Samuel L. Jackson is not on Disney’s cast list for “Avengers: Doomsday”, which arrives on December 18th, 2026. Nick Fury is missing from that list for a film that brings heroes from three universes together, and that is a fair moment to look back at a question the MCU has raised on purpose. When Fury was on screen, was it really Fury?
Here are the Nick Furys the MCU has shown in the order the stories reached screens, and what each one leaves open before “Doomsday”. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Captain Marvel”, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Secret Invasion”.
When Fury was on screen, was it really Fury?”
The trick starts in “Captain Marvel” in 2019, a film set in the 1990s, and Disney’s page for it calls the Skrulls “notorious shape-shifters.” Their leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) takes the face of a S.H.I.E.L.D. director named Keller to get inside the agency while Fury is the agent who ends up beside Carol Danvers (Brie Larson). By the end Talos is her ally and she has promised to find the Skrulls a new home.
“Spider-Man: Far From Home” followed later in 2019 and used the idea on the audience. Its Nick Fury pulls Peter Parker (Tom Holland) into a mission, and that Fury is Talos. The post-credits scene says so and Fury himself began in a credits scene in “Iron Man” in 2008, SlashFilm notes. Before the faces change the pair complain that being fooled by an illusionist is embarrassing for a shapeshifter. The Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) at his side is Talos’s wife Soren, who also appears in “Captain Marvel”. Talos is the one who gave Peter the E.D.I.T.H. glasses from Tony Stark. Talos then phones the real Fury, who is on a beach that turns out to be a simulation aboard a Skrull spaceship, and Fury tells the Skrulls around him to get back to work.
The reveal answers a problem the film created. Fury is the man whose “super power is being suspicious”, in director Jon Watts’s words, yet Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) fools him. ComicBookMovie.com ran the Watts interview in July 2019. The one who got fooled was a Skrull.
An earlier line plays differently now. Fury mentions Kree sleeper cells to Hill in passing, and once the reveal lands that sounds like a Skrull’s worry since the Kree and the Skrulls are enemies. Fans also guessed the swap went back years, but Watts said no and called it the “real Nick Fury at Tony’s funeral” at the end of “Avengers: Endgame”. Looper reads the scene as confirming the swap “for at least the duration of the film, if not for months longer.”
The Skrulls had kept their side of an old deal. Jackson told Vanity Fair that Fury “had a whole Skrull spy network because they could shape-shift and go places that people couldn’t go.” The Skrulls “kept their word”, he added, while Fury “hasn’t done what he said he was going to do”, and Looper carries both quotes. That broken promise drives “Secret Invasion” in 2023, a show set three decades after “Captain Marvel” where Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) leads Skrulls who say Fury abandoned them. The Hollywood Reporter read the 2019 scene as a sign that the Skrulls would stay Earth’s allies, but in the series most Skrulls on Earth live peacefully, Looper notes, and many have followed Gravik.
Talos dies in episode four and in the finale the Fury who faces Gravik in the Skrull compound in Russia is not Fury. It is Talos’s daughter, G’iah (Emilia Clarke), in disguise. Gravik shot her in episode three and believes she is dead. He also believes the man in front of him is dying of radiation poisoning, and Comic Basics says she coughed and took iodide pills to sell it. Both take powers from the Harvest, a serum built from Avengers DNA, and G’iah kills him. The real Fury is busy elsewhere, exposing the Skrull posing as Rhodey (Don Cheadle) to President Ritson.
Looper and Comic Basics both read the finale as a plan the real Fury was part of, which makes G’iah’s swap a different kind of trick from the one in 2019. Talos covered for an absent Fury, while G’iah stood in for a Fury who was working the other half of the plan. One swap hid an absence and the other was a weapon.
The real Fury’s look carries its own signal. Jackson told Vanity Fair, in a quote Looper carries, that the eyepatch is “part of who the strong Nick Fury was”, and the character starts “Secret Invasion” without it.
The finale also answers why Fury never found the Skrulls a home, and the answer comes from G’iah speaking as Fury. She says he knew “within a few years of searching” that no other planet would suit them. SlashFilm raises the possibility that G’iah invented the speech, while Looper takes it as the truth and says Fury searched for years, failed and gave up.
Fury is not the only face the Skrulls borrow. A Skrull has replaced Rhodey and Everett Ross has been swapped too, and G’iah frees the real men from the Skrull compound. The show never says how long they were gone.
The win has a cost because President Ritson turns on the Skrulls. Fury leaves for S.A.B.E.R. with his wife Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard) to start peace talks between the Skrulls and the Kree, who have offered peace. Priscilla is a Skrull herself. Looper says Fury married her after “Captain Marvel.” “The Marvels” reached theaters on November 10th, 2023, and Looper calls it a sequel to “Captain Marvel” and “Secret Invasion”, among others. Fury has not been on screen since.
Disney’s own pages leave Fury out. The cast list on the Disney Movies page does not name Jackson, and Disney+ says some cast and characters “remain a mystery.” D23’s report on the “Avengers Endgame: Encore” event says Anthony Russo confirmed more MCU actors will appear and quotes him saying “We have absolutely not announced the entire cast. There is more to come.” Jackson’s own account points the other way. He told The Direct that Marvel’s only word to him was “You’re not gonna be in this movie. You’ll be in the next.” SlashFilm and GamesRadar read “the next” as “Avengers: Secret Wars”, due on December 17th, 2027, but that is Jackson’s account and not a studio announcement.
That leaves Fury’s story in a narrow spot. The series ended with him heading for peace talks with the Kree, the president had turned on the Skrulls and G’iah had a deal with a British intelligence agent. None of those threads needs a Skrull in Fury’s face, but all of them need his decisions. Disney+ says the film brings the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Wakandans together. It also promises “more news as soon as we can”, so the cast list can still change. The MCU has taught viewers to check the face, and right now there is no face to check. Jackson is not on Disney’s list, and by his own account his next Marvel film is a different one.
What Do You Think? Which swap worked better: Talos in “Spider-Man: Far From Home” or G’iah in “Secret Invasion”? Should “Avengers: Doomsday” keep Fury off screen entirely? And should the Skrull peace talks pay off in “Avengers: Secret Wars”?
Catch up properly: every MCU movie and show in chronological order on the MCU+ Universe Tree.
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