While Secret Invasion ended up being one of the more critically-mixed projects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one thing it didn’t hold back was delivering major casualties. At the end of the first episode, Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill was gunned down in cold blood by a disguised Gravik, and three episodes later, Kinsley Ben-Adir’s antagonistic Skrull killed Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, Nick Fury longtime ally. So Mendelsohn’s time in the superhero franchise is now done, and the actor has reacted to his character being killed off.
Mendelsohn shared his thoughts while being interviewed for the documentary Marvel Studios’ Assembled: The Making of Secret Invasion, which can now be streamed with a Disney+ subscription. While the actor’s time in the MCU was relatively short compared to many of the franchise’s other major players, he’ll nonetheless miss his time there working with both the on and off-camera talent, saying:
I’m going to miss this one; I’m going to miss it a lot. I’m going to miss the degree to which this is in people’s hearts. I’m going to miss the people that a lot of the audience don’t see, who make up the real experience and what it is to do these things — people I work with every day. And I’m going to miss being on-set with Sam.
Ben Mendeloshn debuted as Talos in Captain Marvel, where the Skrull was initially presented as a villain, but then Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers learned that he was simply leading a group of Skrull refugees in finding a new homeworld and avoid being wiped out by the Kree Empire. Captain Marvel was set in 1995, and Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credits scene provided the first opportunity to see what Talos was up to in the present day, as it was revealed that he and his wife Soren had been disguised as Nick Fury and Maria Hill, respectively, for the entirety of the main story. Then came Secret Invasion, where Talos was working with Fury to foil Gravik’s schemes, as well as reconcile with his daughter, G’iah, played by Emilia Clarke.
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Talos died in “Beloved” after rescuing President Ritson from Gravik’s assault on the United States commander-in-convoy in Russia. While resurrections are commonplace in superhero stories, it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards for Ben Mendelsohn’s character, so you can’t blame him for feeling sad about leaving this chapter of his career behind. It’s also a shame given that Secret Invasion fleshed out a compelling dynamic between Fury and Talos after not sharing that much screen time in Captain Marvel, and it would have been nice to see more of that.
Unfortunately, Talos’ death in Secret Invasion didn’t exactly leave a strong impact on President Ritson, because by the end of the final episode, titled “Home,” Dermot Mulroney’s character issued a bill declaring all off-world species as hostile to Earth, as well as ordered any discovered Skrulls to be hunted down. That was just one of many twists on which Secret Invasion delivered in its finale, with arguably the biggest one being that Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes had been impersonated by the Skrull named Raava for years rather than just a short period of time.
While it remains to be seen when or even if the Skrulls will play a prominent role in any of the upcoming Marvel movies or upcoming Marvel TV shows, Samuel L. Jackson will be seen reprising Nick Fury in The Marvels, which opens in theaters on November 10. Ben Mendelsohn’s next movie, The Marsh King’s Daughter, opens a week earlier on the 2023 release calendar.