Marvel's Secret Invasion on Disney Plus sounds like it'll be a big deal

Secret Invasion Disney Plus
(Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Marvel's Secret Invasion TV show sounds like it's going to be a massive deal, based on the latest casting news doing the rounds for the series. Actress Olivia Colman, who won an Oscar for The Favourite, is reportedly in talks to join the show, which stars actors Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as the Skrull Talos. 

This comes from THR, which has no further details on who Colman could be playing – Marvel didn't comment on the report. THR has a strong track record with these kinds of stories. 

Kingsley Ben-Adir from One Night in Miami is reportedly in line to play the show's main villain, which was revealed last month.

Secret Invasion is about a sect of Skrulls who have infiltrated every part of life on Earth – it's based on a popular comic book crossover, which revealed that a main member of the Avengers had actually been replaced by an undercover Skrull posing in their place. The opportunity for similar revelations in the MCU is exciting, if creatively a little risky.

It's unclear when the show will release, but since filming hasn't started yet, we'd expect to see it in 2022 at the earliest. The show will be a Disney Plus exclusive, and Mr Robot's Kyle Bradstreet is the show's head writer.

A movie-level event on the small screen

Secret Invasion was a massive-scale crossover in the comics that drew in many Marvel characters – indeed, Marvel's Kevin Feige compared it to the Civil War storyline when announcing the show back in December 2020. That's how far-reaching it goes.

It's unclear how big Marvel's ambitions will be for this show, but as we've seen from WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it's willing to pull out all the stops to make its TV shows feel movie-sized. It could be that Secret Invasion is the biggest moment of the MCU's Phase 4 – it just happens to take place on the small screen, rather than in theaters.

That could be a sign of how important TV is going to be to the MCU's future.

Samuel Roberts

Samuel is a PR Manager at game developer Frontier. Formerly TechRadar's Senior Entertainment Editor, he's an expert in Marvel, Star Wars, Netflix shows and general streaming stuff. Before his stint at TechRadar, he spent six years at PC Gamer. Samuel is also the co-host of the popular Back Page podcast, in which he details the trials and tribulations of being a games magazine editor – and attempts to justify his impulsive eBay games buying binges.