8 Reasons Why Secret Empire Didn't Work
4. We All Knew How It Would End From The First Issue
No matter how much Spencer and Marvel assured us otherwise, we all knew where it was going.
From the moment we learned just how Captain America became an agent of Hydra way back in Steve Rogers: Captain America #2, almost a year before Secret Empire began, readers and critics alike knew exactly how it would all end.
In that issue, we learn that Kobik, a living Cosmic Cube who looks like a little girl and introduced in a prior Marvel event, was manipulated by the Red Skull into altering Steve Rogers and his history so that he was always a member of Hydra.
As soon as we knew that, we knew that the way it would all end is Kobik (the Cosmic Cube), would reverse what she did.
Immediately, Marvel and Secret Empire writer Nick Spencer kept insisting that the Cosmic Cube would not fix everything, that what we all thought would happen wouldn't happen, even banging on this promise in a spoiler-article Marvel did with the New York Times days before the final issue.
Problem being: it was exactly what happened.
While sure, the people who died still died, and the things Hydra Cap did still happened, it was the Cosmic Cube, Kobik, who restored a version of Steve Rogers with his original history and intentions intact, and saw to the defeat and reversal of the changes wrought by Hydra Cap himself.
Ultimately, this meant the ending of the series felt completely weak, because we all saw it coming long before the series even began.