Cobie Smulders teases Marvel thriller Secret Invasion at Comic-Con: 'This is a darker show'

Marvel brought a top-secret surprise to Comic-Con.

Cobie Smulders joined the massive Marvel panel in Hall H on Saturday to tease the studio's upcoming thriller Secret Invasion. Smulders and Samuel L. Jackson are headlining the cast of the Disney+ show, which follows ex-SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Maria Hill as they grapple with a worldwide invasion of Skrulls.

Kyle Bradstreet created the show based on the iconic comic storyline, which reveals that the shape-shifting Skrulls have secretly infiltrated powerful organizations around the globe. The starry cast also includes Ben Mendelsohn as the Skrull Talos (reprising his role from 2019's Captain Marvel), Kingsley Ben-Adir, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke.

"This is a darker show," Smulders said. "We're going to get deeper into the characters. We're going to see them in new ways, and it's going to be an exciting thriller, and you're never going to know who people are. Are they a Skrull? Are they a human? It's going to be a bit of a guessing game."

Smulders also introduced some footage from the show, which has yet to be released publicly. It featured Fury returning to Earth after a long time away: He's back, sans eyepatch, and we see his injured eye white and blind. We also see the return of MCU vets Don Cheadle and Martin Freeman, and Ben-Adir seems to be a villainous Skrull. The footage also included brief shots of Colman and Clarke.

The footage ended with Fury saying, "I'm the last person standing between them and what they really want."

The Skrulls have long been a villainous staple in Marvel Comics, but when they made their big-screen debut in Captain Marvel, it was in a more sympathetic role. When we last saw Jackson's Fury and Smulders' Hill in Spider-Man: Far From Home, a post-credits scene revealed that they had actually been replaced by Skrull, while the real Nick and Maria were relaxing elsewhere.

Secret Invasion is slated to debut in spring 2023 on Disney+.

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• Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman in talks to join Marvel's Secret Invasion series
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