The Worst Things Nick Fury Has Done In The MCU
Hey, nobody's perfect, not even an Avenger. Which is why most of the heroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (aka the MCU), it's hard to deny, have done things far from heroic at some point in their lives.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) sold weapons that have killed and maimed; Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) killed William Lopez (Zahn McClarnon), driving the man's daughter Maya (Alaqua Cox) to a life of revenge. When it comes to the worst things Black Widow has done, where could you even begin? Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) has plenty of red in her ledger.
You'd think Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) would be off the hook, since he is typically running things behind the scenes rather than out there punching people, but this is far from the truth. Ever since he was a low-ranking agent at SHIELD, Fury has been making some seriously questionable decisions. He has lied to his teammates, taken advantage of his allies, and abandoned his wife. In fact, what he did in "Secret Invasion" alone almost doubled the list of shameful things viewers have witnessed. Below, a compilation of Fury's not-so-greatest hits.
Trying to weaponize the Tesseract
Halfway through "The Avengers," the team discovers Nick Fury has a secret. It turns out that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his army of Chitauri didn't just stumble upon the planet and decide to invade it. They were drawn to it because Fury was meddling with an Infinity Stone. Specifically, he was running experiments on the Tesseract, hoping to develop it into a weapon of mass destruction. Fury claims he did this to save Earth, since The Destroyer's attack in New Mexico convinced him Earth needed to up its weapons game or it would be flattened by the next hostile Asgardian. Still, Fury never considered the far-reaching consequences of his actions.
Ironically, it's Fury's arms-assembling that makes the planet vulnerable to an extraterrestrial threat. As Thor (Chris Hemsworth) explains, most other alien species would have dismissed humanity as harmless, a fledgling species just starting to dip its toes into space travel. But once outside forces (such as Loki) detected the presence of the Tesseract, it sent a clear message: Earth was ready to play with the big boys.
As a result of Fury's actions, the Tesseract gives Loki a window to come straight to Earth, where he makes quick work of Fury's weapons facility and launches his plan for world domination. This is the first of many times that Fury's urge to take preemptive action against possible foes would come back to bite him.
Manipulating the Avengers
The death of Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) leaves the Avengers dejected, not to mention furious at Fury for getting them into the whole mess. Nick Fury decides to give them a pep talk, which would ordinarily be a good thing, if he wasn't also taking advantage of Coulson's death to motivate the Avengers and get back in their good graces.
For starters, Fury tries to sweep his possible culpability under the rug. He concedes that yes, he tried to turn the Tesseract into a weapon, but more importantly, he was banking on another secret weapon: the Avengers. An inspiring speech ensues, with Fury invoking Coulson's name and tugging on the Avengers' heartstrings. The clincher is when Fury plunks down the trading cards that belonged to Coulson, still covered with blood. However, Coulson did not clutch these cards as he lay dying, as Fury would like the Avengers to believe. Fury simply stole the cards from Coulson's locker and then smeared Coulson's blood on them to hammer home the man's martyr status, knowing it would spur the Avengers into action.
This trick he plays on the team is a small sin, but it reveals the lack of faith Fury has in his assembled super team. Fury could have simply trusted them to defend the planet without being asked. After all, they're clearly mourning Coulson, even without Fury rubbing his death in their faces. Of course, trust isn't exactly Fury's strongest suit. He wants to leave nothing up to chance, even if that means emotionally manipulating the team.
Using Steve Rogers as a pawn
After wringing tears from the eyes of the Avengers with a trading card, Nick Fury takes the manipulation one step further in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."
In the opening sequence, Fury sends Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) on a mission. Ostensibly, Steve's job is to rescue hostages aboard the Lemurian Star. Yet, Steve later discovers the true reason for the mission: to save a copy of SHIELD intelligence before pirates can get their hands on it. Fury gives a whole separate set of instructions to Natasha Romanoff, who completes her objective right under Steve's nose. Sure, Fury didn't want any of the hostages to get hurt; that's why he assigned Steve to the job. Still, keeping the hostages safe was merely a bonus, secondary to Fury's real objective.
To be fair, it makes sense for Fury to only share such sensitive information on a need-to-know basis. Given that Natasha was retrieving plans for Project Insight, keeping it under wraps would protect Steve and prevent this dangerous information from falling into the wrong hands. Nevertheless, lying to Steve was pretty low, especially since he probably would have been willing to save both the hostages and the data if he knew the world was at stake. This moment dealt a blow to Steve's trust in both Fury and Natasha, which only made it harder for them to work together when it came time to stop HYDRA.
Building a fleet of Helicarriers
It seems Nick Fury didn't learn his lesson after messing with the Tesseract. He makes the same mistake all over again in "Winter Soldier."
