‘Secret Invasion’ Easter Eggs: 5 Things You May Have Missed in Episode 2

What Is Gravik’s Machine?

Episode 2 gives us a bunch of clues regarding Gravik’s plan. He’s infiltrated the Skrull council, which includes a number of high-ranking officials like the UK’s prime minister, and he’s working on a weapon of some sort that will make Skrulls “stronger.” Gravik’s righthand Skrull Pagon (Killian Scott) tells one of the scientists, Rosa Dalton, that the “harvest wasn’t there.” That means he’ll have to go back to “scavenging.” Pagon complains that Gravik has provided “multiple locations for harvest, all of them empty.” So, what is going on here?

Let’s start with those scientists. We find out later during Sonya Falsworth’s interrogation of a captive Skrull that Rosa and her husband are a married couple who are working on this machine. We know from the credits that the couple are Rosa (Katie Finneran) and Victor Dalton (Mark Bazeley). As far as I can tell, these two have no Marvel Comics counterparts, so you know as much as I do. I will say that, these two are likely Skrulls posing as human and not human collaborators. Why? Because when G’iah’s snooping through computer files, Rosa’s has “ACTIVE POD NUMBER: 019” on it, which may refer to those pods where the Skrulls keep the humans whose minds they are doubling.

As for all that lingo, “harvest” and “scavenging,” this also seems to be cleared up by G’iah’s snooping session. We see that there are genetic samples from four beings that have been harvested or scavenged from where we last saw them in the MCU.

Those are:

• Groot, whose DNA was most likely recovered in Wakanda from the battle in Avengers: Infinity War
• Cull Obsidian, Thanos’ big bruiser henchman; he lost a hand when a portal closed on it after a fight in Manhattan, also in Avengers: Infinity War
• A Frost Beast, likely the one that was last seen frolicking in London in the post-credits scene of Thor: The Dark World
• And Extremis, which isn’t a person but instead a nanotech serum that powered a bunch of henchpersons in Iron Man 3, and the Skrulls cold have acquired anywhere from Florida to Tennessee to California.

Based on all this, it seems very clear that Gravik is sending Skrulls out to acquire DNA samples from other aliens and enhanced humans. He’s likely doing this so he can make the Skrulls “stronger,” most likely by giving Skrulls additional powers and abilities. There’s even proof of this; in one of the trailers, you can see Gravik stretch out his arm Groot-style.

“Without you, this wouldn’t be possible”

While we’re talking about Gravik’s plan, I want to point out this odd moment in Episode 2. Upon returning to New Skrullos to a crowd of Skrulls cheering him on, Gravik looks directly at one Skrull — Kreega, played by Irmena Chichikova — and says, “Without you, this wouldn’t be possible.”

Now, it’s entirely likely that Gravik is just offering a platitude about how his success is the success of all Skrulls or whatever, but the moment feels almost too pointed to be generic. Then you have to think about who Kreega is in the comics and what we believe Gravik’s plan to be. In the comics, Kreega is the Super-Skrull of Marvel’s Mangaverse.

Of course, Secret Invasion does seem to be just pairing random Skrull names with random characters so far, so Kreega’s name isn’t itself a sign of things to come on the show. But when paired with Gravik’s plan, which seems to be to give Skrulls a host of new powers, and this pointed moment, maybe Kreega is destined to be the MCU’s first Super-Skrull — or at least this experiment’s first test subject?

Know Your Skrulls

Last week’s episode introduced us to most of the Skrull heavy-hitters, at least the ones with comic book counterparts. It’s hard to tell if the Skrull council have counterparts yet since we only know their human aliases and not their Skrull names. All that said, only one new Skrull was mentioned in this episode, and that’s Emperor Drogge.

While there’s no Emperor Drogge in the comics, there is a Skrull named Dro’ge — and he played a major part in Secret Invasion. In the comics, Dro’ge was the head priest of science and was responsible for figuring out how to graft superhuman abilities from DNA samples onto Warrior Super-Skrulls.

He essentially did what the Daltons are doing on the show. And instead of naming the unseen Skrull emperor that Talos mentions after any of the Skrull emperors from the comics (like Dorrek, Veranke, R’Klll, or S’Byll), they just went with a riff on Drogge. See what I mean about the names rarely corresponding with the comics?

Berners Tavern

In his capacity as a member of President Ritson’s administration, James “Rhodey” Rhodes calls for a one-on-one meeting with Nick Fury at Berners Tavern. There’s no comic lore here or anything, but just Rhodey so clearly saying “Berners Tavern” was enough to pique my interest. Sure enough, the real Berners Tavern in London was a Secret Invasion filming location. The restaurant is run by Chef Jason Atherton and located in the London EDITION five-star hotel.

Fury’s wife

The episode ends with a big reveal: Nick Fury is married! That’s about all we know about his marriage, though. All we see in Episode 2 is Fury enter a home and greet a character, played by Charlayne Woodard, with a kiss after putting on his wedding band. From promotional materials we know that Woodard is playing Priscilla Fury, and we know that she’s a Skrull. She may also have another name: Varra.

In the opening flashback to 1997, we see Varra bring Gravik to Fury’s group of refugees. While Woodard isn’t credited as playing Varra, it really sounds like they have the same voice. On top of that, the credits do not list Varra. Maybe that’s because Marvel Studios would want to keep the Priscilla/Varra connection secret.

And just to cover all the bases, Varra is the name of a minor Marvel Comics character who is a Skrull/Kree hybrid and a member of the Knights of the Infinite. Of course there’s no reason to think that any of those character traits will have a bearing on this story.

This isn’t the first time Fury’s wife has popped up in the MCU. She was mentioned in Captain America: The Winter Soldier during the scene in Steve Rogers’ apartment where Fury, injured after being chased by HYDRA sleeper agents, tells Steve, “My wife kicked me out.”

As far as the comics go, Nick Fury has never been married — as far as we know. The truth is, though, it’s more complicated than that. Just know that Priscilla Fury has no counterpart, at least not yet.