SECRET INVASION Furys REAL PLAN For the Harvest and RED HULK Explained
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00:00 - Yes, yes, war, war, but the Harvest?
00:03 - Hey, welcome back to Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Airy,
00:08 and let's talk about Nick Fury's biggest, darkest secret
00:11 that we learned in Secret Invasion, Episode 5, the Harvest.
00:14 - Nearly every Avenger spilled blood in the Battle of Earth.
00:19 In the aftermath, some were sent in to collect that DNA.
00:24 - Who the (beep) starts a conversation like that?
00:27 I just sat down.
00:28 - Now, this is messed up for so many reasons.
00:31 We are going to talk about why Fury did this,
00:33 what his plans were, and how we think that all of this
00:35 is going to lead up to Captain America, Brave New World.
00:38 - What was that?
00:38 - I saw nothing.
00:39 So, just to catch you up,
00:40 after the Battle of Earth at the end of Avengers Endgame,
00:42 Nick Fury sent Skrull agents into the battlefield
00:45 to meticulously collect the DNA of all the heroes,
00:48 and he called this the Harvest.
00:49 Now, that name is incredibly dehumanizing.
00:52 It implies that the heroes were nothing more than resources
00:54 to be gathered up and used for later.
00:56 - Think you got enough?
00:57 - And maybe that's how Fury has always seen the heroes,
01:00 as living weapons to be used to defend Earth.
01:02 - Man, that's creepy.
01:03 Why would Fury treat the heroes in such a way?
01:06 - Well, let's go back and look at Fury's personal history,
01:08 both before and during phases one through three,
01:10 and then we'll understand where Fury's coming from,
01:12 and we can figure out what his end goal really was,
01:15 and how it leads the way forward
01:16 for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
01:17 Fury grew up seeing the worst of humanity.
01:19 He grew up poor in the segregated South,
01:21 much like Samuel L. Jackson, who was born in 1948
01:24 and grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
01:26 Now, it's interesting that Jackson's past
01:27 mirrors his character so closely.
01:29 Samuel L. Jackson also loved comic books as a kid,
01:31 and also to this day.
01:33 - I always read comics from the time I was a kid.
01:35 I used to buy comic books.
01:37 - So I wonder if Nick Fury had a similar background,
01:39 reading those Captain America comics
01:41 that we saw in "First Avenger."
01:42 This would explain his unbridled faith
01:44 and enthusiasm in superheroes.
01:46 So in this series, though,
01:47 we learn a little bit about Fury's upbringing,
01:49 about how not only did he have to ride
01:51 in a different train car than white people,
01:52 but they weren't even allowed to buy food.
01:54 - And we couldn't go in the dining car.
01:57 - And we see this worldview reflected
01:59 when he lectures Talos about the Skrulls.
02:01 - There's not enough room or tolerance
02:03 on this planet for another species!
02:06 - Now, you have to think how hard it must have been
02:07 for Fury to climb the ranks of SHIELD
02:09 as a black man in the 1980s and '90s.
02:11 - Men who look like us don't get promoted
02:13 because of what our daddies know.
02:15 - But like Talos says, the Skrulls were responsible
02:17 for his rise to power.
02:18 - You didn't start ascending the ranks
02:22 until me and 19 of my people signed on
02:25 as your invisible spy network.
02:27 - Not that they did all the work for him, not necessarily,
02:29 but the appearance of the Skrulls and Kree
02:31 gave Nick Fury a purpose in his career.
02:33 After meeting Carol and seeing the Kree warships,
02:35 he realized that humanity was outgunned and needed help.
02:38 They needed heroes.
02:39 This is why, at the end of the movie,
02:41 he authors the Avengers Initiative.
02:42 In doing this, he admits that humanity
02:44 is not enough to fight these threats.
02:46 As he puts it, the heroes are there-
02:48 - To fight the battles that we never could.
02:50 - At least, that's the story he told the Avengers.
02:52 The real story is Fury has always been
02:55 building up contingencies, like the Harvest,
02:57 just in case the heroes failed.
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04:29 So, back to Fury.
04:30 He always has a contingency,
04:32 kind of like his secret eyeball
04:33 that had backdoor access to the SHIELD mainframe.
04:36 - Alpha level confirmed.
04:38 Encryption code accepted.
