The episode received mixed reviews, with some critics noting the improved exposition and praising the performances (particularly those of Jackson, Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Colman, and Cheadle) but expressing issues with the writing and the revelation of Fury's wife, Priscilla, to be a Skrull.

To Fury's dismay, Rhodes gives him a military discharge, due to his presence at the bombing attack which escalated the tension between the United States and other international governments.

[6][7] Marvel Studios' Feige, Louis D'Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, and Jonathan Schwartz served as executive producers on the series alongside Jackson, Selim, Bradstreet, and Brian Tucker.

[10] Some of these DNA samples include Groot, Cull Obsidian, a Frost Beast, and the Extremis virus,[10][11] which was theorized to lead to the creation of the MCU's version of the Super-Skrull.

In the first scene, Fury begins discussing his childhood experience when he had ridden the train with his mother from Detroit, Michigan to Alabama bringing their meals in a shoebox.

Jackson had revealed that it had paralleled his own experiences during his youth, as he had travelled via train from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Washington, D.C. During the train rides, Jackson could not access the dining cars and had been provided meals in a shoebox due to segregation, and had decided to use the experience to give Fury "the kind of history that he has, to inform the story in a real way about, you know, how he wasn't always this [powerful], or he does look at America in another kind of way".

[15] The episode stars Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, Kingsley Ben-Adir as Gravik, Charlayne Woodard as Priscilla Fury, Killian Scott as Pagon, Samuel Adewunmi as Beto, Christopher McDonald as Chris Stearn, Katie Finneran as Rosa Dalton, Emilia Clarke as G'iah, Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth, and Don Cheadle as James "Rhodey" Rhodes.

[16] Also appearing are Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Irmena Chichikova as Kreega, Seeta Indrani as Shirley Sagar, Christopher Goh as Jack Hyun-Bin, Giampiero Judica as Secretary General of NATO Caspani, Ben Peel as John Brogan, Anna Madeley as Pamela Lawton, Michael Epp as Ruben Steiner, Mark Bazeley as Victor Dalton, Juliet Stevenson as Elizabeth Hill, Lucas Persaud as Young Skrull Gravik, Charlotte Baker as Soren, and Kate Braithwaite as Skrull Soren.

[23] According to Whip Media's TV Time, Secret Invasion was the most watched original series across all platforms in the United States during the week of July 2, 2023.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Secret Invasion's promise grows ever fainter in a subpar second episode that gets some mileage out of Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle's chemistry but otherwise struggles to generate much intrigue.

He had also better understood the threat of the Skrulls' situation and enjoyed the increased screentime Gravik and Sonya Falsworth had received, commenting that it had displayed their ruthlessness as they had "no qualms about crossing moral lines to protect their people's interests".

[28] For The Daily Beast, Fletcher Peters had mixed thoughts on the train scene, in which Fury warns Talos that humanity would be intolerant of the Skrulls due to current discrimination.

She had appreciated the choice to address civil rights issues, but felt that it was a "little weird" to "start comparing the treatment of this fake alien race to actual problems that real humans face".

She also did not enjoy the revelation of Priscilla to be a Skrull and was "peeved" due to the amount of plot twists, writing that an alternate possibility could've simply been to ensure "everyone has already gone full-Skrull, and the humans are gone", but had appreciated Colman's performance, citing it as the episode's best moment.

[29] However, Space.com writer Franz Ruiz had enjoyed Fury's reaction to Talos's revelation that there are millions of Skrull refugees on Earth, deeming it to be "more compelling than anything in the first episode".

He had also liked the opening scene and thought the de-aging effects were superior to that of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and unlike Peters, deemed Mendelsohn's performance to be the best in the episode.

Hassenger was also interested in the "implicit" class conflict between the assimilated Skrulls and Gravik's rebellious factions, but opined it to be "relegated to expositional dialogue rather than action or story" and wished for Secret Invasion to align more closely with the tone of The X-Files.