WARNING: Spoilers for the Secret Invasion premiere below.
Secret Invasion burst onto Disney+ this week, and the new Marvel series kicked off things with a shocking death right out of the gate. After returning to Earth following the events of Avengers: Endgame, a beaten and worn-down Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) re-teams with his must trusted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) to stop an intricate global conspiracy put into place by a splinter cell of shape-shifting Skrulls.
However, as the first episode reaches its final moments, Fury learns that he has severely underestimated his opponents. Not only do the Skrulls pull off a deadly terrorist attack right in front of Fury’s face, but the Skrull resistance leader Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) shoots Hill in cold blood. Even worse, Gravik does it while disguised as Fury, leaving Hill to think she’d been betrayed as she slumps to the ground.
Of course, this is Marvel we’re talking about, so it’s completely reasonable to question whether Smulders’ character is really dead. However, in a new interview, Smulders confirms that Maria Hill is dead.
Via Vanity Fair:
“There is a multiverse now, so anything is possible. But I’m pretty sure this is it.” (As for rumors that she appears in this fall’s The Marvels, Smulders denies them: “I don’t know anything about that.”) During our conversation, Smulders speaks of Hill’s fate with a certain finality, having made peace with the fact that this is likely the end. “It felt and it feels strange,” she says. “Maria Hill’s passing is very real, and it’s shocking, and it feels very human.” She adds, “It was a sad day.”
While Smulders is said to see Hill go, she trusts that “Marvel is doing the storyline that they think is best.” In fact, she specifically cited the tragic pain of thinking Nick Fury shot her as she died in his arms. However, in Smulders’ mind, she put it all together before fading out.
“I like to think that she, by the time she passed, knew it wasn’t him,” Smulders told Vanity Fair. “Initially, it’s terrifying and so confusing. But I’d like to think she got there.”
New episodes of Secret Invasion stream Wednesday on Disney+.
(Via Vanity Fair)