Secret Invasion Episode 4: Talos’ Fate, Explained

[This story contains Secret Invasion spoilers for season 1 episode 4, “Beloved.”] First, Secret Invasion shot and killed longtime Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) ally Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). Then the Skrull insurgent Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) gunned down and seemingly killed Skrull mole G’iah (Emilia Clarke) — who faked her death and healed her bullet wound with the regenerative Extremis nanotechnology. Following the revelation that Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is a Skrull imposter who aided the Super-Skrull Gravik’s assassination attempt on the life of U.S. President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney), a third character suffered their apparent death at Gravik’s hands in Wednesday’s “Beloved” episode of Secret Invasion.

While en route to the “most important negotiation since the Cuban Missile Crisis” with Russia, President Ritson’s convoy is attacked by Gravik’s Skrull Resistance disguised as the Russians. Fury tries to intercept Ritson with the shape-shifter Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), but Gravik’s right-hand man, the Skrull Pagon (Killian Scott), shoots Talos as he attempts to save the president from his reinforced vehicle. Gravely wounded, Talos reverts to his Skrull form and is nearly killed by friendly fire when a soldier mistakes the alien for the enemy.

Talos summons the last of his strength to free Ritson, but Fury is forced to leave him behind as he extracts the president from the kill zone. Episode 4 ends with the Extremis-enhanced Gravik fatally stabbing Talos before Fury can save him.

It’s a tragic end for Talos, who planned to stop Gravik’s insurgency, save the planet, and use that bargaining chip to secure amnesty for the one million refugee Skrulls in hiding on Earth. “G’iah, we’re a people without a planet. We depend on the goodwill of our hosts. We just have to keep showing them who we are,” Talos told his daughter. “We just keep contributing, show them our hearts. They will see us.”

Believing him to be “delusional,” G’iah walked away from her father with the words: “That’s not who we are. And that is not who I’ve become.”

To quote the poet Raymond Carver’s “Late Fragment”: 

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”
“I did.”
“And what did you want?”
“To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

New episodes of Marvel’s Secret Invasion premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.