Secret Invasion Episode 2 Review - 7 Ups & 3 Downs

After having to wait eight months for the first episode of Secret Invasion since the conclusion of She-Hulk on Disney+, the mere week until episode two felt like the blink of an eye. It feels so good to have weekly MCU content back, and this writer is already fearing for Echo having every episode dropped at the same time.

That week has given fans time to digest everything that happened in Resurrection, from the seeds of mistrust being sown to recovering from that shocking final scene. By the time the next Wednesday comes around, they are raring to go for more.

Episode two, Promises, continued a lot of the positive things from the first episode. The gritty tone remained the same, and the likes of Gravik and Sonya were given more screen time, while Christopher McDonald's character showed his face in both human and Skrull form.

Again, much like the previous episode, there was a lot to like about Secret Invasion's second chapter, but there were plenty of drawbacks including how the show opened. And no, we're not talking about the AI intro (although that is still terrible).

Typically at the beginning of an episodic show like Secret Invasion, there will be a 'previously on' feature to help catch the audience up to where they need to be, and to remind them of some of the more important aspects of the series going into a specific episode.

Promises didn't have that however, instead it featured what was essentially a full recap of Captain Marvel, of course being careful not to actually show the titular character herself. This went through Fury's whole arc from meeting the Skrulls to trusting them and promising to help them find a new home.

This felt like an incredibly jarring way to open the second episode of the show. While it did bleed into the first proper scene of the episode based in 1997, it felt like everything that was shown in the recap was explained in the scene anyway. Recapping an entire movie just to aid one scene felt entirely out of place and didn't exactly place much trust in the viewer to know what was going on.

Chances are if you're watching Secret Invasion you know roughly what happened in Captain Marvel at the very least. Maybe a bit of exposition would help, but nothing so on the nose as this. Imagine if the likes of Infinity War or Endgame summed up everything that fans needed to have seen before actually getting into the movie. We'd have been there all night!