Is Secret Invasion Samuel L. Jackson's Last Time as Nick Fury?
"One last fight," spymaster Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) says in the new Secret Invasion trailer, which ominously states that "the end is closer than we think." Four years since we last saw him off-world with a sect of Skrulls in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. Director returns to Earth to uncover a conspiracy: the rebel Super Skrull Gravik's (Kingsley Ben-Adir) clandestine invasion of Earth by a faction of shape-shifting Skrulls. If a fugitive Fury and his allies fail to thwart an imminent Skrull invasion, it could mean the end of humanity. But is the Marvel Studios series Fury's final mission?
The latest footage shows a fugitive Fury — often without his eyepatch — back from "vacation" and wrapping up loose ends on Earth. "This is personal," says Fury as he revisits his fake grave for the first time since Captain America: The Winter Soldier, learning from his few trusted allies that "things have gotten much worse" since Fury went to space and entrusted Skrull couple Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and Soren (Sharon Blynn) to impersonate Fury and his right-hand, former S.H.I.E.L.D. Deputy Director Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). To that, Fury says: "Why do you think I came back?"
In the 1990s, Fury and the cosmic Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) helped rescue Talos' Skrull clan: refugees of the intergalactic Kree-Skrull War that destroyed their homeworld on the planet Skrullos. But decades later, in the present day, Talos and Soren's grown-up daughter G'iah (Emilia Clarke) has grown to resent the humans who failed to fulfill their promises, while renegade Gravik and his like-minded Skrulls seek to infiltrate all levels of Earth to best protect their displaced species.
"You don't know what they have planned for you," G'iah appears to tell Fury, while footage shows the U.S. Department of Damage Control — a shadowy former S.H.I.E.L.D. subsidiary that has had dealings with superhumans like Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in Ms. Marvel — retrieving a specimen sample from the Black Order alien Cull Obisidian (Terry Notary), whose hand was severed in Avengers: Infinity War. This hints at a plot to engineer Super Skrulls, who are enhanced to wield superhuman powers not possessed by regular shape-shifters.
Whether or not Fury survives the six-episode Secret Invasion, it won't be the last time audiences see the character Jackson has portrayed since 2008's Iron Man: Jackson will reunite with Larson in The Marvels, the upcoming Captain Marvel sequel teaming the cosmic Avenger with Kamala and the grown-up Monica Rambeau (WandaVision's Teyonah Parris).
"There are things I really didn't know about Nick Fury that I just found out [making Secret Invasion]," Jackson said in a past interview. "The minds behind what happened during The Blip are fantastic. That's a part of what we're uncovering when we do this series. The place that Nick Fury is in, the evolution of his story, or the de-evolution of his story. Maybe we wind it down, or maybe we crank it up, it's kinda hard to tell."
Jackson continued, "It's giving me an opportunity to explore something other than the 'bad-assery' of who Nick Fury is, and 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."
Secret Invasion peeks beneath the eyepatch when the series premieres June 21st on Disney+; The Marvels is scheduled to open in theaters on November 10th.