“The driver in front [Secret Invasion] is that this is a deep dive into Nick Fury,” said series director Ali Selim speaking to Polygon ahead of the show’s premiere. “Not only in Nick Fury’s personal life, but also in Nick Fury’s inner life. His demons and his questions and his fears and his secrets.”
As the unflappable spymaster of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nick Fury has spent very little screen time on who he is when he’s not pulling the strings of superheroes from the shadows. And with all that shadowy space to work with, you can’t just reveal that Nick Fury loves Bon Jovi. You have to go bigger.
And in the second episode of Secret invasionthe show got bigger.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for episode 2 of Secret Invasion.]
Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Marvel Studios
The last comment of episode 2 is surprising to say the least. After getting a real dressing-down from Rhodey Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Fury wanders around Moscow until he arrives at a charming modern house where a Skrull woman (Charlayne Woodard) is chopping vegetables. Nick escorts himself inside, where the woman asks him if he is forgetting something, and that something turns out to be a wedding ring.
The tabloid headline itself writes: NICK FURY’S SECRET ALIEN WIFE!!
For Selim, the reveal was all about getting Fury’s inner life in a way that justified itself. “His family life has been a secret in the MCU for 15 years. We revealed his family life, and I think revealing a woman is more interesting than revealing a leather sofa.”
But how does all this fit into the story of Nick as Secret invasion does it tell us? Characters like Talos and Maria Hill have criticized him for retreating from Earth after Thanos’ snap, but his wife doesn’t seem too surprised to see him walk through the front door. Has Nick actually been a lot closer than the rest of the MCU thought all along?
Selim objected to providing those details – which we’re sure will come out in upcoming episodes. For him, it’s about showing the audience that Nick Fury really is on his back foot, but he might just be starting to come around.
‘He’s hiding. And if you hide [but have] no attachments, it’s not as interesting as if you’re hiding from someone as important and influential as a woman or a child in your life. To bring him back and say he’s ignoring some of his personal life is really part of Nick’s character. He’s gone, he’s retreated, and now he’s coming back, not just to fight another battle for Earth, but to fight another battle for himself.