Secret Invasion “Beloved” Review: Great dialogue battles stunning lack of urgency

Samuel L. Jackson continues to shine in Beloved and the dialogue is top-notch. However the abbreviated runtime and failure to move the story forward until the final few minutes zaps life from the episode.

Nick Fury discovers his wife and James Rhodes are working together to take him out. The bulk of the episode revolves around Fury talking to these two characters. Meanwhile, G’iah’s fate is revealed in a quick scene at the beginning of the episode. After a conversation with her father, Talos, she vanishes from the episode.

The fate of the world is supposedly at stake, yet there’s no sense of urgency until the final few moments of the episode. Even the conversations as poetic as they’re, don’t really dive beneath the surface. In Beloved, Fury addresses his wife’s betrayal. However, the scene doesn’t delve into when she started conspiring against Fury.

Beloved‘s saving grace is the final action setpiece. The siege on President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney) is fantastic and full of tension. I had a problem with one character’s demise coming soon after G’iah’s fake death.

Secret Invasion needs to generate story momentum in the final two episodes. If not, Secret Invasion will be another Disney Plus MCU show with a strong beginning and a weak ending.

With the overview out of the way, let’s dive deeper into Beloved. There may be some spoilers. Secret Invasion is streaming on Disney Plus.

Questioning your Beloved

Beloved features another flashback sequence. Secret Invasion goes back to 2012 after the Avengers defeated Loki. Fury meets his wife at a bar, where Varra shares her favorite poetry. It’s a sweet scene that gives room for Jackson and Charlayne Woodard to shine.

Beloved returns to the present. Fury overhears Varra meeting with Rhodes who orders her to take out Fury. Varra returns to the house where Fury is waiting. Fury doesn’t beat around the bush and addresses her betrayal upfront.

Fury asks Varra to explain how she took on Priscilla Davis’s identity. She took it under three conditions. One of those conditions included not hurting Fury. After a moment of reflection, both raise their pistols, shoot and hit nothing. Varra asks if Fury could have accepted her in her Skrull form. Before leaving the house, Fury says I guess we’ll never know.

Woodard and Jackson are excellent in this scene. Brian Tucker‘s dialogue is on point as well. Unfortunately, the scene doesn’t really explore anything below the surface. When did Varra begin betraying Fury? Her deal with the real Priscilla seems to indicate she only started working with fake Rhodes sometime after.

G’iah’s Resurrection

Beloved begins with G’iah rapidly healing from the gunshot wound. A quick flashback shows G’iah putting herself through the Super Skrull experiment.

She quickly meets with her father, Talos. He shares a rather foolish plan with her. After they foil Gravik’s mission, Talos and Fury will request amnesty for the Skrulls. G’iah wisely thinks the plan is idiotic and leaves. G’iah doesn’t appear again in the episode.

Emilia Clarke and Ben Mendelsohn are great in this one scene. Clarke shines at showing G’iah’s desperation. G’iah wants to believe in her father’s plan, but just can’t trust the plan. Fury and Talos’s plan is ridiculously dumb. Even if they stop Gravik, Fury and Talos kept the identity of the Skrulls away from intelligence officials. There’s no way they’re going to let a race of being who can change their appearance off the leash. This is the same universe that subjected The Avengers to the Sokovia Accords in Civil War.

Gravik’s ambush

After leaving his wife, Fury pays fake Rhodes another visit. On the surface, Fury is trying to appeal to Rhodes. In reality, he uses a bottle of Pappy laced with a tracker to trace Rhodes and President Ritson. Don Cheadle hamming it up in this different take on Rhodes is a ton of fun.

Gravik ambushes the president’s caravan. Fury and Talos fight back. The president is alive but unconscious after the vehicle is overturned. Talos is wounded trying to save the president. A soldier appears to give Talos a hand. The soldier suddenly turns into Gravik and kills Talos right in front of Fury.

Talos’s death makes G’iah’s fake death at the end of the last episode even more of a mistake. It feels too much like a repeat. The idea clearly seems to be to remove Talos so G’iah can move to the forefront. If that’s the case, there needed to be more scenes between G’iah and Talos.

On the positive front, the action itself is well done. Although Gravik’s plan doesn’t seem more inspired than Fury and Talos’s.

Beloved final thoughts

Overall, Secret Invasion appears to be losing steam. The performances and good dialogue are keeping the series afloat. However, the lack of meaningful story development is ridding the series of momentum.

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