Secret Invasion: Nick Fury Betrayed The Avengers Just As Badly As The Skrulls

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

The penultimate episode of "Secret Invasion" reveals that Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) isn't quite as in control as he'd like to be. In fact, some of his men outright try to kill him after growing disillusioned with his violent ways. Unfortunately, his adversary isn't playing particularly nicely, either. 

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has never been a saint. One of the key points of the show is that he betrayed the Skrulls by not being able to — or choosing not to — find them a new home planet. In "Harvest," we find out that he also pulled a fast one on the Avengers.

The titular project took place in the aftermath of the climactic battle in "Avengers: Endgame." Fury sent Gravik and a team of Skrulls to scour the battlefield for the heroes' (and, presumably, villains') DNA samples, which he then stored for reasons that are unrevealed, but unlikely to be entirely altruistic. Fury is a man of contingency plans, but this particular method of DNA collection directly contributed to giving Gravik his Super-Skrull idea. It also made Fury the embodiment of the government collecting people's DNA without consent, something that's been a human rights issue in countries like China for some time (via The New York Times) and would probably cause comment from the heroes if they knew. No wonder Fury is hesitant to call for backup.

"Secret Invasion" has hinted that Nick Fury is the show's true antagonist during its first half, but while it's becoming increasingly clear that he's mostly on the side of angels on this particular occasion, his track record is far from spotless. In fact, his "Harvest" DNA-collecting project is just the latest blemish in his résumé when it comes to being an extremely dirty player in the surveillance game.

Remember "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," where the then-SHIELD Director was championing Project Insight, a method to eliminate perceived threats preemptively? That's some "Minority Report" level stuff, right there. There's also the issue at the heart of "Secret Invasion," which is that he used Skrulls as his personal spies for decades while utterly failing to find them a new home as he promised. These are just the things we know, of course — there's no telling how many similar plots the man has hatched during his years in the game. 

The Blip may have changed Fury, but he still has more than enough red in his ledger. Now that it's clear that he's betrayed the Avengers with his DNA-harvesting trick, he's truly running out of friends ... especially if the Avengers ever actually hear about it.