Secret Invasion: Fury's Reason To Not Call The Avengers Only Helps The Skrulls

Contains spoilers for "Secret Invasion" Season 1, Episode 5 — "Harvest"

In "Secret Invasion" Episode 5, Nick Fury finally sheds some light on why he intends to go against Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) alone. He's previously claimed that bringing in his Avenger contacts would complicate things, which is a reasonable enough point when you're battling shapeshifters. Here, however, we discover that his main reason to keep superheroes out of play with this one is ... largely stubbornness, really, and willingness to prove that he still has what it takes. 

On his own fake grave in Finland, Fury makes a big speech about wanting to do things himself because he feels humanity can't rely on superheroes. He also heavily implies that he's still dealing with the trauma from turning to dust during the Blip, and is in dire need of a win after his array of failures. All of this is very noble, but there's one little problem: He's not trying to take down a local street gang. He's trying to prevent a situation that'll almost certainly lead to either the Skrulls taking over the earth or the world plunging into World War III, so the stakes are easily as high as they were in the first Avengers movie. Going at it alone in a situation like this makes just about as much sense as taking a slingshot to a gunfight, and no matter how highly Gravik thinks of his Super-Skrull powers, Fury makes the Skrull's job quite a bit easier by deciding to keep his superpowered allies away from the action. 

There are a few problems with Fury's insistence to operate without his superpowered friends. For one, he's absolutely not alone. He's already gone to Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Rhodey (Don Cheadle) for help before the former died and the latter turned out to be a Skrull. This breaks his rule from the get-go since Rhodey absolutely is a superhero. He's also been happy to operate with G'iah (Emilia Clarke) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), both of whom have what, by human standards, are absolutely superpowers. He also has zero problems seeking help from Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Colman), who has access to a vast intelligence network, as well as the superpower of being able to out-cool Nick Fury. What's an Avenger or two when you've already invited folks like that to your party?

Of course, there's also the phone call Fury takes at the end of the episode. It's left deliberately ambiguous whether Fury's calling Gravik or an ally, but the scene certainly presents the call as an important one — perhaps meaningful enough to introduce a new player in the mix. The season finale will show whether Fury has rethought his big plan. Right now, his "No Avengers" policy mostly makes it seem that he's really, really worried about them finding out that he's been stealing their DNA in the aftermath of the hardest battle they ever fought.