Bombs, aliens and Samuel L Jackson: the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s return to the small screen was an intriguing, darker affair – featuring a brilliant performance from Olivia Colman
This recap contains spoilers for episode one of Secret Invasion. Do not read on unless you have seen it
Farewell Cobie Smulders. The Canadian actor had played Maria Hill since 2012, appearing in all four Avengers films, as well as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spider-Man: Far From Home and in the TV series Agents of SHIELD Despite Hill never being given a storyline worthy of Smulders’ talents, I wasn’t expecting her to bow out like this.
Who was Sonya Falsworth talking to in that intercepted meeting? Surely not … Agent Prescod? That would mean Falsworth was talking to a Skrull impostor.
At least three sugars in that tiny cup of tea, Gravik? What are you, a lazy caricature of a builder?
I always enjoy hearing non-standard accents in the MCU, following on from Erin Kellyman’s Nottingham twang in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Gravik sounds to my ear like a man from Pontypridd, while Killian Scott as Pagon appears to be talking in his native Limerick brogue. It’s about time we got away from generics.
Getting the Avengers on a midlife crisis shopping spree certainly beats a sports car, hair implants or a fancy watch.
A shame Richard Dormer won’t be sticking around as Agent Prescod. I would watch him in anything – that voice! Those wild eyes! He was terrific in Blue Lights, wonderful as Game of Thrones’s Ser Beric Dondarrion and, best of all, as Terri Hooley, the owner of a Belfast record shop during the Troubles in the shamefully underrated Good Vibrations. (You may have seen Hooley as a talking head in the brilliant BBC documentary series Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland.)
You may also recognise Kingsley Ben-Adir from his time in ITV’s Vera, as a private eye in the second season of The OA or as the doomed Col Ben Younger in Peaky Blinders’ fourth and fifth seasons. He’s been busy – playing a version of Ken in the forthcoming Barbie film and starring in a Bob Marley biopic due for release next year.
What’s the little girl with the brightly coloured ball got to do with it?
