With its second episode out and blowing minds, Secret Invasion continues to ignite the MCU fandom. Chronicling a shadowy game of espionage played between Nick Fury and a slew of Skrulls (good and bad) — this new Disney Plus series is unlike anything the MCU has ever done. No, really. I feel like I say that a lot, but in this case it’s kinda true.
Yet one aspect of the larger-that-life adventure continues to puzzle. What the heck is S.A.B.E.R? Alluded to constantly, S.A.B.E.R is mentioned quite a bit during the first episode, and is certainly shaping up to be one of the season’s biggest narrative pieces.
Thankfully, if it’s not fully explained by the end of Secret Invasion it definitely will be spelled out by The Marvels — another MCU mystery I’m out to solve. Moreover, if you don’t get enough of him during Secret Invasion, one familiar face has reappeared in epic fashion for the newest trailer for The Marvels. There might be more to this story than meets… The eye.
That’s right, Nicky Fury is back and better than ever. Again. Following Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) as they work together to thwart an intergalactic threat, The Marvels is a team-up set to change the landscape of the entire franchise. What else is new?
Actually, can I step in here with for a second? This has been a long time coming…
At this point it feels like every new Marvel project has the stakes turned up to 11, and that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes the fate of the world doesn’t need to be on the line. Maybe every once in a while we just want to see some superheroes save a city, rescue a few folks, and go home. That’s it, that’s all. Heck, I’d watch them save a cat if it meant that when the story was over I didn’t have to do quantum physics to figure out where the franchise was headed next.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand how things got this way in the first place — I’m looking at you Avengers: Endgame. Everything up until big bad Thanos had been pretty cut and dry, but one half the universe was wiped out, things got complicated. Once you’ve threatened life everywhere, blowing up a bomb or kidnapping a few people just doesn’t cut it. BUT it should.
Earth’s mightiest heroes can still be at there best when the outcome is minor, the risks are low, and everyone gets to go home on time for a change. Will Marvel pivot to those kinds of stories though? Probably not.
Thanks for letting me vent. Alright, it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled program.
What is the heck is S.A.B.E.R.?
Assembler of the Avengers and all around badass, Nick Fury hasn’t been a part of the larger Marvel mythos for quite some time now — onscreen, that is. What’s been happening behind the scenes is much more intersting.
Some folks may remember that Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury was a massive part of 2019’s Captain Marvel, but disappeared soon after during later events in the MCU’s timeline. Yet, it wasn’t without reason. In truth Fury left Earth to establish another organization in need of an acronym, and no, it isn’t S.W.O.R.D.
S.W.O.R.D., which stands for the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division, deals generally with any intergalactic threats the Earth might face — in the comics, that is — and is a direct parter to S.H.I.E.L.D., aka the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. S.H.I.E.L.D. handles everything happening down on Earth, and together S.H.I.E.L.D and S.W.O.R.D. protect our planet from all sorts of villainy.
Now, meet S.A.B.E.R. — although we have no clue yet what it stands for, S.A.B.E.R. is a creation entirely unique to the Marvel movies and has never appeared on the pages of a comic book. In The Marvels trailer, we get our fist glimpse of this new defense force, and judging from the space station on display it seems like S.A.B.E.R. is going to also be dealing with all things space.
It’s orbiting Earth. How could it not? As far as how Marvel is going to parse out the specific functions for each of these entities remains a mystery, but my guess is that S.H.I.E.L.D. will handle Earth, S.W.O.R.D. will handle anything from space that comes to Earth, and S.A.B.E.R. will be proactive in protecting the Earth from space in general. Confused? So am I.
Built as a joint effort between Fury and his Skrull collaborators, it like S.A.B.E.R. will be a massive point of character contention in Secret Invasion. With The Marvels on the way with November — we won’t have to wait long to finally get some answers out of Nick Fury and Carol Danvers, and that’s saying something.