Secret Invasion: What Happened with Nick Fury and Talos in Captain Marvel?

This article contains Captain MarveL spoilers

A lot has happened since the events of the Marvel Studios blockbuster Captain Marvel. It was released in 2019, just four years ago, but think of all we’ve been through since then! A lot has happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, too. Captain Marvel was a pre-Avengers: Endgame movie, so a handful of big goodbyes and the entire canon MCU Disney+ TV library have happened since we first met the feisty Carol Danvers.

It’s wild to think of how many new stories Marvel has managed to tell since they went back to the 1990s in Captain Marvel and introduced us to Carol and the alien Skrull race, but a young Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) was a key part of that story, and he remains a key part of it in the follow up series, Secret Invasion, which is now streaming on Disney+. If you missed Captain Marvel, or have just forgotten certain bits of the movie, we are here to help connect the dots from there to the new show.

In Captain Marvel, we initially catch up with Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in 1995, when she has amnesia and is working with the extremely powerful Kree race. The Kree are at war with the Skrulls, a race of shapeshifting aliens, so Carol thinks she is, too. But when she is kidnapped by Skrull commander Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), Carol is able to start unlocking memories of once being on Earth, thanks to some savvy Skrull technology. She escapes the clutches of Talos and his Skrulls, and lands on Earth to begin investigating her broken memories.

Security force S.H.I.E.L.D. is still up and running in the 90s, so Carol crash-landing in L.A. alerts their top man Nick Fury (a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson), and he moves to intercept and question her. The pair are both attacked by the Skrulls, who are able to impersonate various humans. Talos pretends to be Nick’s boss and asks him to keep an eye on her. Nick and Carol begin pursuing new leads about her lost human identity, but Talos turns up unexpectedly just as they finally discover how Carol got her superpowers.

In an unexpected twist, it turns out that Talos is not a villain, and neither are his Skrulls. They are refugees who have escaped the brutal Kree race Carol was working for, and they are merely hiding in space close to Earth until they can find a new home. Talos joins forces with Nick and Carol to eliminate the Kree threat, and they promise Talos that they will find the Skrulls a new homeworld where they are safe from the Kree. Carol leaves Earth to work on the project, but is then supposedly missing in action until Nick calls on her when the Avengers need help with Thanos a few decades later.

Marvel’s Secret Invasion TV series catches up with Nick and Talos in the present day. Not only have Nick and Carol failed to secure a home for the Skrulls like they promised back in the 90s, but they have seemingly fully abandoned them on Earth. The Skrulls remain hidden, lost, and unable to take their natural green-skinned form in front of humans. Many of them have had enough of waiting for Nick to fulfil his obligations to their race, so a faction have begun planning to take Earth as their homeworld instead. This leads to a dangerous conflict between Nick and the rebel Skrulls in the new show.