With ‘Secret Invasion,’ Marvel Misses Yet Another Opportunity to Spotlight Queer Love in the MCU

Marvel wants you to know without a doubt that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is straight.

After spending two episodes in the intimate company of Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, Fury arrives home at the end of “Secret Invasion” Episode 2 to kiss a human woman (Charlayne Woodard, revealed moments earlier to be an alien Skrull). As a credit to both actors, it’s one of the more passionate kisses in the entire MCU — but feels more than a little like overcompensation for Fury’s crackling, outrageous chemistry with Talos (Ben Mendelsohn).

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“Secret Invasion” does a lot to fill in the gaps between its timeline and the inciting events of “Captain Marvel,” set more than 30 years earlier — including establishing that Fury and Talos have remained close and been working together to protect both humans and Skrulls. When they reunite on Earth in Episode 1, they put their foreheads together in a universally acknowledged gesture of intimacy that took this reporter’s breath away. When Talos convinces other Skrulls to seek refuge on Earth in a flashback, he gives them one reason, his voice heavy with emotion: “This man. This man who I trust.”

Beyond years of history and shorthand, Fury and Talos have that aforementioned formidable chemistry, a credit to Jackson and Mendelsohn as much as to their characters’ written rapport. Whether they’re strategizing, catching up, or debating whether Talos qualifies as a good-looking Skrull (!), these characters have palpable tension and the strongest jaded married couple energy since “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (another show that painstakingly depicted at least one character romantically interested in women, and unconvincingly).

There’s nothing wrong with Fury and Talos’ deep friendship, especially as it depicts platonic physical affection between men, but it’s yet another tired example of Marvel and Disney’s now-habitual queer baiting, queer coding, and failing to do the bare minimum to include anything but heteronormative characters and romances in their stories. It happened with Steve (Chris Evans) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Sam (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky, really anyone and Bucky, Carol (Brie Larson) and Maria (Lashana Lynch), even Kamala (Iman Vellani) and classmate Zoe (Laurel Marsden). Canonically queer characters such as Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and the nameless support group member played by Joe Russo in “Avengers: Endgame” are placed firmly in the periphery, sending the implicit message that queer love does not deserve the spotlight (even when the franchise’s straight romance is often lacking). Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) was the one major exception, in the franchise’s second-lowest reviewed film to date (just recently dethroned, and barely, by “Quantumania”), but the failures of “The Eternals” should not result in queer erasure for the MCU’s future.

Maybe no one at Marvel wanted to parse through the precedents of human and Skrull gender theory — even if Fury’s current relationship raises the same questions. Is a relationship canonically queer if it’s between different genders of different species? Can Skrulls only take the human form of their respective gender? Do Skrulls even ascribe to gender the way humans have historically? (That part seems hardest to believe, that shape-shifting aliens would be so restricted.) Why are the few explicitly queer characters aliens from other planets, members of supposedly more-accepting races that only further reinforce humanity’s shortcomings in this department?

The MCU is largely sexless, something fans like this one have bemoaned for years. Nothing livens up a spy thriller like a high-stakes love story, which “Secret Invasion” clearly knows with the introduction of Woodard’s character — but could have been even more personal with a character fans know and love. Deepening Fury and Talos’ relationship adds immense significance to the decades they’ve spent together, and to what Fury would and wouldn’t risk in an interplanetary war. As it stands, he’s still fighting with and for someone he cares about deeply. Episode 2 ends ambiguously regarding whether Fury even knows he’s married to a Skrull, so if that’s new information it could shake things up moving forward and affect his relationship with Talos and the broader Skrull community. Like the best MCU stories, “Secret Invasion” still has plenty of promise — which makes it all the more disappointing to see the possibility of a queer love story stamped down so early.

“Secret Invasion” is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes every Wednesday.

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