Secret Invasion premiere ends on a tragic twist for major MCU character

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday's premiere of Secret Invasion, "Resurrection."

Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) return home has been anything but a happy reunion in Secret Invasion.

Marvel's dark new spy series kicked off with a literal bang in the series premiere (streaming now on Disney+), as Fury and his longtime ally Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Skrull pal Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) fail to stop Skrull terrorist Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) from bombing a square in Moscow.

Aided by Talos' own daughter G'iah (Emilia Clarke), Gravik not only sets off multiple bombs in a heavily populated area, but he also shape-shifts into Fury to shoot and kill Hill at point-blank range. The premiere ends with Hill dying in Fury's arms amid the explosive chaos all around them.

It's a shocking and tragic ending for what seemed to be shaping up to be Hill's biggest role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. One of the few remaining long-running characters left in the MCU, she has appeared in six movies and three TV series since her debut in 2012's Avengers, but she's never been a main character in any of them despite the character's importance in the comic book source material.

Since Secret Invasion has been touted as a series revolving around Fury as he uncovers a decades-long conspiracy of the shape-shifting Skrulls secretly infiltrating the planet, it felt like Hill would also get her long-deserved spotlight as well, since she's his righthand agent. But instead, it appears as if Hill's impact on this series will be felt through her death rather than anything she might have accomplished in the mission.

It's not hard to imagine that Fury will blame himself for Hill's murder — Gravik was literally wearing his face when doing the deed, and Hill died believing her own friend killed her. "It was you," Hill tells him as she dies. "Not me," a confused and shocked Fury responds. Plus, Gravik's mission was borne out of Fury's failure to keep the promise he made to all the Skrulls at the end of Captain Marvel — to find them a new home. While Fury has been hiding out for an extended stay on S.A.B.E.R., having seemingly given up on that 30-year-old promise, Gravik now leads a group of rebel Skrulls who are looking for revenge via global terrorist attacks.

And with pretty much every character giving Fury grief for how he's changed since the snap/blip and he's no longer the man he used to be who can handle a war like the one that's coming, it seems as if Hill's death is meant to hammer that point home. Will he start believing in that narrative, or will Fury avenge Hill and prove everyone wrong by once again saving the day?

One thing is for certain: Hill's devastating death means Secret Invasion isn't afraid to take big swings. It's already clear that no one is safe and anything is fair game in the remaining five episodes (debuting Wednesdays on Disney+).

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