Secret Invasion Failed Maria Hill

This piece contains spoilers for Secret Invasion Episode 2.

In the annals of the MCU’s storied history it’s unlikely that you’ll find a more loyal and unwavering soldier than Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). While many of the franchise’s biggest heroes have turned on each other and the US government — for good reason — Maria has, after a few early disagreements, always stood by her boss and friend, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). The former Deputy Director and Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a pillar of strength for Fury during his many trials and travails, and was an integral part of the Avengers Initiative. Since her introduction in 2012, she’s outlived heroes like Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), villains like Loki (Tom Hiddleston) — at least the first iteration of him —, and has garnered a huge base of passionate fans. That’s one of the reasons many viewers were shocked to see Hill unceremoniously killed off by big bad and Skrull rebel leader, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), at the end of Secret Invasion’s premiere. That and the fact that she’s one of the few characters from the comic run that was meant to play a significant role in the story. 

The choice to kill the character that got fans talking and theorizing heavily. Was Hill a Skrull and the real Hill was elsewhere? We never saw her transform back into one of the green-headed aliens, so that seemed unlikely. Could it be that this is a fake death ala Nick Fury in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Maybe this could be a part of a classic Marvel espionage long con. It could even be something as simple as a life model decoy (a tactic that Hill used in the Secret Invasion comic and Fury used in the previously mentioned Winter Soldier). 

At least that seemed like it might be the case until the first 20 minutes of Secret Invasion Episode 2. Hill’s death is all but confirmed as we see Fury kneeling over her body and then later on we watch her casket being delivered to American soil for burial. It’s there that we get a terse conversation between Fury and Maria Hill’s understandably devastated mother Elizabeth (Juliet Stevenson). So, unless Hill’s family buried a very believable LMD, it’s time to believe Cobie Smulders’ many retrospective farewell interviews and say goodbye to Maria Hill. 

The choice to kill Maria seems only to serve a classic — and repetitive — narrative trope that was coined in the comics criticism space. Fridging is the colloquial term for what Gail Simone termed as the women in refrigerators trope: a woman is killed or injured to push forward the narrative of a male character and their development. Inspired by the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern arc where his dead girlfriend was put in his fridge, it’s a common story device in many movies and TV shows, and something the MCU has marketed in before. Remember Gamora 1.0 (Zoe Saldana)? We see the character killed in order to push forward the journey of Thanos. Regardless of all the ways the story could have been pushed forward otherwise, a functional, well-rounded hero was tossed off a cliff to try and develop the story of a genocidal maniac via a false representation of “love.”  

Maria Hill’s death depressingly fits into this trend too. Her demise wasn’t particularly heroic, it wasn’t tied to her narrative — it couldn’t have been, given her story has always been little more than an extension of Fury’s in the MCU — or the character’s journey. In fact, it was all the more shocking because it made sense to many expectant fans that this wouldn’t just be a showcase of Nick Fury battling the Skrulls but also a show about his relationship with his right hand and their fight together. Narratively that’s a choice that would have made a lot of sense and that could have given Hill — a perennial side character — a moment in the spotlight and some much needed development. It seems even stranger when we take into account just how close Fury and Hill were. In a chat with IGN, Jackson shared how much Fury’s absence post-Blip impacted Hill. 

“It’s really a difficult thing for her,” Jackson said. “Nick Fury kind of cuts people off whenever he wants to, or however he wants to, and the fact that she’s saying he’s been letting her calls go to voicemail for three years is traumatic for her. And I guess after the first year or so, she dealt with it. She was kind of hurt by it. So, their relationship is a little strange, which causes her to say what she needs to say, in terms of him being capable of doing what he’s capable of doing, or what he used to be capable of doing.”

Their conversation from Episode 1 about Fury’s post-Blip struggles showcases Maria’s feelings and her fearlessness when it comes to setting Fury straight. It also establishes the tone for Fury’s journey in the show where his abilities and prowess are constantly questioned by those around him. It’s also a sad note to end on as we learn that not only was Maria killed by Gravik who was disguised as Fury at the time — did she know it wasn’t him? — but she had already felt let down by him in the lead up to her untimely death. 

Watching the episode quickly brush over Hill’s death, it feels like it happened for no other reason than to give Fury a righteous reason to hate the young man that he once apparently helped raise. Now, Fury can become a lone wolf battling against the Skrull invasion, as this episode removes not only Maria but also Rhodey (Don Cheadle) as potential allies. But, luckily for Cheadle — and the MCU — the latter survives the plot device. 

It’s not that men haven’t been killed in the MCU — RIP Heimdall and Gilgamesh, we love you — Tony Stark of course being the most famous. But his death was in service of saving the world, a powerful and heroic sacrifice to stop Thanos. Sure, Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) made a sacrifice too. But Hawkeye could have easily made it instead seeing as he was a literal serial killer by the events of Avengers: Endgame. Hill was shot in a public square after failing to stop a Skrull terrorist attack. And her death will most likely only impact Fury and give him a revenge arc against Gravik. It’s a death that fails to pay Hill the respect she deserves and feels like it’s played for shock and bleak “reality” more than anything else. Luckily, the choice wasn’t a shock to Smulders who told The Hollywood Reporter that she’d known about Maria’s fate for years. 

The actor also told THR that “it has been an amazing 10 years of being a part of something that is so beloved and makes people so excited.” It’s just a shame that the MCU couldn’t give Smulders and Hill a story and send off that befit her impact on the biggest movies in the world.