After more than a decade of either cameoing or being a supporting player in Marvel movies, the time has come for Nick Fury to lead his own MCU story. Samuel L. Jackson will lead the upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion, which will be our first time seeing the character since Spider-Man: Far From Home. However, some new information has come to life from Jackson himself revealing a surprising way Secret Invasion will explore Fury in a surprising way, namely through delving into one of the MCU’s bleaker periods.
Samuel L. Jackson stopped by EW’s Awards podcast to talk about a variety of subjects, including his work on Secret Invasion. Here’s what the actor had to say about how the show explores Nick Fury’s characterization:
There are things that even I really didn’t know about Nick Fury that I just found out, that the minds behind what happened during the Blip are fantastic. That’s part of what we’re uncovering when we do this series now. The place that Nick Fury is in, the evolution of his story or the devolution of his story, as maybe we wind it down or maybe we crank it up. It’s kind of hard to tell, but giving me an opportunity to explore something other than the badass-ery of who Nick Fury is. I’ve had a good time doing that, and I’m looking forward to people sharing that aspect of who he is when this series does happen.
As if learning that we’ll see a Nick Fury sans eyepatch at some point during Secret Invasion’s run wasn’t weird enough, now Samuel L. Jackson has casually revealed that the show that’ll become available to Disney+ subscribers at a yet-to-be-revealed date. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed at Disney’s upfront presentation that Secret Invasion will explore events that happened during the Blip period, though it doesn’t sound like the series will be set entirely at that point in the MCU timeline. Regardless, this is an unusual move considering that in the Avengers: Infinity War post-credits scene, we saw Fury being turned to dust by Thanos’ snap. The same thing happened to Cobie Smulder’s Maria Hill, who’s also back for Secret Invasion.
What exactly is going on here then? Well, let’s first remember that in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the Nick Fury we followed along with in the main story was actually Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrull character Talos disguised as Fury, and Talos’ wife Soren (played by Sharon Blynn) was disguised as Maria Hill, all while the real Fury was hanging out on a Skrull spaceship. Since Mendelsohn will reprise Talos in Secret Invasion, two ideas for this examination of the Blip time period come to mind. First, the Nick Fury we saw dusted in Avengers: Infinity War was actually Talos, and the real Fury was still active in the five years between Thanos’ wiping out half of all life in the universe and Hulk undoing that genocide with the Infinity Stones retrieved from the Time Heist. Second, Fury was indeed dusted, and Talos began impersonating him during the Blip.
Taking into account our previous look at Samuel L. Jackson as a two-eyed Nick Fury, I’m leaning towards Option #2 being more likely, especially since, as far as we know, Talos wasn’t aware of the pager that the real Fury used to contact Captain Marvel before he turned to dust. With Fury gone and Talos surviving in this scenario, it’s easy enough the Skrull pretending to be Fury and continuing his old ally’s spy work. However, on the off chance that Option #1 happens, it’ll certainly be interesting to see how Fury navigates a world dealing with the aftermath of Thanos’ actions.
Along with his prominent role in Secret Invasion, Samuel L. Jackson is set to reprise Nick Fury in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, which are now dated for February 17, 2023 and July 28, 2023, respectively. Jackson, Cobie Smulders and Ben Mendelsohn’s Secret Invasion costars include Martin Freeman and Don Cheadle reprising Everett K. Ross and James Rhodes/War Machine, respectively, as well as Kingsley Ben-Adir, Olivia Colman, Emiliar Clarke, Killian Scott, Christopher McDonald, Carmen Ejogo and Dermot Mulroney. When more updates about this series about Skrulls infiltrating all aspects of life on Earth (just like the original Secret Invasion storyline), CinemaBlend will pass them along.
