Main cast: Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury), Ben Mendelsohn (Talos), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Gravik), Charlayne Woodard (Priscilla), Killian Scott (Pagon), Samuel Adewunmi (Beto), Dermot Mulroney (President Ritson), Katie Finneran (Rosa), Emilia Clarke (G’iah), Olivia Colman (Sonya Falsworth), and Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine)
Director: Ali Selim
So, finally, something that could have been resolved in, say, three episodes kick into gear in Harvest, and Samuel L Jackson seems to have finally woken up at least to do some acting that doesn’t involve looking and acting like a battered homeless hobo.
True to present day MCU style, though, this abrupt galvanization of Nick’s old self seems abrupt. Sure, one can argue that it may be catalyzed by the event at the end of the previous episode, but I also feel that the show could have spent at least some of the screen time in its last four episodes to show some continuous character progression to make this Nick breaking out of his sad sack shell feel more organic.
Meanwhile, people run around, there are shootings everywhere, and I’m amused to note that there are so many Skrulls running around, but nearly all of them are conveniently in human form—all the better to lower the cost of an already cheap-looking show, naturally.
There is a too little, too late feel to the party finally starting up at this tail end of the season, with the previous few episodes so sluggish in terms of pacing and advancing the plot only to have everything suddenly accelerate in this late stage like someone got fed up and lit a fire under its arse.
Anyway, this is the second-to-last episode, and it’s a transitional episode that serves as a lead-in to the grand finale, so there’s not much else I can say about this.
Sadly, there’s not much that I feel compelled to say either, because this episode is just sort of there in a “I’ve watched it, so… that’s about it, I guess?” way. Nick hasn’t done much of anything, neither has Gravik, and everyone just mostly talks the entire show so far!
Nothing that I’ve seen here or in the past few episodes particularly excite me, and “Better than that last abomination!” is a low bar tantamount to saying that you’ve caught herpes, but hey, at least it’s not syphilis or something.
Whatever. Let’s just get this ho-hum season over and done with.
