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Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is one of the longest-running characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having first appeared in the franchise’s first film, Iron Man, way back in 2008. But it’s only now that the franchise is really looking to explore what makes the character tick by giving him his own television mini-series. Secret Invasion will be the first entry in the franchise in which Jackson takes on a lead role but despite this his previous appearances have still done plenty of work with the character that should be remembered before viewers jump into the new show.
Released in 2019, Captain Marvel is still a relatively recent entry in the MCU, but it features what is actually Nick’s first appearance in the franchise’s chronology, as the film takes place in the 1990s. In the film Nick is a regular agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., not the director of the organization as he would later become. He is the first agent to encounter future Captain Marvel Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) when she arrives on Earth, believing herself to be a soldier of the alien Kree empire named Vers. Although Nick and S.H.I.E.L.D. initially believe Carol to be a possible threat, after discovering the existence of the Skrulls, the Kree’s shape-shifting enemies, Nick forms an alliance with her and the pair investigate why a group of Skrulls has come to Earth, learning about Carol’s own Earth-bound origins along the way.
Nick Fury and the Skrulls
Eventually, they discover that Carol was actually a human Air Force pilot until exposure to the Infinity Stone known as the Tesseract gave her superpowers but erased her memory. Kree warrior Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) took her in, so the empire could use her powers for their own purposes. Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) met with Nick and Carol to broker a truce. He explained that his people were not the terrorists the Kree pretended they were but were instead refugees searching for a new home planet.
A Kree defector named Mar-Vell (Annette Bening), who disguised herself as Carol’s Air Force mentor Wendy Lawson, was attempting to help them find one when she was killed by Yon-Rogg. Nick and Carol help Talos find Mar-Vell’s outer space laboratory, where he is reunited with his family, and after defeating Yon-Rogg and his team, Starforce, in battle, pledge to help the Skrulls find a new planet. However, by the present day, they have yet to do so, setting up the events of Secret Invasion, in which a group of Skrulls will turn to violence to achieve their goals.
Fury’s Paranoia
Pitting Nick against an invasion by a race of shape-shifters is a perfect way to explore his core character flaws, those being his paranoia and inability to trust, which have been displayed multiple times throughout his appearances in the MCU. While serving as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s director in The Avengers he followed the orders of the World Security Council and worked to create “Phase 2”, an assortment of advanced weapons created by researching the Tesseract, even though this meant following the research of Hydra, the Nazi science division Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) fought against in World War II. When Steve and the other Avengers angrily confronted him about this Nick attempted to justify his actions, saying that Thor Odinson’s (Chris Hemsworth) battle with the Destroyer in the first Thor movie, which brought widespread destruction to the town it took place in, showed that human security forces were “hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned,” against the plethora of superhuman threats that were arising.
Despite this, he remained adamant that his preferred method for dealing with these threats was the formation of the Avengers team, and he stood against the Security Council when they ordered a nuclear strike on the island of Manhattan to contain Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) alien invasion. Nick shot down the plane he believed was carrying the nuclear weapon, though this turned out to be a decoy, leaving the real plane to be dealt with by Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). At the end of the film, Nick allowed Thor to take the Tesseract to Asgard for safekeeping, implying that he had abandoned the Phase 2 plans, leading to tension with the Council.
But Nick and the Council, unfortunately, got back on the same page by the time of his next appearance in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In that film, S.H.I.E.L.D. was developing Project Insight, a fleet of three heavily-armed Helicarriers designed to preemptively target and eliminate terrorists and other possible criminals. A satisfied Nick described to Steve how the program meant “we’re going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen,” which Steve felt went against American values. Insight is the greatest example of the harmful potential of Nick’s paranoid tactics.
Later in the film he, Steve, and the group discover that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated and manipulated by Hydra for decades and that their leader, Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), planned to use Insight to wipe out any potential threats to his organization and take over the world. However, even after this, Nick remained insistent on using a strategy that would salvage as much of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s infrastructure as possible. It was only after he saw that all of his allies sided with Steve in arguing that the entire organization had to be dismantled to eliminate the Hydra contamination that he agreed.
The Winter Soldier also showed the damaging effects Nick’s tactics have on his interpersonal relationships. After discovering the first evidence of the Hydra conspiracy Nick was targeted for assassination, with the brainwashed Buck Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) nearly succeeding in killing him. After Bucky’s second attempt on his life, Nick staged his own death to allow himself to go underground, not even informing close associates like Steve or Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) that he was alive until much later. Natasha, who was particularly close to Nick, was deeply hurt by this, as shown in more detail in a deleted scene from the film.
Secret Invasion may very well further damage Nick’s personal relationships. The trailers and other promotional materials already emphasize the tension between him and his long-time right-hand Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), due to the fact that Nick has been off-planet for years before the series, as highlighted in Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home. The fact that the series could reveal that Hill or other allies of Nick’s like James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle) are actually hostile Skrull impostors means that Nick’s trust issues may be about to become a whole lot worse.
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