Overview
The Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely never end, and Disney shows no signs of wanting it to — but if it ever does, every Marvel character you can think of will get their own Disney+ series first. Already, plenty have; see: WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms Marvel and She-Hulk. The next one to join them: Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury, aka the Director of SHIELD and creator of the Avengers Initiative who acted as the connective tissue between most of the MCU's early instalments. (If Jackson didn't show up in a Marvel movie back then, was it really a Marvel movie?)
Fifteen years after first appearing in the post-credits scene of the original Iron Man, the film that started it all, Fury will placed front and centre in Secret Invasion — a show that was announced back in 2020, but won't hit streaming until autumn 2023 Down Under. As seen in the just-dropped first trailer for the six-episode series, a war is looming with the shapeshifting Skrulls, and Fury can't keep ignoring the pleas from Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders, How I Met Your Mother) for help.
Plenty of other familiar faces pop up, too: Australia's own Ben Mendelsohn (Cyrano) returning as Talos after Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home, Don Cheadle (The Wonder Years) as War Machine and Martin Freeman (Breeders) as the CIA's Everett Ross. Will their characters really show up? Or will we really be seeing Skrull impersonators? Obviously, that'll only be answered when Secret Invasion arrives.
Because every actor ever has to fit into the MCU at some point, the above cast is joined by a few other huge names as well: Olivia Colman (Mothering Sunday), Emilia Clarke (Last Christmas) and Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami).
The story clearly ties into Captain Marvel, which is proving a launching pad for more than a few recent and upcoming MCU chapters, such as streaming's Ms Marvel and big-screen release The Marvels — which teams up Captain Marvel (Brie Larson, Just Mercy), Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) and WandaVision's Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, Candyman), and also arrives in 2023.
Fury, and therefore Jackson, did appear in two episodes of the Agents of SHIELD TV show in 2013 and 2014, so this won't be the character's first small-screen outing.
Behind the scenes, Kyle Bradstreet (Mr Robot) created Secret Invasion, and writes and executive produces.
Check out the trailer for Secret Invasion below:
Secret Invasion will stream via Disney+ in autumn 2023 — we'll update you with an exact release date when one is announced.
Images: Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.