The six-part Secret Invasion TV series on Disney + streamed its final episode last night and unfortunately it was as mid as the rest of the series. To go into why it was so mediocre and par for the course with the recent TV shows set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) there will be major spoilers from this point on.

Secret Invasion had a lot to admire, notably Samuel L. Jackson as former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, Olivia Colman as British secret agent Sonya Falsworth, and some terrific dialouge. There was one riveting moment where Fury explained, using his childhood memories in the segragated south, why humanity would never accept alien beings living on Earth. But the overall feeling of the series feels underwhelming and done on the cheap, which is surprising given that it supposedly had a large budget.

Like every comic-book adaptation, Secret Invasion was very loosely based on the Marvel Comics mini-series of the same name in that it only adapted the basic premise that alien shape shifters called Skrulls infiltrated Earth’s human populace. Unlike the comic books there weren’t any Skrulls impersonating superheroes except for Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes aka War Machine (Don Cheadle). There aren’t any epic battles between superheroes and their alien counterparts, and there is a lack of paranoia about who was a Skrull like in the comic books where readers were shocked that several superheroes were impersonated by Skrulls for years.

Yes, there was Rhodey, but that was it, and by the way he acted at the start of the series it was fairly obvious that he was a Skrull. There were a few other revelations but they lacked any dramatic punch because most of these people never appeared before in the MCU. The TV series was just begging for appearances from many established characters, yet that never happened. Sure, it was unrealistic to expect Chris Hemsworth or Paul Rudd to show up, but the MCU has so many distinctive minor characters that could have appeared to play into the paranoia by revelations that they were Skrulls. What is it, they ran out of money to pay these actors? Did the showrunners seriously expected viewers to be shocked when it was revealed that the prime minister of the United Kingdom was a Skrull? Big deal! This faux prime minister did not even do anything!

The storyline followed Nick Fury as he learned that a million Skrulls are living as refugees on Earth disguised as humans. One of them, Gravik (KIngsley Ben-Adir) was a former spy who worked with Fury and is now a terrorist intent on turning Earth into a new homeworld for his race. To do this, Gravik planned to start World War III by using his clandestine Skrull army to instigate a conflict between the United States and Russia. With limited resources, except the help of his Skrull friend Talos (Ben Mendelsohn). Fury has to muster all his connections and skills to stop Gravik and his followers.

What could have been an intense and paranoid political thriller came off as underwhelming aside from a few bright moments throughout the show. Many elements of the storyline do not make sense. For instance, Skrulls were immune to radiation, which is why Gravik wanted to start a third world war. He reasoned that when humanity was wiped out by the fallout radiation the remaining Skrulls would inherit the Earth. But did he stop to consider that Skrulls would be just as vulnerable to the shockwaves and firestorms from the nuclear explosions? What about the biosphere of Earth, could the Skrulls survive on a poisoned planet with no food available and destroyed infrastructures?

Then there were the attempts to assasinate the president of the United States (Dermot Mulroney). There was a sequence in the fifth episode where the president’s motorcade in England was attacked by Gravik’s forces. It was exciting, but it was nagging to see how lightly protected the motorcade was or how it was put into a vulnerable position in the first place. Some lines of dialogue that the Secret Service was severely compromised would have helped here. The poor lines of defense are even more noticeable in scenes were the president was in a British hospital with very few people around him. He should have had an army surrounding him after the motorcade attack and most likely the Secret Service would have whisked him off to Air Force One. Instead we are expected to believe that Fury was able to slink into the hospital without any serious opposition.

There were these cheap dramatic moments of Fury facing off with the Rhodey Skrull. Every time the Skrull would get the upper hand because he was disguised as Rhodey. So why didn’t Fury do what Falsworth did in other scenes when dealing with Skrulls and just shoot him? She showed that injuring a Skrull would have revealed that their blood was a different color and boom, the fake Rhodey would have been exposed.

Watching Secret Invasion was frustrating because there were kernels of a great show if it was allowed to be better written and fleshed out. The stakes rarely felt intense and the full ramifications of the Skrull invasion were not examined until the final episode. After the president was saved he started a deranged campaign to root out Skrulls throughout the world and vignettes were shown with vigilantes attacking people randomly to expose them as Skrulls. This led to tragedies like the actual British prime minister being killed. Yet, this situation is not resolved. It would have worked better if this happened in the midway point of the TV series to raise tension and paranoia.

The TV show is riddled with so many dangling subplots. For example, when the real Rhodey was rescued, it was implied that he was held prisoner for a long time but it’s never made clear. When was he captured? Is the Rhodey we saw in the MCU films a Skrull? Secret Invasion missed a great opportunity to show the tragedy of this aspect of the Skrull invasion just by having Rhodey asking for his now-deceased friend, Tony Stark.

There is also the fact that Secret Invasion led to the introduction of the most OP character in the MCU: G’iah (Emilia Clarke), the estranged daughter of Talos who flip floped between both Gravik and Fury. A major plot in the show was that Gravik did not give a damn about his people, He only wanted to gain power by absorbing the abilities of the superhumans in the MCU. It turned out that Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. had been secretly collecting the DNA of superhumans and storing them. Gravik’s followers found a way to allow their Skrull bodies to absorb the DNA and Gravik wanted to become a Super Skrull. During a final battle between Gravik and G’iah (which should have been between Fury and Gravik), both Skrulls absorb all these powers and have a big throwdown. It was goofy, did not make sense, but it was fun in a comic book kind of way. G’iah was able to win but now she has the powers of every superhuman we’ve seen in the MCU like Captain Marvel, the Hulk, Thor, the Winter Solider, Mantix, Groot and many others! This felt so ridiculous and unrealistic. For the MCU’s sake, G’iah has to come back in some other TV show or film and be de-powered. Otherwise she will become the MCU’s one-dimensional deus ex machina like Captain Marvel. By the way, if it took someone with superpowers to defeat Gravik, how come did Fury not call for help from the remaining Avengers? The excuses he gave were nonsensical and the real reason was the budget.

The budget limitations for Secret Invasion was the latest example of how the Disney + MCU TV shows have not lived up to the hype and promise of cinema-level TV shows. Yes, there have been a few high-quality MCU TV shows and specials, but for the most part, the others have been disappointing. Secret Invasion just underscores the flaws with the typical MCU TV show: rushed scripts with underdeveloped plots and characters, limited budgets, middling episodes, and the inability to stick the landing with the final episodes. Secret Invasion should have been a sprawling epic that involved major characters. It should have been like the classic mini-series that had large budgets and were epic in scope. Instead we got a more intimate spy caper involving Nick Fury dealing with his past demons that did not belong in this TV show. Fury’s premise should have been its own original TV drama, and would have been better received. As it stands Secret Invasion failed to meld the two premises and wound up being a disappointment, and the MCU and fans deserve better.