A few month ago I started the ungrateful task ofrecapping Secret Invasion , and now , a calendar month afterthe serial ended , I ’m still deeply underwhelmed by the predictable blandness of the entire thing . Then , because I was hit by a burst of nostalgia and because I find Hayley Atwell absurdly attractive , I started a re - watch ofthe other base spy thriller from Marvel : Agent Carter .
After I wind up the second season ( the show was unceremoniously cancel in 2016 ) , I was leave wondering … how did Secret Invasion manage to hump up so mischievously that Agent Carter , a web television receiver release with fewer star , way less hype , and without Secret Invasion ’s $ 200 million budget , was better written , well paced , and more enjoyable than Marvel ’s most recent spy series ?
For some background , Agent Carter was a short - inhabit Marvel TV seriesthat run for two seasons on ABC from 2015 to 2016 . The first season sawHayley Atwell ’s Agent Peggy Carterattempting to establish herself within the boy ’s club of the postwar spy system , the Strategic Scientific Reserve ( SSR ) , hoping to net Howard Stark ’s name after an arms deal go sideway . It is a science - fable dramady frame in the Marvel universe , but with a main character who has no power , Agent Carter keep both high heels unwaveringly on the ground .
Image: Marvel Studios
Secret Invasion was touted as “ prime , ” and despite the fact that most of the plot was going to doubtless circle around the way out of what to do with the aliens that had clandestinely made Earth their home in the ‘ 90s , I believe the pitch . So much of spycraft is meld info and chance — in the veracious hands , the premise of a radical of shapeshifting Skrulls help Samuel L. Jackson ’s Nick Fury puppet the Avengers into obligingness has potential . What we got , however , was a messy global political crises exacerbate by a single man ’s hubris — the exact opposite of what Agent Carter was doing .
On the surface , Agent Carter should n’t have work . It ’s a menses piece star a comparatively vague character who was on sieve for less than 20 minutes in Captain America : The First Avenger , a movie that was already three years old at the time of the first time of year ’s release . But Agent Carter ’s first season ’s secret plan is tight and focussed , and the setting , costume , and even the fact that it includes an ( almost ) whole Modern cast of characters become some of Agent Carter ’s great durability .
Agent Carter understood its limitation and work within them . It use practical sets , special special effect , and some incredibly brutal fight stage dancing to draw off fantastic stunt work . tally to that a compelling main character who was an absolute smokeshow and had interpersonal chemistry with any three characters on cover at any given time and you have television magic . The 2d season , I ’ll amply admit , was n’t as potent as the first , but it still kept up a satisfying compelling secret plan and more than that , I give care . I wanted to watch Peggy kick can and take name , and I did n’t care about what motion picture she might be in next .
With Secret Invasion , the strongest parts of the show fall from the operation . Ben Mendelsohn as Talos and Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth were exceptionally good in their roles , and Jackson ’s Fury occasionally had some rattling moments . But these minor parts were worth less than the sum total of the serial publication , which fail to hand over a cohesive , tense , or even interesting story . We — the audience — simply knew too much .
Agent Carter never hasten to give away Peggy ’s secrets . Everything was peeled back slow , give us more and more of the globe as we went along . It was pace . Part of this comes from the fact that the MCU was just littler seven years ago . Another part of this is that it had two season to fill , for a sum of 18 episode ; Secret Invasion run for only six episodes total . Part of this is because the series was never expected to make much of an impact on the movies , by virtue of the social occasion of Marvel television at the time and the fact that it was set in the other 1950s . Agent Carter was given a walled garden and it conduct reward of it . Secret Invasion , deplorably , was expected to slot into a larger MCU , fill in the gaps between films that are already out or are mostly done , and it suffer for that track . mayhap if Secret Invasion had been able-bodied to go off the MCU rails it would have gone somewhere interesting .
The problem with Secret Invasion , and really the problem that has chevvy all of the MCU television set series since WandaVision was released in 2021 , is that these shows are pieces of a puzzler . They are never allowed to show the full depiction . They are not allowed to be a complete story . There is no ending to any of these appearance , just more hooks for writers and theater director to pick up in another show — not even , of necessity , for the audience to pick up on .
Secret Invasion — and most of these other show — feel both meandering and pointless . There is some fun to be had in exploring new origin stories like She - Hulk and Ms. Marvel , but there ’s always the expectation that even if you start a unexampled lineament ’s journeying in a Marvel show it will eventually contribute into a Marvel film . It ’s a cycle of endless content that weakens every concept , that disfranchise writers and theater director , and that turns every ending into a XII question grade without a satisfactory resolution . orphic Invasion is , at long last , a stoppage gap .
The success of Agent Carter as a show is rooted in the fact that it was allow for to stand apart from the MCU but still borrow toy dog out of its sandbox . It ’s familiar , but not full of Easter eggs , jiffy to the audience , or flashbacks . It would not impact the movies and would have little to no effect on the sacred timeline . It had none of the thoughtfulness of present-day shows and was stronger for it . Secret Invasion had , on paper , everything going for it — gravid actors , a generous budget , tons of generator material — and it strike out . But the universe of discourse seems to have reached capacity , and the Disney+ television display , which could have been fun , data-based trysts in the Marvel garden , are run to be the part of the MCU that suffers most .
Agent Carter and Secret Invasion are both stream on Disney+ .
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