Secret Invasion: How Did Nick Fury Even Get All That Marvel DNA?

Marvel’s Secret Invasion hinged on the MacGuffin of “The Harvest,” i.e. a collection of DNA from The Avengers and other Earth heroes, during The Battle of Earth in Avengers: Endgame. However, like so many aspects of Secret Invasion, the full explanation for how The Harvest was gathered was only told in vague snippets and was never shown. Even after the Secret Invasion finale, some Marvel Cinematic Universe fans still have questions about how The Harvest even happened. 

Let’s break it down! 

What Is The Harvest in the MCU?

Based on the information revealed in Secret Invasion, it seems that after The Battle of Earth against Thanos, Nick Fury went to much greater lengths to “clean up” the battlefield than he did after the Battle of New York. Many different Avengers, aliens, and enhanced/cosmic-powered people shed blood during the fight between Thanos’ army and the Marvel heroes; that was a cornucopia of DNA for anyone to harvest and use in all the wrong ways – so Nick Fury made sure to get there first. 

How Was The Harvest Made? 

Fury used Skrulls – specifically Gravik and his team of cleaners to infiltrate the clean-up effort and collect samples of all the different super-powered beings in the battle. Fury then took that DNA and distilled it into a fluid containing all the different samples in one. Secret Invasion showed fans that Fury stored at least one sample of The Harvest in one of his gravestones around the world – but as always there’s room for later reveals that there could be more of it… 

Every Avengers DNA Sample In The Harvest

When G’iah (Emilia Clarke) brings Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) the Harvest sample, Gravik loads it up for analysis in a computer, which in turn reveals the names of the Avengers characters included in the Harvest: 

DNA samples from the Battle of Earth heroes include Captain America (Chris Evans), Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), Groot (Vin Diesel), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Korg (Taika Waititi), and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). 

DNA Samples from the Battle of Earth villains include Thanos, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, the Chitauri, and Outriders.

Fury also added DNA from other super-powered beings that didn’t fight in the Battle of Earth, such as Ghost (Hannah John-Kaman) and Abomination (Tim Roth).

What Did The Skrulls Do With The Harvest?

Gravik knew about The Harvest having been one of the key people to help Fury collect it in the first place. The Skrull terrorist couldn’t find where Fury had hidden The Harvest, so he set about making his own, collecting samples from Groot, Cull Obsidian, Extremis, and the Frost Beast of Jotunheim. Gravik built a machine that could allow Skrulls to copy that DNA and therefore access all the powers/abilities of each. His goal was to then coerce Fury into giving him the full Harvest, to make himself (and presumably any loyal soldiers) into the ultimate Super Skrulls. 

When Gravik gets the harvest from “Fury” (G’iah in disguise), he uses the machine to fully upgrade himself to Super Skrull status, but inadvertently enhances G’iah, as well. In the resulting battle of the Super Skrulls, G’iah kills Gravik, emerging as the sole Super Skrull in existence. Time will tell if G’iah is also the only source of the Harvest now, or if Fury has some of this Ultimate Super Serum stashed elsewhere…

Secret Invasion is streaming on Disney+.