Marvel needs you to know undoubtedly that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is straight.
After spending two episodes within the intimate firm of Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, Fury arrives house on the finish of “Secret Invasion” Episode 2 to kiss a human girl (Charlayne Woodard, revealed moments earlier to be an alien Skrull). As a credit score to each actors, it’s one of many extra passionate kisses in the complete MCU — however feels greater than slightly like overcompensation for Fury’s crackling, outrageous chemistry with Talos (Ben Mendelsohn).
“Secret Invasion” does so much to fill within the gaps between its timeline and the inciting occasions of “Captain Marvel,” set greater than 30 years earlier — together with establishing that Fury and Talos have remained shut and been working collectively to guard each people and Skrulls. Once they reunite on Earth in Episode 1, they put their foreheads collectively in a universally acknowledged gesture of intimacy that took this reporter’s breath away. When Talos convinces different Skrulls to hunt refuge on Earth in a flashback, he offers them one motive, his voice heavy with emotion: “This man. This man who I belief.”
Past years of historical past and shorthand, Fury and Talos have that aforementioned formidable chemistry, a credit score to Jackson and Mendelsohn as a lot as to their characters’ written rapport. Whether or not they’re strategizing, catching up, or debating whether or not Talos qualifies as a handsome Skrull (!), these characters have palpable rigidity and the strongest jaded married couple vitality since “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (one other present that painstakingly depicted no less than one character romantically concerned about ladies, and unconvincingly).
There’s nothing improper with Fury and Talos’ deep friendship, particularly because it depicts platonic bodily affection between males, however it’s yet one more drained instance of Marvel and Disney’s now-habitual queer baiting, queer coding, and failing to do the bare minimum to incorporate something however heteronormative characters and romances of their tales. It occurred with Steve (Chris Evans) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Sam (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky, actually anybody and Bucky, Carol (Brie Larson) and Maria (Lashana Lynch), even Kamala (Iman Vellani) and classmate Zoe (Laurel Marsden). Canonically queer characters resembling Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and the anonymous assist group member performed by Joe Russo in “Avengers: Endgame” are positioned firmly within the periphery, sending the implicit message that queer love doesn’t deserve the highlight (even when the franchise’s straight romance is often lacking). Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) was the one main exception, within the franchise’s second-lowest reviewed movie so far (only in the near past dethroned, and barely, by “Quantumania”), however the failures of “The Eternals” mustn’t end in queer erasure for the MCU’s future.
Possibly nobody at Marvel wished to parse by the precedents of human and Skrull gender concept — even when Fury’s present relationship raises the identical questions. Is a relationship canonically queer if it’s between completely different genders of various species? Can Skrulls solely take the human type of their respective gender? Do Skrulls even ascribe to gender the best way people have traditionally? (That half appears hardest to imagine, that shape-shifting aliens can be so restricted.) Why are the few explicitly queer characters aliens from different planets, members of supposedly more-accepting races that solely additional reinforce humanity’s shortcomings on this division?
The MCU is essentially sexless, one thing followers like this one have bemoaned for years. Nothing livens up a spy thriller like a high-stakes love story, which “Secret Invasion” clearly is aware of with the introduction of Woodard’s character — however might have been much more private with a personality followers know and love. Deepening Fury and Talos’ relationship provides immense significance to the many years they’ve spent collectively, and to what Fury would and wouldn’t threat in an interplanetary conflict. Because it stands, he’s nonetheless preventing with and for somebody he cares about deeply. Episode 2 ends ambiguously relating to whether or not Fury even is aware of he’s married to a Skrull, so if that’s new info it might shake issues up transferring ahead and have an effect on his relationship with Talos and the broader Skrull neighborhood. Like one of the best MCU tales, “Secret Invasion” nonetheless has loads of promise — which makes it all of the extra disappointing to see the potential for a queer love story stamped down so early.
“Secret Invasion” is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes each Wednesday.
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