‘Secret Invasion’ Shocker: [SPOILER] Deserved Better—But Are They Really Gone?

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Marvel’s Secret Invasion, episode 1, “Resurrection.”]

It’s perhaps poetic—and shocking—that an episode titled “Resurrection” would end with a major character death.

At the end of Secret Invasion’s premiere, Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), a mainstay in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2012’s The Avengers, gets caught up in the panicked rush of the crowd as Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) enacts the first step in his explosive plan for Skrull domination. Maria turns from helping a survivor to locate her longtime friend and ally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) through the haze of smoky chaos. “Hill!” Fury shouts—and then he shoots her in the stomach.

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That was not, in fact, Fury. It was the villainous Gravik, utilizing his Skrull abilities to take Fury’s appearance. Unfortunately, the distinction doesn’t matter much for poor Maria. She bleeds out in surprisingly graphic fashion for the typically sterile MCU; the final shot of the episode is her body lying amidst the rubble in the decimated Russian square. As if inviting viewers to mourn, the first credit after the cut to black reads, “Special Guest Star Cobie Smulders.” And thus, Maria Hill takes her final bow. Probably. Disappointingly.

Of course, Maria’s hardly the only character to have died tragically in the ever-sprawling Marvel universe. That’s the thing about conflicts in these larger-than-life programs. They’re as real as their stakes to the characters within them, and taking such a major player off the board in Secret Invasion raises the stakes dramatically for Fury, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), and the rest of the good guys… just as Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) “death” did in The Avengers. Disappointment enters the picture when one considers the circumstances of Hill’s final moments, and how they fit into a larger, more troubling pattern within the MCU.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Were we to write a eulogy for Maria, we’re not entirely sure what we’d say—not because she wasn’t a meaningful character, but because for all her appearances and badassery in a fight, she was never afforded the chance to grow beyond the role of “Nick Fury’s Most Trusted Sidekick.” Secret Invasion seemed as if it might finally peel back some of her interlocking layers of duty and dedication to let viewers glimpse the person beneath. After more than a decade with the character, it was time. Instead, it cast her in her usual role—Fury’s best friend, Fury’s right hand, Fury’s no-nonsense, capable confidant. And then she died, much as she lived: in Fury’s shadow.

Given her tenure in the MCU, it’s difficult not to view her death as a waste. For an “original Avengers” character to go out in such quick, emotionless fashion is jaw-dropping. That’s not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Death doesn’t always arrive as an honorable last-minute sacrifice, or occur nobly with a set of moving final words. But Maria’s death feels like another entry on a list that includes, among others, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johnasson) and the original Gamora (Zoe Saldana). What do all of these women have in common? Obviously, they died… and mostly, they died to motivate the men around them.

Disney+/Marvel

It’s difficult to look at the circumstances of Maria’s death and not consider that she might’ve been “fridged,” a term which here refers to the killing of a female character in order to inspire transformative emotional anguish in her male counterparts. In short, it seems Maria died to convince Fury to “check [his] footing”—because, as she so prophetically predicted during their chess game earlier in the episode, someone was going to get hurt. And so, it’s tricky tightrope that Secret Invasion forced itself to walk; Fury needed motivation, sure, and a wake-up call about his own complacency. But was it worth Marvel falling back into a tired trope, especially with a relatively unexplored character who’d stuck around since the formation of the original Avengers?

Yes, this is comic-book television. Yes, Phil Coulson came back. So, yes, theoretically, Maria could too. She didn’t seem to be a Skrull, but any number of handwave-y, science-y explanations might pull her from the grave. There are always Life-Model Decoys, and parallel universes, and a magical place called T.A.H.I.T.I. But something about the gravitas with which Maria’s death was filmed feels final. There’s a cold solemnity to showing her bleeding body on the stone that doesn’t seem like a setup for a rug-pull. If she turns out to be alive, it’ll offer yet another chance for Marvel to turn her into a multidimensional human being and to explore the heart under her uniform. As it is, we, and plenty of fans, mourn Maria Hill—for who she was, and for who she never got to be.

Secret Invasion, Wednesdays, Disney+