9 details you might have missed in Marvel's 'Secret Invasion,' so far

She holds the book while sitting in the New Skrullos dining hall, observing a conversation between Gravik and Pagon.

The title of the book is fitting, considering that Skrulls have been blending in with humans and assuming their identities as part of their infiltration of the planet. 

Fans haven't seen Don Cheadle's James Rhodes as War Machine since "Avengers: Endgame." 

During the meeting, after being frustrated by the committee's representatives, Rhodey turns to someone behind him and mutters, "If Slovakia rolls its eyes at me one more time, I'm gonna put on the suit and carpet bomb it."

Rhodey's first response to Fury about tackling the Skrull threat is, "Maybe we should call our friends," an unsubtle nod to the Avengers.

Fury responds by saying: "No, no, no, we can't jump the gun on that. We get them into a fight with the Skrulls, and the next thing you know they find themselves duplicated and turned into terrorists."

This is a reference to the 2008 comics event "Secret Invasion" which inspired the series, where numerous Avengers were kidnapped and replaced by Skrulls. It was revealed that the aliens were on Earth when the assassin Elektra was killed, and her body turned back into a Skrull.

As the conspiracy got larger, heroes like Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic learned that the aliens had infiltrated every single government and intelligence agency on the planet, including S.H.I.E.L.D. 

The comic series ended in a huge fight between the Skrulls still masquerading as heroes, and the real heroes who had been kidnapped years before. 

"Men who look like us don't get promoted because of who our daddies know," Fury tells Rhodey. "Every ounce of power we wrestle from the vice grip of the mediocre Alexander Pierces who run this world was earned in blood. So let's make the power mean something."

Alexander Pierce is actually the person who appointed Fury the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. back in the day.

The two characters had a good rapport, and Fury even admitted in "Captain America: The Winter Solider" that he once would have taken a bullet for Pierce. But that changed when Pierce was revealed to be a HYDRA leader who betrayed Fury and ordered him to be assassinated. In the end, Fury shot Pierce dead. 

In episode two, G'iah accesses files containing information on the aforementioned species. The references to Frost Beast from the "Thor" films and Extremis, the virus that manipulated a host's genetic makeup in "Iron Man 3," indicate that Skrulls have been quietly at work, in plain sight, for quite some time.

Gravik's goal is for the Skrulls to make humans extinct and take over Earth. He says that in order to achieve that, they have to become super-powered and transform into "uniquely programmed weapons of mass destruction," which he calls Super Skrulls. This is why Gravik has been collecting genetic information.

The trailers for "Secret Invasion" showed a brief glimpse of Gravik displaying Groot-like extension abilities. In episode three, viewers see that Gravik has become a Super Skrull, as indicated by his hand quickly healing and glowing orange (similar to how a host looks when injected with the Extremis virus) after Talos stabs him. 

This concept of enhanced Skrulls is reminiscent of a villain from the comics, known as Super-Skrull, who notably took on the combined powers of the Fantastic Four members. 

Varra was previously seen at the start of episode two, in a flashback that took place in Brixton, London in 1997. Varra is the Skrull who introduced Fury to Gravik, the eventual leader of the rebel Skrulls. 

If the name Dreykov sounds familiar, it's because he was the villain of Scarlett Johansson's 2021 standalone "Black Widow" movie. Dreykov oversaw the infamous Red Room, where young girls were trained to become assassins as part of the Black Widow Program. 

The mention of Dreykov in the "Secret Invasion" flashback suggests that S.H.I.E.L.D. was looking into him three years after Natasha Romanoff was captured and taken to the Red Room.

Viewers first started theorizing that Rhodey may not be who he claims to be after episode two was released. During one scene, Rhodey referred to Fury as Nick. 

Marvel fans may recall that Fury has previously made it clear that people only call him by his last name.

In the '90s-set film "Captain Marvel," Fury told Carol Danvers, "Everybody calls me Fury. Not Nicholas. Not Joseph. Not Nick. Just Fury."

Then in episode three of "Secret Invasion," a Skrull, posing as Robert Fairbanks and pretending to be Talos on the intercom, unintentionally blows his cover by calling Fury by his first name.

"Nobody calls me Nick, Bob," Fury says when he confronts him.

Beyond Rhodey calling him Nick, the Skrull theory seems plausible because, in episode three, Fury tells Talos that he got a lead about a rebel Skrull who's high up in the US government and is in London right now. Rhodey has become a more prominent political figure and works closely with the president. And, more interesting, he was in London during episode two for the emergency security summit. 

To pile onto the suspicion, at the end of episode three, Priscilla is seen answering a phone call from a Skrull who sounds exactly like Don Cheadle's Rhodey.

The person on the other end tells her to meet at St. James Church in one hour. When Priscilla says that she needs to speak to Gravik instead, he replies, "Yeah, well, you're talking to me."

While cooking, Fury has "The Chris Stearns Show" on TV in the kitchen.

"Does anyone out there seriously trust our leaders? I sure don't," Stearns says. "Load your guns and make sure you got enough food and water because that, my friends, looks a hell of a lot like World War III."

Later in the episode, G'iah sneaks over to the area of the compound containing the pods where notable public figures are hooked up to machines so the Skrulls can take their minds.

As G'iah walks over to the pod containing Robert Fairbanks, the camera passes over the real Stearns, who's attached to a machine.

It makes sense that the Stearns seen earlier on TV is a Skrull in disguise, especially considering Gravik's goal.

He previously said that he believed humans were always going to be the masters of their own demise. During episode three, Gravik calls humans "miscreants" and says that all they know is murder. He predicts that within a week of chaos being unleashed, humans will fight each other.

By impersonating a political commentator, the rebel Skrulls are inciting fear among humans about an impending war, which is what Gravik wants.