This article contains spoilers for Secret Invasion.
Cobie Smulders, whose decade-long run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe seemingly ended with Maria Hill’s death inSecret Invasion, is reportedly returning for a minor role inThe Marvels. While a good rule of thumb is suspending one’s disbelief when following any Marvel thread, Hill’s death at the end ofSecret Invasion’s first episode seemingly was solidified by the opening scenes of its second episode.
The second episode ofSecret Invasionquickly confirmed thatthe shooting of Maria Hillat the end of its previous episode was fatal, and that her death was intended to push Nick Fury to better action with the threat at hand. After the show’s premiere episode aired, Smulders went on record stating how she felt her character’s death felt final, but she would always answer the call should Marvel need her back in the future. In addition to Hill making animated appearances in upcoming episodes of Disney’sMoon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,Smulders will be making her seventh MCU feature film appearance inThe Marvels, out later this year.
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Who is Maria Hill?
Agent Maria Hill has been a player in the MCU sinceThe Avengersand, as such, viewers have come to expect her involvement in every universe-changing event. Coming onto the scene as Nick Fury’s second in command at SHIELD way back when, Maria Hill is a character who has always been concerned with upholding justice. In the early years of her appearances, Hill was brought in when the stakes were high enough to require top-level SHIELD involvement without shelling out for Samuel L. Jackson. While Smulders was given enough solo appearances to make the role of Maria Hill her own, she was often paired with Fury as one of the few he trusted enough to keep in his inner circle. Maria Hill has always been a strong, capable, fiercely human soldier who isn’t afraid to challenge authority in the pursuit of doing the right thing.
She was integral to the events ofCaptain America: The Winter Soldierand the fallout prevalent in a post-SHIELD world all the way through to being a valuable supporting player inSpider-Man: Far From Home. Fans were excited to see her in a prominent role inSecret Invasionas this would have been a prime moment for a longtime supporting character to get the development she deserved –until she got fridged in its first episode.
While death is often not a permanent condition for comic book characters, Maria Hill’s death (her fridging) inSecret Invasionfeels like it should be longer lasting. However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has followed in its comic book footsteps in resurrecting dead characters in its projects. Whether these characters were brought back for shock value, retcon purposes, or to lead new projects for the studio, the MCU does bring back fallen heroes and villains on a semi-regular basis.
After his death inThe Avengers, AgentPhil Coulson was resurrectedusing the TAHITI project prior to the events ofAgents of SHIELD. While Coulson’s death was the emotional driving force that caused the heroes to band together in the first Avengers movie, the painstaking lengths to which Fury went to bring him back to life demonstrated more humanity than viewers had really seen from the character at that point. And though Coulson was only brought back to lead the MCU flagship TV show, this choice resulted inmany fan-favorite charactersviewers are eagerly waiting to return to screensten years after their introduction in the show.
More recently, Gamora was killed inInfinity War(another instance of fridging in recent MCU canon) and was brought back in the following movie because of time-travel antics. Vision was reborn five years after his death by method of memory-implantation-in-robot-clone at the end ofWandaVision. Loki “died” and “came back” multiple times, but was able to be somewhat resurrected after Thanos snapped his neck inInfinity War’s first few minutes by escaping with the 2012 Tesseract inEndgame– setting the stage for his own time-travel-themed Disney+ show. While the MCU is a lot better about maintaining the integrity of a main character death than Marvel Comics, they aren’t immune to comic book death at all.
Could Maria Hill be resurrected inSecret Invasion?
Cobie Smulders has given many interviews sinceSecret Invasionpremiered talking about the emotional, grounded nature of Maria Hill’s death – which prompts the question of what timeline this show falls into in the MCU. The final shot in the show’s first episode played on many “comic book death” fakeout theories fans have had in the past: if we don’t see a body, the death isn’t real. The episode ends in a prolonged pan-out over Hill’s presumed corpse, bleeding out in a town square after being shot by a Skrull posing as Fury. The next episode opens on the same shot before showing audiences Hill’s casket and her paired-down military funeral on an airship, before Fury is told to make her death count by Maria Hill’s grieving mother (a deeply emotional scene confirming that Hill wasn’t killed off, she was fridged).
It’s hard to tell, this early on, if she could be brought back inSecret Invasion’s sure-to-be shock ending. However, given that Smulders is confirmed to appear inThe MarvelsandSecret Invasionis the Spy Thriller of the recent Marvel canon, every other delusional Maria Hill fan is ready to see how this execution was a vital piece of Fury’s plan and she isn’t really dead. Surely,Maria Hill will continue to be the quiet MVPfor as long as Cobie Smulders wants to come back to the role.
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