04:40 - Fury's first contingency was the Scrawls themselves.
04:42 As we covered in this video,
04:43 it might have always been Fury's plan
04:45 to never find the Scrawls a home.
04:47 Or at least he lied about how easy it would be
04:49 for the other planets to overcome their anti-Scrawl,
04:51 anti-shape-shifting sentiments,
04:52 and allow the Scrawls to settle on their worlds.
04:54 It's a good video, you should check it out.
04:55 But Fury had no problem using the Scrawls
04:57 to make SHIELD such a dominant global power
04:59 that it reported directly to the World Security Council.
05:02 So in many ways, a bolstered SHIELD
05:04 was his first contingency as he sought out superheroes.
05:06 In the early days, his options were pretty limited
05:08 as far as heroes went.
05:09 Banner's Hulk was too unreliable,
05:11 Hank Pym was a retired loose cannon,
05:12 and Carol-- - Don't invoke her name.
05:14 - Is very far away.
05:15 So while he spent years waiting for more heroes
05:18 to become available to him,
05:19 he gathered alien tech, hydro weapons,
05:21 anything he could use in case a larger threat arrived.
05:24 That's what I mean by SHIELD was his original contingency.
05:26 But then a real superhero revealed himself to the public.
05:29 - I am Iron Man.
05:30 - But he's such a mess that he's kind of a bust.
05:32 And then, after the Destroyer levels the small town in Thor,
05:35 Fury decides to really step up these contingency plans.
05:37 This is when SHIELD began to use the Tesseract
05:40 to recreate the experiments of Arnim Zola,
05:42 to use the cube to-- - Make weapons.
05:44 - And by the way, Zola worked for SHIELD for years,
05:46 but he never did this himself.
05:48 And actually, that makes total sense,
05:49 because why would Zola want SHIELD
05:51 to have that kind of firepower?
05:52 Anyways, the events of "The Avengers" prove Fury right.
05:55 The Avengers overcome their differences
05:56 and protect the Earth.
05:57 Hell, Fury has so much faith in them
05:58 that he actually allows them to go their separate ways
06:00 at the end of the movie,
06:01 just like how Carol left Earth years before,
06:03 but promised to return if she was needed.
06:05 Now, impressed on this, Nick says that they'll come back.
06:08 - They'll come back.
06:09 - Why?
06:10 - Because we'll need them to.
06:12 - And then SHIELD fell,
06:13 and this only reinforced Fury's beliefs
06:15 that the heroes were the only salvation for Earth.
06:17 He couldn't stop HYDRA, but Captain America could.
06:20 He couldn't take down Alexander Pierce,
06:21 but Black Widow could.
06:22 And his moral judgment was so compromised at this point
06:25 that he needed Captain America to be the one to kill SHIELD.
06:28 - SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes.
06:32 - So in "Age of Ultron," when the heroes royally,
06:34 royally screw up, Fury still believes in them.
06:36 - I was kinda hoping when I saw you,
06:38 you'd have more than that.
06:39 - I do.
06:40 I have you.
06:41 - You see, after "Winter Soldier,"
06:42 Fury didn't give up protecting the world.
06:44 He just worked from the shadows.
06:46 He even held onto an old helicarrier for emergencies.
06:48 In "Infinity War," we see him coordinating security
06:50 with Maria Hill and referencing Cameron Cline.
06:53 - Tell Cline we'll need him in.
06:54 - Nick, Nick!
06:54 - Who's Calvin Cline?
06:55 - Well, Calvin Cline is a time traveler.
06:57 Cameron Cline is this guy who stood up to HYDRA
06:59 in "The Winter Soldier" and is working with Fury and Hill
07:01 in this post-credits scene of "Infinity War."
07:02 The point I'm making here is that Fury didn't retire
07:05 and let the heroes handle things.
07:06 He kept working behind the scenes,
07:08 as a contingency, in case the heroes failed.
07:10 In fact, during this time,
07:11 he was probably lending his expertise to S.W.O.R.D.,
07:13 an organization partially founded by Maria Rambeau.
07:16 But then, Captain America's Civil War happened.
07:18 Now, even though Fury was not in that movie,
07:20 we can guess that this conflict
07:21 really shook his faith in superheroes.
07:23 He saw Tony Stark learn all the wrong lessons
07:25 from the fall of SHIELD.
