Disney Plus is really shaping up to be a site of success for Marvel this year; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 may be steering the theatrical train back on track, but now that we have release dates for the second season of the fan favorite Loki and wildcard in the making Echo, Marvel’s 2023 slate feels more real than ever.
Leading the charge is Secret Invasion, the Samuel L. Jackson-led spy thriller whose tonal shifts appear to be the most extreme we’ve ever gotten from an MCU project. Indeed, Marvel’s streaming content has never been afraid to get more adventurous than its cinematic counterparts (see WandaVision, Moon Knight, and Werewolf by Night), but everything we’ve seen from Secret Invasion so far has been oozing unprecedented political grit.
And that’s no mistake; at the Disney annual upfront presentation that took place the other day, Marvel Studios’ very own One-Above-All Kevin Feige described the series as a “twisting political thriller,” per Variety.
It’s no big surprise, considering most anyone with a nose for genre could sniff out the direction that Secret Invasion is taking in terms of presentation, but to hear the boss of Marvel Studios use the words “political thriller” to describe a show we already knew was going to be braver than most other MCU content feels like a weighty acknowledgement all the same.
Now if only that same acknowledgement had been given to the ongoing writers’ strike; the upfront presentation’s overall focus on live events and reality television was telling, but we would’ve preferred a bit more backbone there.
Secret Invasion is due on Disney Plus on June 21.