I’ve said before that fairly or unfairly, critics are getting tired of the MCU. Lately, that’s been the movies, but the most recent point of evidence? Marvel’s new much-hyped Secret Invasion series starring A-listers like Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle and Emilia Clarke, which has the worst critic score for a major Marvel series since…Netflix’s Iron Fist.
Currently, Secret Invasion has a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes from 121 critics with a better, but not amazing 73% audience score. While a 63% is still technically “fresh,” in the larger context of Marvel TV, it’s quite bad. Here’s where it ranks on the list as a result:
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- Ms. Marvel – 98%
- Agents of SHIELD – 95%
- Daredevil – 92%
- Loki – 92%
- Hawkeye – 92%
- WandaVision – 91%
- Luke Cage – 87%
- Moon Knight – 86%
- Agent Carter – 86%
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – 84%
- Jessica Jones – 83%
- She-Hulk – 80%
- The Defenders – 78%
- The Punisher – 64%
- Secret Invasion – 63%
- Iron Fist – 37%
- Inhumans – 11%
That is…quite a ways down the list, a full 20-30% below essentially every other major MCU-linked series, and well below most of the new-era Disney Plus ones like Ms. Marvel, Loki, Hawkeye and Wandavision.
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Something has gotten lost in translation here, as Marvel billed this as a super serious spy drama, but it doesn’t quite land that way as Nick Fury faces an invisible threat that really no one seems to care about but him, which doesn’t make for a particularly compelling watch. Plus, it’s trying to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and then every so often, somebody in full green scaly face prosthetics shows up and kind of takes you out of it. I get that this was all a comic storyline, but despite a blockbuster intro that killed off two long-time (albeit somewhat minor) MCU characters, it’s just not going very well.
Marvel TV has been a bit all over the place, mostly full of successes to some extent, but pretty nebulous about what’s supposed to be an ongoing series and what isn’t. I can’t even keep track of it all. Loki definitely has a second season as is coming soon. WandaVision isn’t coming back but a Coven of Chaos spin-off is. Falcon and the Winter Soldier turns into Captain America 4. I think Moon Knight has a season 2. Ms. Marvel may have a season 2 after The Marvels. No clue if Hawkeye or She-Hulk will come back.
Secret Invasion feels like it’s going to be a one-off six-episode production, one that probably would have been better off as a movie with a higher budget and more of the main heroes brought in to support Fury, as the Skrull storylines were hugely expansive in the comics in terms of who was secretly a Skrull and who wasn’t. Here it’s going to be what, Don Cheadle is a Skrull? Probably? Fury is? Those feel like the only real options, so it’s not exactly gearing up for a mind-blowing twist here.
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We’ll see what happens in the rest of the series, but it’s not looking good so far.
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