Deciding that one Helicarrier isn't enough, Fury decides to build three, each equipped with long-range rifles and an extremely precise satellite targeting system. This operation, called Project Insight, is intended to take preemptive action against any possible threat to world security. So eager is Fury to save the world that he is willing to jump the gun and kill potential terrorists before they even commit a crime. In that respect, Fury's views aren't too removed from those of Ammit the Devourer (Saba Mubarak) from "Moon Knight" — who is, as you may recall, a villain. Fury even gives Steve Rogers a thinly-veiled threat to "get with the program."
Nick Fury wants to protect SHIELD from outside attacks, not realizing that the biggest threat to SHIELD has already infiltrated its ranks. As it turns out, HYDRA was already deeply embedded inside SHIELD, so they quickly hijack Project Insight, reminding Fury that a weapon of mass destruction is still a weapon of mass destruction no matter whose finger is on the trigger. Once again, Fury's own weapon is used against him. Fury practically handed the Helicarriers to HYDRA, all because he didn't want to admit that some weapons don't even belong in the hands of the good guys.
Selling out Carol Danvers
Nick Fury was lying and double-crossing long before he was director of SHIELD. In "Captain Marvel," set more than a decade before the events of the other films, Fury is depicted as discovering Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and bringing her to SHIELD.
Fury uses his pager to summon help, but when Carol asks what he's doing, Fury lies and says he is simply messaging his mom. In reality, he is letting his pals at SHIELD know that he's found a super-powered individual, whom he refers to as "the target." What Fury doesn't consider is that his buddy Coulson isn't the only one to receive the message; it also goes straight to Agent Keller, who is actually the Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in disguise. (This was when Fury and Talos were still enemies, of course.) Soon Talos is hot on Fury's tail, using all the resources of SHIELD to stop him.
To be fair, Fury couldn't be sure he could trust Carol, and he definitely couldn't have known that a shape-shifting alien was posing as a SHIELD agent. Still, it wasn't very sporting of him to summon his colleagues behind Carol's back, especially since Fury doesn't seem particularly sorry about it. When Carol would later call him out on it, his reply is a simple "My bad!" He does, at least, let Carol confiscate his communicator, lest he get tempted to sell her out again.
Breaking his promise to the Skrulls
Back in 1997, Nick Fury spoke to a group of Skrull refugees, including a young Gravik (Lucas Persaud), who was orphaned and traumatized at a very young age. Fury promised to find them a new planet in exchange for their service. He declared that he had every confidence that "humans and Skrulls can help each other," though clearly he was more concerned with how Skrulls could help humans. He asked the Skrulls to assimilate amongst humans, spending most of their lives wearing human faces, which was a pretty heartless thing to ask of refugees who'd just lost their home planet. What's more, Fury recruited twenty of these Skrulls to be his spies, sending them to do his dirty work.
25 years later, these Skrulls have delivered on their end of the deal more than tenfold, while Fury is no closer to finding them a home planet. He always seems to have something more important on his plate, whether it's launching his Avengers Initiative or doing whatever he's up to on SABER. Fury seems to have all but forgotten about finding the Skrulls a new planet — and perish the thought of sharing his own planet with the Skrulls. Fury explodes in outrage when Talos brings up that possibility.
His empty promises lead directly to the rise of extremists, including a now-grown Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), who has grown tired of waiting for Fury to deliver the Skrulls that new home.
Not showing his love for Priscilla
Nick Fury hasn't exactly been the best husband to Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard), a Skrull who also goes by the name Varra. When the two married, they both knew that Fury's job meant he would be away for long periods of time, and that he couldn't wear his wedding ring in public, for her protection. However, Priscilla never counted on her husband's emotional distance.
After the Blip, she welcomed him back with open arms, but he retreated onto SABER, leaving his wife alone again. She has become so inured to his absence that she tells him outright that she knows he only came down from SABER because the world needed saving; she is under no illusion that he came back for her sake. What's more, Fury probes her for information, seeing if she knows anything about Gravik. He has so little faith in his wife that he fears she joined Gravik's rebellion.
Perhaps worst of all, Fury hasn't really loved his wife for who she is. While he often assures Priscilla that her human form is beautiful, he has never felt comfortable kissing her in her Skrull form. When Priscilla asks Fury if he would've still loved her if she'd been her true self, Fury's silence tells her all she needs to know. Of course, in the final episode of "Secret Invasion," Fury's walls finally come down. He embraces Priscilla and kisses her, not caring that she is in Skrull form. So, perhaps there is hope for their marriage yet.