07:26 Instead of keeping power decentralized,
07:28 Tony hands power over to the government.
07:30 He requests for the government to keep him in check.
07:33 - We need to be put in check.
07:34 - And Fury also saw that the government
07:35 no longer has any faith in the heroes to do the right thing.
07:38 So now the government is striving
07:40 for greater control as well.
07:42 This is just laying the groundwork
07:43 for some organization like HYDRA to be born again.
07:45 And then, the heroes prove the government was right
07:47 not to trust them.
07:48 They invalidate Nick Fury's faith in them.
07:50 They come to blows, nearly killing Rhodey,
07:52 blowing up an airport,
07:53 and putting a high school kid in the line of fire.
07:56 That's followed by another conflict
07:57 that finally ruins Fury's dream,
07:59 when the Avengers truly split up.
08:01 - That shield doesn't belong to you.
08:03 - My father made that shield.
08:04 - And then, the blip.
08:08 Now, think about this from Fury's point of view.
08:09 Everybody knows that at this point,
08:10 aliens have entered Earth's atmosphere
08:12 just like they did in the Avengers.
08:13 Now, Fury had to have thought on some level
08:15 that the heroes would repeat history and defeat the aliens.
08:18 So the moment he starts to dust, look at his face.
08:21 Fury isn't just sad that he's dusting, his heart is broken.
08:24 He sees that the heroes failed,
08:26 and that means that he failed by putting his faith in them.
08:29 It's a shame that this show doesn't show us
08:31 the immediate aftermath of the blip.
08:33 Imagine Fury reforming on the spot,
08:35 learning he's been gone for five years.
08:37 Five years!
08:38 He used to know everything, now he knows nothing.
08:40 His life's work was meaningless.
08:41 Now, we hear about this in the show.
08:43 - You were never the same after the blip.
08:45 - I think Thanos's snap changed you.
08:47 - But it would have been so much more powerful
08:49 to see this happening to him.
08:50 So, this brings us back to the Harvest.
08:52 Sorry about all that recap,
08:53 but it's important to know his headspace.
08:55 The Battle of Earth happens the same day
08:57 that Fury is reformed.
08:58 So that means that Fury's dusted back,
09:00 finds out it's been five years,
09:01 then hears there was a big battle with some aliens,
09:03 and that Tony Stark died, and that Natasha's dead.
09:06 And his first thought is,
09:07 "Hey, let's get some Skrulls over there on the double
09:09 "to collect some blood samples."
09:10 - That's weird.
09:11 That's really weird.
09:13 - And, you know, in the scene where Cap is going back
09:15 in time, in the background, we do see repair crews
09:17 and helicopters carrying away crates.
09:19 So, there would have been some people on this site.
09:21 Very easy to send in some Skrulls, and bingo, hero DNA.
09:24 - But why does Fury want Avengers blood?
09:26 - Well, I can think of four reasons,
09:28 and I'm gonna rank them from most altruistic
09:30 to mostly evil.
09:31 - I think you're evil!
09:32 - Number one, maybe Fury simply wanted
09:34 to replicate their blood in case any of them
09:36 needed a blood transfusion.
09:37 After all, it would take very specific blood
09:39 to be compatible with Hulk, a super soldier,
09:41 or a woman powered by the energies of the Tesseract.
09:43 Possibility number two, see, we saw in "Civil War"
09:45 that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept some of Steve Rogers' blood,
09:47 even though in the show "Agent Carter,"
09:49 Howard told Peggy that she had the last vial of it.
09:51 ♪ Live with your smile so warm ♪
09:56 ♪ And your cheeks so soft ♪
09:59 - And we also saw that HYDRA used that blood
10:01 to make super soldiers, so maybe that was also
10:03 S.H.I.E.L.D.'s MO from the start.
10:04 Fury wanted the heroes' blood to learn
10:06 how to replicate their powers,
10:08 and this is what would have given Gravik
10:09 the idea to begin with.
10:10 Of all the possibilities, I think this one's
10:12 probably the most likely.
10:13 I mean, think about it.
10:14 Fury's faith in the heroes is now non-existent,
10:16 and he's a guy who loves his contingency plans,
10:18 so he wants greater control.
