The Secret Invasion Trailer Gave Us A Glimpse At A Potential Phase 6 Villain
Contains spoilers for "Secret Invasion"
After months of anticipation, Marvel Studios' latest miniseries is ramping its way toward release. "Secret Invasion" will be a multipart Disney+ program that teams up Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his fellow Agents of SHIELD members against a group of Skrulls. During an intense battle sequence depicted by the show's second trailer, Kingsley Ben-Adir's Gravik, who heads a rebellious faction of the Skrull army, can be seen with one of his arms warping into a set of lashing vines. That superior ability to absorb powers and then supercharge them seems to mean that he's the infamous Fantastic Four enemy Super-Skrull.
Anyone who knows their Marvel history knows that Skrulls are incalculably dangerous beings. Aliens gifted with the ability to shape-shift into absolutely any being they wish to, they are also graced with the power to neatly mimic others. It's no wonder that, during "Secret Invasion," they're looking to invade Earth and manipulate world politics by posing as presidents and other world leaders. But Super-Skrull is a very specific subset of Skrull — a dangerous, specific foe and a formidable villain whose powerful ability to lay waste to his foes is legendary in the Marvel Comics world.
The Super-Skrull has a long Marvel Comics history behind him
According to the Marvel Comics website, K'lrt first arrives on Marvel's Earth-616 at the direction of Dorrek VII, a Skrull emperor seeking revenge on the Fantastic Four. The superteam prevented the Skrull's first attempted invasion of earth, and K'lrt appears to have the most promise among his fellow soldiers to teach the heroes what Dorrek VII hopes will be a painful lesson. K'lrt absorbs the team's superpowers and uses them against the entire group, sometimes simultaneously; an interstellar beam helps strengthen K'lrt's newfound abilities and causes him to easily defeat the team.
Reed Richards soon figures out about the Skull satellite powering K'lrt and seeks to knock it out of the sky. When they do so, K'lrt is temporarily depowered and then easily defeated by the team. A subsequent boost from the Skrull homeworld results in K'lrt assuming the identity of Sue and Johnny Storm's father, Doctor Franklin Storm. Confusion sets in as K'lrt, still posing as Storm, declares himself The Invincible Man and attacks the Fantastic Four. Reed realizes what happened to the real Franklin, but the situation does not end well for his future father-in-law.
Though he's gotten close over time, Super-Skrull has failed to top the Fantastic Four or any of the other Marvel heroes he's come up against, including the mighty Thor. Those repeated defeats have resulted in his shameful exile from his home planet. There's no word as to how much of Super-Skrull's Marvel Comics history will make it into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but with a "Fantastic Four" movie set to hit theaters in February 2025, one senses they'll have a hand in shaping his destiny.