Secret Invasion Episode 4 is Full of Highs and Lows

The latest episode of the MCU series is an encapsulation of the show at its best and at its worst, as it continues to struggle to find cohesion.

With its fourth episode, "Beloved," Marvel's Secret Invasion finds its most firm footing yet, with a narrative that feels purposeful and motivated. However, the precarious structure it has built in prior episodes isn't sturdy enough to support the weight of Secret Invasion's ambition.

Strangely enough, this is far from the first time a Marvel Studios TV series has encountered this same problem. Other Disney+ MCU series, such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Moon Knight, had structures that were more reminiscent of a three-act movie rather than a television series. This inevitably led to the works feeling stretched thin, meandering, and needlessly convoluted. This approach also meant that the central characters were kept in total stasis.

In a movie, if Iron Man doesn't experience character growth until the end of the second act, that's fine because it's a two-hour movie designed to be consumed in a single sitting. But in a television series, if Iron Man were to go four full episodes in total stasis and then suddenly experience the totality of his character's development in one episode, it would be jarring and unsatisfying. To keep the characters in essentially emotional hibernation for multiple episodes at a time, only to bring things screeching to a halt to deliver all of their development in a single episode, is bewildering. What should be a gradual change, allowing the audience to experience the character's development alongside them, is instead performed as quickly as flipping a switch.

The prior episodes of Secret Invasion have shied so far away from divulging meaningful character motivation or furthering the development of the characters in the series, so "Beloved" has to bring everything to a stand-still to catch all of the in-universe characters up to speed, intellectually and emotionally, before the next big thing happens. This results in an episode whose structural editing consists almost entirely of back-to-back-to-back conversations between various characters before its closing action setpiece.

Structurally and narratively, this is a problem. Having said that, those five conversations that make up the majority of "Beloved" are five of the best scenes of the series. Brian Tucker's writing is invested in actually exploring the characters, Ali Selim's direction feels more fully formed and confident, and above all, the performances feel more intimate, highlighting each actor's strengths. Don Cheadle, Emilia Clarke, and Ben Mendelsohn all deliver standout work in these scenes, but Samuel L. Jackson delightfully walks away with the episode. His performance here feels alive and engaged with the work in a way that he rarely gets the chance to be as Nick Fury.

So while it serves to only further underscore larger issues with Secret Invasion as a whole, the quieter pace and tone of this episode is a welcome reprieve in which the creative team finally seems to find its footing. Unfortunately, the episode-ending action setpiece is more than content to throw all of that out the window in favor of cheap thrills.

Secret Invasion has struggled with editing, especially in its action scenes, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Episode 4's finale. The gargantuan sequence features dozens of actors and extras, high-octane practical effects, and extensive digital effects, and is easily the most expensive setpiece of Secret Invasion thus far. Sadly, it is also its most incoherent. The entire sequence's tension revolves around the President's upended car and seeing which of the warring sides will reach it first. Here, the President is the MacGuffin of the scene, crucial to any and all further story developments.

But the sequence does very little to establish any sense of geography and does an even worse job of maintaining any sense of direction. The battle takes place in a nebulous space, where the audience is never clear who is close to what, and the result is a distinctly muddled scene. As the edit loses track of key characters altogether in the midst of the sequence, it grows increasingly frustrating.

Secret Invasion takes the time to meaningfully and purposefully carve out motivations and emotional stakes for its characters, capitalizing on mounting tension by building to a big climactic action sequence. But the action proceeds to fumble all of that goodwill by losing all the hard-earned craftsmanship that had been defined earlier in the episode. So while "Beloved" is undoubtedly Secret Invasion's strongest episode yet, it's also quite flummoxing. Instead of being the moment that the series finally comes into its own, it's just another missed opportunity.

New episodes of Secret Invasion stream every Wednesday on Disney+.