Hiding on SABER
Between the events of "Avengers: Endgame" and "Secret Invasion," Nick Fury spent most of his time on SABER, even asking Talos to pose as him on Earth so that most people wouldn't notice he was gone. Nonetheless, Fury's absence was definitely felt, and not just by his wife.
For one, Fury wasn't even around when Soren (Sharon Blynn), the wife of Talos, died. Knowing that Gravik killed Soren for siding with Fury instead of him, it's possible that Soren might have still been alive if not for Fury. Either way, Fury is a bit late to the party when he comforts a grieving Talos.
What's more, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) is stung by his abandonment. Ever since "The Avengers," Fury and Hill seemed to be an inseparable pair, but that all changed when he fled for SABER. When the two reunite in the first episode of "Secret invasion," Hill is clearly bitter that Fury left her to shoulder so many problems alone, without even telling her why. Even now that Fury is back, she feels like she doesn't know him anymore. This terse conversation appears to be their final words to each other, since Hill is sent home in a coffin in the very next sequence. Fury took his right-hand woman for granted until it was too late.
Most importantly, Fury wasn't there for Earth when it needed him most. By the time he noticed the titular "secret invasion," it was already well underway.
Never thanking Talos
"Secret Invasion" reveals that Fury owes his whole career to his Skrull spies, especially Talos. As Talos reminds him, Fury started out on the bottom of the rung at SHIELD, and he only got promoted to the director of SHIELD because he was standing on the backs of his Skrull army. And who has been enlisted in that army since Day One? Talos, of course.
The way Fury tells it, he has been constantly cleaning up the messes of the Skrulls, but really it's the other way around. From stopping terrorist attacks to blackmailing Fury's enemies, the Skrulls have done it all. G'iah (Emilia Clarke) has risked her life as a double-agent, while Gravik has sifted through the wreckage of the Battle of Earth to collect DNA samples from the Avengers. Fury even made his future wife Priscilla spy on Dreykov (Ray Winstone).
Meanwhile, Talos has been suffering in silence for years out of his loyalty to Fury, without so much as a thank you. In fact, Fury is so accustomed to having Talos at his side that he automatically expects Talos to volunteer to help him. Fury only apologizes because wants something from Talos in return. Thankfully, Talos finally realizes his worth and makes Fury beg for his help; the look on Fury's face in this scene is priceless.
Threatening a Skrull child
It's no secret that Nick Fury is a badass, but in one episode of "Secret Invasion," Fury does something so antiheroic that it almost tips into being just plain bad.
When Fury and Talos sneak into the home of a Skrull going by the name Robert "Bob" Fairbanks (David Bark-Jones), Talos sends Fury a message via earpiece. Yet Fury decides there's something not quite right. His instincts are spot-on, because Bob is actually holding Talos hostage, trying to lure Fury upstairs into an ambush. In response, Fury brings a hostage of his own: the Skrull posing as Bob's son Zachary (Aladair Noble).
We get that Fury wanted desperately to save his friend. But Zachary is only a kid. While it's true that Skrulls can shapeshift into anyone, Bob's reaction makes it immediately clear that Zachary is probably a Skrull child. He must be either Bob's actual son or somebody else close to Bob. It's a pretty cold thing to do, even by Fury's standards.
Fury does release Zachary, but only after Bob releases Talos first, and you can't help but wonder if Fury would have shot Zachary if Bob made a move on Talos. To make matters worse, Zachary's father doesn't even survive until the end of the episode. Granted, Fury isn't the one who kills Bob; instead, Talos kills the man in a fit of rage, and Fury disapproves of this rash move. Still, there is no sign that Fury and Talos make any effort to comfort the now-orphaned Skrull.
Skipping the funeral of Talos
It's bad enough that Nick Fury pretty much leaves Talos for dead in Episode 4 of "Secret Invasion." Sure, Gravik had just stabbed Talos through the heart, and Fury needed to get the U.S. President to safety, but Fury could have at least checked to see if Talos was still alive.
On top of everything else, Fury doesn't even bother attending the funeral for Talos. He simply tosses G'iah a phone and tells her to call Priscilla, who will take care of the memorial service. Both of them stand by the funeral pyre, but Fury is too busy traveling to Finland to collect his secret stash of Avengers DNA. While it's true that Gravik gives Fury an ultimatum (surrender the Harvest or else he will launch a nuclear war), Gravik doesn't issue this threat until after Fury already decided to skip the funeral. So, why couldn't Fury take a moment to pay his respects to his friend before saving the world? It was the least he could do, after treating Talos like an expendable sidekick all his life. Arguably, this might be the worst thing Nick Fury has done.
Of course, perhaps it's not fair to blame Fury for this. More likely, he is a victim of the universe builders at Marvel Studios, who decided it was more important to move the plot forward than give the character a moment to grieve.