Cobie Smulders Opens Up About ‘Terrifying’ Secret Invasion Twist and Her MCU Future as Maria Hill
The following contains spoilers from the Secret Invasion series premiere (now streaming on Disney+).
Cobie Smulders is very likely done diligently concealing Marvel secrets, given how the first episode of Disney+’s Secret Invasion ended.
As the latest Marvel TV series’ premiere neared its end, the good guys appeared to have gained an upper hand, when Talos (played by Captain Marvel‘s Ben Mendelsohn) got tipped off by his daughter G’iah (Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke) on how to track explosives being delivered by rebel Skrulls to a public square in Moscow. Alas, the marked knapsacks proved to be decoys, after which Skrull ringleader Gravik (The OA‘s Kingsley Ben-Adir) began triggering deadly blast after deadly blast.
Amid the violent mayhem, Maria was relieved to see Nick Fury alive and well — only to be shot by him, in cold blood. As Maria slumped to the pavement, viewers saw that “Fury” was in fact shapeshifter Gravik, who disappeared into crowd after intently staring down the real deal. Fury himself (Samuel L. Jackson) then rushed to Maria’s side, barely in time to see her pass away.
“It was you,” a shellshocked Maria marveled with her last breath. “Not me,” Fury said, though it seemed his words did not register with his dying friend.
“To have Fury … know that Hill thinks that Fury shot her — that’s the pain of that moment,” Smulders observed in a new Vanity Fair post mortem.
But did Maria hear Fury’s “Not me” plea before dying? “I like to think that she, by the time she passed, knew it wasn’t him,” Smulders said. “Initially, it’s terrifying and so confusing. But I’d like to think she got there.”
Reflecting on her death scene, which was filmed in London amid much Marvel-typical super-secrecy, Smulders said, “It felt and it feels strange,” adding: “Maria Hill’s passing is very real, and it’s shocking, and it feels very human…. It was a sad day.”
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Smulders had played Maria Hill in nearly a dozen live-action and animated Marvel projects since 2011, including her debut in The Avengers, a smattering of episodes of the MCU-adjacent ABC series Agents of SHIELD and, prior to Secret Invasion, Spider-Man: Far From Home.
While it’s hard to say that anyone is ever truly “gone” from a superhero franchise, Smulders — who told Vanity Fair, “I don’t know anything” about rumors she appears in this fall’s The Marvels movie — indicated that her 12-year MCU run is over.
“There is a multiverse now, so anything is possible,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure this is it.”
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