10:21 This blood would allow him to have his own squad
10:23 of superheroes, just like the HYDRA weapons
10:25 that S.H.I.E.L.D. was trying to build in "The Avengers."
10:27 - Yeah, but maybe those private superheroes
10:29 could just rebel against Fury.
10:30 How would he know that they were going to be loyal
10:31 to him and him alone?
10:33 - Well, this is where we really get into
10:34 some Aldous Huxley "Brave New World" stuff, cloning.
10:37 In the "Civil War" comic book, Thor was dead at the time,
10:39 so Tony Stark created a mindless Thor clone
10:42 to do his bidding.
10:42 Now, doing this crossed many ethical lines,
10:44 so several superheroes turned against Tony after this.
10:47 Now, the MCU has not done much with clones yet,
10:50 but they're a big deal in the comics.
10:51 "Spider-Man's Clone Saga" was about a villain
10:53 called the Jackal using Peter Parker's DNA
10:55 to create several spider clones, and you know what?
10:57 Even though that storyline almost ended "Marvel Comics,"
11:00 very long story, it would still make a killer movie.
11:02 Imagine that twist, though, at the end of this series
11:04 when we go into Fury's basement in his house
11:06 and we see rows of cloning cylinders.
11:08 I mean, Marvel's already using
11:10 a lot of Rick and Morty riders.
11:11 They might as well use the basement clones, too.
11:13 - Operation Phoenix is not the fallback
11:16 I thought it would be.
11:17 - It could also be that Fury wanted to clone the heroes
11:19 just in case they died.
11:20 Let's give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
11:21 And that brings me to the fourth most evil possibility,
11:24 and probably the most likely.
11:26 He wanted the blood to find and exploit
11:28 the weaknesses of the heroes.
11:29 - But why would he do that?
11:30 Is he a bad guy?
11:31 - No, no, no, he did it in case he would have to, you know.
11:34 With some of Banner's blood, he could figure out
11:38 how to neutralize the gamma radiation inside of him,
11:40 or how to rob Steve Rogers of Super Soldier Serum
11:43 to make him old.
11:43 I'm actually still disappointed that Thanos didn't do that
11:45 to him with the time gem,
11:46 or like turn him into Skinny Steve,
11:48 and then Tony would have had to have replicated
11:49 his dad's experiment from first "Avenger"
11:51 in "Avengers Endgame."
11:51 Like, it would have been a full circle moment.
11:53 Shit, that would have been great.
11:54 This is what Batman does in the comics.
11:55 He's got a plan to take down every member
11:57 of the Justice League just in case they go rogue.
11:59 - The Justice League is far too dangerous
12:01 to lack a fail safe against any possible misuse
12:03 of our power.
12:04 - This is why Superman gave him
12:05 Lex Luthor's kryptonite ring,
12:07 in case he ever lost his mind or went out of control.
12:09 Or in the film "Justice League Dark,"
12:11 he gave him a kryptonite bullet.
12:12 - If the League ever did go over to the wrong side,
12:15 I want there to be somebody I can trust
12:16 to keep the planet safe, even from me.
12:20 - But I digress.
12:21 I mean, Fury could have also wanted
12:22 to know the heroes' weaknesses so he could help them.
12:24 Like, for instance, if he knew how an enemy
12:25 could drain Carol's powers,
12:26 like Wanda did to 838 Maria Ranbeau,
12:29 then Fury could make the heroes more powerful
12:31 so they could overcome their weaknesses.
12:32 But I think Fury's more of a Batman guy.
12:34 No matter what his reason was,
12:35 taking genetic material of heroes
12:37 who just saved the universe without their consent
12:40 is a total villain move.
12:42 And calling it "The Harvest" dehumanizes the heroes
12:45 and makes it clear that Fury only ever saw them as assets.
12:48 After all, this is the guy that ruined
12:50 Coulson's near-mint collection of vintage cards.
12:52 - It's a vintage set.
12:53 Took me a couple of years to collect them all.
12:55 - Just to tell the Avengers a convincing lie.
12:57 - Yeah, that is a total super villain move.
12:59 - Right?
13:00 - So it's no wonder Fury doesn't want the heroes
13:01 to get involved in this show.
13:02 Now, this is actually a great explanation
13:04 for why there are no heroes in this show.
