Not like it’s that big of a secret, but Maria Hill is coming to Disney+. Cobie Smulders will reprise her role as the former SHIELD operative and Nick Fury’s right hand woman on the upcoming Disney+ Marvel show Secret Invasion.
Deadline broke the news of the casting and notes that Smulders is joining an already stacked roster that includes Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, plus newcomers like Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Christopher McDonald, and Killian Scott. Maria Hill has basically been by Nick Fury’s side since 2012’s The Avengers so continuing that role here makes a lot of sense. Still, it’s always nice to have confirmation.
As for how Secret Invasion will impact the large Marvel Cinematic Universe, that’s the big mystery. You have to imagine a show about Skrulls that have secretly invaded planet Earth for years before Nick Fury and Captain Marvel encountered them in the 1990s is rather significant. And while rumour is the show won’t match the scope of the Marvel Comics series it’s named after, there are still innumerable possibilities. Could we pop back into older movies or shows and recontexualize things that have already happened? Will the Skrulls appear as characters on other shows? Or will Nick Fury and Maria Hill somehow solve this invasion in the span of six episodes on Disney+? Time will tell.
Speaking of time, Secret Invasion is likely to be out in late 2022, depending on how Marvel chooses to space out everything else it has coming. But before we see this show, which is being executive produced by Mr. Robot’s Kyle Bradstreet, we will be getting Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight on Disney+ alone, not to mention a handful of movies. As we’ve seen with the shows Marvel has released so far, though, sometimes they’re right on top of each other, like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which aired just a few weeks apart, with Loki not too far behind.
How big and important do you think Secret Invasion is going to be? Was there ever a doubt Maria Hill was coming along for the ride?