety box, with a gun in it. After this, she gets a call, from an unknown caller that tells her to meet at St. James Church.

Beloved

Episode four starts with Gi’ah being left for dead in the woods, and we explore the last moments before her death, as she “injects” herself with Extremis. In the woods, she comes back to life thanks to said serum.

After the intro, we’re back in 2012, as Fury and Varra meet in a bar, and she says the first thing she thought after seeing the Avengers, is that Fury had something to do with it. They end up tailing about a book, and reciting part of it, about living a life together and feeling beloved, despite everything and because of everything.

In the present, Varra is meeting the man who called her… that we learn is Rhodey, who’s actually a Skrull working for Gravik (I told you guys! I knew!). He tells her she has to kill Fury, and she tells him it’s not important to kill him because Fury is just getting old and useless – I saw this as a way to protect him, and not as a way to talk bad about him. While this happens, we also learn Fury bugged her and he’s listening to everything for the house.

After this, Talos and Gi’ah meet in a park (?) and he apologizes for bringing her into this and getting her hurt. She asks him if he has a plan to save their people because Gravik has one and it works, and Talos tells her they have to integrate with the humans and find a “good” way to find their way back into their old lives (I’m paraphrasing).

In the next scene, we see Fury and Varra in their house, she notices he’s not wearing his wedding ring (probably because he feels betrayed), but he makes up an excuse. They discuss their lives together again, as they did in the past, and he tells he she was a mistake. He tells he ignored every sign, even now that she has a gun and plans to kill him. They both settle their guns on the table. And he asks her why she chose this woman to be her host. She said they were friends for years, Varra visited her for years, caring for the woman, and the day she died Varra asked if she wanted to fall in love. Varra told her about Nick, and made the woman three promises: one was that she would bury the woman at sea, another was that she would be a daughter to the woman’s parents, and another – the most important one – that she would NEVER hurt Nick. This brought Nick to recite their “promises” again, and at the end of it, they both shot the wall behind each other, demonstrating they would ALWAYS choose each other over anything else.

After this, we see a female Skrull getting out of the shower and we see her turning into Rhodey as soon as she approaches the mirror. As Skrull!Rhodey comes out of the bathroom, he finds Fury in his hotel room, saying he should sit down with him and drink together. As Fury clearly acts like a friend, he threatens him saying he knows there’s a high-operative officer infiltrated in the White House.

As they finish said “meeting”, Rhodey meets up with the President of the United States for a UN meeting. Fury and Talos follow their car knowing something is about to happen, and they have to be there.

As an incident regarding the President happens, the Skrulls attack the US operatives, pretending to be Russian – and potentially getting WWIII started. Fury intervenes to save the President and shoots one of the Skrulls planes down. During the fight, we also find out Gravik has stolen Groot’s powers, and he now has an extending ability. Trying to save President Ritson, Talos gets shot by one of Gravies thugs and turns into a Skrull. Left unharmed and unsafe, Talos gets taken by Gravik who stabs him to death, while Fury tries to defend Talos and shoots Gravik, he learns Travis has taken Extremis and he’s unbreakable.

I have to say… I didn’t like episode 3 very much, but episode 4 was FIRE.

Also…we really need to talk about how all this SuperSkrulls thing seems based on Daniel Whitehall’s theories about stealing Inhumans’ powers to his own advantage. And how these theories were used by Nathaniel Malick – son of Wilfred Malick, founder of HYDRA – who happens one of the few who succeeded in stealing powers from a superhero. We also know HYDRA is still active somehow – “If a head is cut off, two more shall take its place.”… are they the ones behind all this? Are they involved? What do you think?

Did you like these episodes? Let me know in the comments!