13:06 He doesn't want them to know that he collected their blood
13:08 and planned to use it against them.
13:09 So, that's what we know.
13:11 But I'm mostly interested in how this is going to affect
13:13 Captain America, New World, sorry,
13:15 I mean Captain America, Brave New World.
13:16 So, we don't know much about Brave New World yet,
13:19 and I'm not a guy who likes to read plot leaks.
13:21 We do know that it features Harrison Ford
13:23 as a recast Thunderbolt Ross.
13:24 We know that Ross is now going to be the president
13:26 and that Ford is now taking roles like this
13:28 because he's in the sunset of his career
13:30 and he wants to try new things.
13:32 So, I think it's very likely that they will mocap him
13:35 and Ross will turn into the Red Hulk
13:36 like he does in the comics.
13:38 - Either surrender peacefully or you can resist.
13:42 Please, resist.
13:45 - And this could explain the return of Tim Blake Nelson
13:47 as Samuel Sterns, the super villain,
13:48 the leader from the comics.
13:50 In "The Incredible Hulk",
13:51 Sterns has synthesized Bruce's blood
13:52 and he turns Emil Blonsky into--
13:54 - An abomination.
13:56 - Which was later totally undermined in "She-Hulk".
13:58 - My favorite chicken, Princess Silk Feather, was stuck.
14:01 - Your favorite chicken?
14:02 - Yeah.
14:03 - Sterns could help Ross become the Red Hulk
14:05 or maybe as the super villain, the leader,
14:06 he's simply the big bad of the movie
14:08 who's trying to reorganize the world
14:10 into a one world government.
14:11 So, from all that information,
14:12 we can make a few guesses
14:13 about how "The Harvest" ties into this film.
14:15 First of all, secret invasion of the comic book
14:17 was a very important crossover
14:19 because in the aftermath,
14:20 the super villain Norman Osborn
14:22 was put in charge of SHIELD
14:23 and he started to remake the world's security.
14:25 He formed his own team of dark avengers
14:27 comprised of super villains masquerading as heroes.
14:29 So, bring that idea back around to "The Harvest".
14:32 Superhero blood, Hulk blood, blood blood.
14:34 - Blood, blood, blood, and bits of sick.
14:39 - Think of Thunderbolt Ross
14:42 as the embodiment of all of McFury's worst traits.
14:45 In "The Incredible Hulk", he's hunting down Banner because--
14:47 - That man's whole body is property of the US Army.
14:50 - In that movie, he gives Blonsky a super soldier serum
14:52 to combat the Hulk.
14:53 So, even in his first appearance in the MCU,
14:56 we see him trying to harness super humans
14:58 to tighten his control of the world.
14:59 Like Fury, he ends up just having to trust the super human,
15:02 the Hulk, to do the right thing
15:03 and defeat the abomination.
15:05 But Ross didn't learn from this lesson.
15:06 He doubled down.
15:07 He spearheaded the Sokovia Accords,
15:09 split up the Avengers, even hunted down Black Widow
15:12 and really just had a spite.
15:13 So, I wouldn't be surprised if Ross
15:15 or his namesake super team, the Thunderbolts,
15:17 were the answer to that in the MCU.
15:19 Now, those titles for Cap 4
15:20 does sound like it's about the world government's
15:22 coalescing into a single government,
15:24 which could kick off a war with Wakanda,
15:26 Talikon, or New Asgard.
15:27 Or, like we talked about in this video,
15:29 World War III could actually break out
15:30 when these superpower nations refuse to bend the knee.
15:33 Now, this would mean that by the time Kang rolls in,
15:35 the Earth is defenseless to stop him.
15:37 Now, that does sound a bit too much like Phase 3,
15:39 where Civil War divided the heroes
15:41 prior to Thanos' arrival.
15:42 So, I'm sure that Marvel's not gonna repeat
15:44 the exact same beats.
15:45 But this setup of Fury collecting hero blood
15:48 can take the MCU in so many interesting and fun directions
15:50 and I am pumped for it.
15:52 And everybody, just remember to head to
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15:57 Thanks again, Zbiotics, for sponsoring this video.
15:59 And I wanna hear from you guys.
16:00 What do you think of all this?
16:01 Let me know in the comments below or at me on Twitter.
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16:06 For ScreenCrush, I'm Ryan Aery.
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