Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ Reveals Emilia Clarke’s Role, Full Cast MCU Cameo List

A giant feature on Marvel’s Secret Invasion, its next MCU show on Disney Plus, just went up on Vanity Fair full of cast interviews and a fair amount of reveals.

While we have known that this is going to be Marvel’s attempt at a spy thriller, probably a less blockbuster-y one than Black Widow or Winter Soldier, there’s a good amount of info here, including the full reveal of Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke’s role, Oscar-winner Olivia Colman’s role, and a bunch of MCU supporting characters who will be appearing as well. Here’s the breakdown:

Samuel L. Jackson – The star of this one, with Nick Fury finally getting his own series, albeit not a film, after appearing in so many other Marvel projects and originally assembling The Avengers.

Ben Mendelsohn – Reprising his Captain Marvel role of Talos, and a friend to Nick Fury as they try to unmask bad Skrull double agents around the globe posing as humans, and potentially even superheroes.

Emilia Clarke – She’s playing G’iah, which is actually a character we’ve seen before, but in Captain Marvel, she was just a kid. G’iah is Talos’ daughter, all grown up, when previously his wife and daughter were seen in Captain Marvel. Clarke describes her as a “refugee kid” who has kind of a “punk feeling.”

Olivia Colman – Perhaps surprisingly, she seems like she may be something of a villain in this one, which is generally not the case for her roles. She’s an MI6 agent tasked with protecting the homeland and Jackson describes her as “coldblooded” and “somebody you’ve never seen her play before.”

Then we have the returning characters from elsewhere in the MCU:

Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross, the CIA agent seen most recently in Black Panther, Wakanda Forever.

Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, who in this story is not War Machine, but the president’s right-hand man. It seems likely this will be some measure of setup for Cheadle’s upcoming Armor Wars project. Given his proximity to the president, however, I do wonder if this version of Rhodey could be a Skrull.

Cobie Smulders will return as Maria Hill, out of her leotard from past films and “in jeans and a tee” in Secret Invasion, Smulders says, sounding somewhat relieved. She’ll of course be one of Jackson’s main allies in the storyline. Unless she’s secretly a Skrull…

So, pretty big cast here, and the word that keeps coming up is “grounded” with shows like Homeland and The Americans as inspiration for the spy-based Skrull hunt. I mean, I’ll watch it, like I do everything in the MCU, and we’ll see if it lands in the good or bad pile after a kind of rough Phase 4.

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