As Disney+ is releasing thrilling new episodes of Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home is just weeks away from hitting theaters, some more big news has arrived on the Marvel front. Cobie Smulders is returning to a live-action Marvel TV show for the first time since ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as part of the cast of Samuel L. Jackson’s Secret Invasion series, and unlike her contribution to the animated What If…? show, she’ll be playing the real Maria Hill.
Cobie Smulders is returning to the MCU for a reunion with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury for Secret Invasion, according to Deadline, which confirms that she’ll be playing Maria Hill again. The show, which will see a number of returning MCU stars as well as some big-name new additions, will tell a story that has been a long time coming since the reveal that Skrulls have been infiltrating Earth for years.
In addition to Smulders and Jackson, the cast is comprised of Ben Mendelsohn returning to reprise his role as Skrull Talos, as well as The Crown's Olivia Colman, Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke, High Fidelity's Kingsley Ben-Adir, American Crime Story's Christopher McDonald, and Dublin Murders' Killian Scott.
Unsurprisingly for a Marvel project, details about what the plot will entail and how the new characters will impact the story or potentially expand into other MCU properties remains to be seen, but Jackson has confirmed that production already started on Secret Invasion. Naturally, he celebrated with an F-bomb, and Disney+ Day back in November revealed the first look at the new show.
Maria Hill coming to Secret Invasion is big news, but not altogether surprising. She is generally part of storylines involving Nick Fury, and this will be a big one. Cobie Smulder's most recent contribution to the MCU was with the animated What If...? which provided a look at what could have been for Maria Hill if things had gone very differently, and she's actually one of the longer-running MCU characters by this point.
She's also one of the relatively few MCU film actors who appeared on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but S.H.I.E.L.D.'s status as an MCU show is dubious by this point. The first two seasons of the series still stuck to the events of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, but later seasons diverged from the films pretty significantly. So Hill appearing in Secret Invasion now in the era of Disney+ superhero shows becoming big hits with viewers is worth getting excited about. Just don't expect Chloe Bennet to show up!
Secret Invasion doesn't have a premiere date just yet, and spoilers may be hard to come by based on how tight a lid that Marvel generally keeps on plot details. Still, there is plenty of Marvel to keep fans busy moving forward. New episodes of Hawkeye are currently releasing on Wednesdays on Disney+, and Spider-Man: No Way Home will make its long-awaited debut on December 17.
