Alien Nation, FINAL

In thinking about last night's finale for Secret Invasion, I find myself reminded of Oscar Wilde's story "The Sphinx Without a Secret". It's about a mysterious woman who is observed visiting a house in secret only for it to turn out that her actions were done entirely to excite intrigue, that she in fact lacked any curious mystery in her life. At the bottom of Secret Invasion, likewise, there is nothing. The ruse doesn't seem to have worked so well as it did for Wilde's character.

There was a more or less decent fight scene between Gravik and G'iah of the variety She-Hulk recently told us we're not interested in seeing. G'iah and Gravik now channel all kinds of powers, mostly from the Guardians of the Galaxy, as evidenced by G'iah's unintentionally hilarious baby Drax arm.

I was reminded of an episode of Angel I watched recently in which Cordelia asked her hunky new alien boyfriend if his power, like Samson, was in his hair and the dumb lug innocently replied, "My power is in my muscles!" I guess dinky little Emilia Clarke is packing some, too, sort of.

Daenerys could crack a smile now and then, she could look angry. Clarke has chosen to play G'iah as someone who lacks personality, in seemingly inverse proportion to her newly acquired powers. It's hard to get excited for her. Grace Randolph argued that it should have been Talos who got the powers. Sure that would've been more satisfying.

Finally Fury, or G'iah in Fury's form, says no planet could be found for the Skrulls. Since this was the question on everyone's mind from the beginning, some attempt to answer it earlier would've been nice. I guess, since it doesn't make any sense, what with a whole universe of planets out there, the writers felt it best to let audiences fill in the blank.

Similarly, Varra wants to use her own name and shape, implying that Fury wouldn't tolerate them before, yet he accepts both right away, which makes sense since we'd had no indication before that he wouldn't. To paraphrase Tom Servo, "Ladies and gentlemen, we provide the scene, you provide the motivation."

And so another obscenely expensive Disney+ series slips quietly into the void. By the way, if you liked this premise, you might want to check out Rockne S. O'Bannon's Alien Nation.

Secret Invasion is available on Disney+.