While I wasn’t overly hyped about Secret Invasion ahead of time, given that it wasn’t any new characters we hadn’t seen before, and just the return of Nick Fury, I was interested to see how the MCU would handle what was being sold as a gritty spy drama.

Now, after episode 5 with one more to go, I have to say that this is just…an extremely bad show. There’s no getting around it. It didn’t start out amazingly, but its quality has slid downhill to a point where what I’m seeing on screen makes little to no sense.

I’m certainly not alone here. Secret Invasion is indeed the worst critically reviewed MCU series in the Disney Plus era, and in the overall MCU, only above Iron Fist and Inhumans. Its 69% audience score is below every other Disney Plus MCU show except She-Hulk, which had the living hell review bombed out of it by a…certain type of viewer.

But Secret Invasion just not good. There’s no getting around it. It’s a spy drama where the spies are aliens and that’s supposed to be the main hook, but it doesn’t really work any differently than a spy drama where double agents are…humans. And it’s less interesting than the actual good spy series we’ve seen on TV the last few years, whether that’s The Americans, Slow Horses or many others.

This week was full of just truly baffling moments. In just 33 minutes or so, we had:

Anything good about the show, or this episode? Yes! Olivia Colman is amazing in every scene she’s in as the cheerful, sociopathic, murderous head of SIS. She’s a delight, and the Oscar-winner is far above the caliber of this series.

I do not understand what happened with this project, but this feels like a “Solo” moment for Marvel as even Bob Iger suggests things are going to scale back on the Disney Plus MCU front from here. Maybe they should.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.