Secret Invasion, the MCU’s new spy thriller, has everyone wondering who they can trust in the MCU. We’ve seen Skrulls before and know they are shapeshifters, so they can impersonate literally anyone. In the Marvel comics, the Secret Invasion storyline had Skrulls pretending to be some of our favorite superheroes. One of the reasons that Secret Invasion was such a frightening thing to the people of Earth-616 is that any government official could be a Skrull. Well now, people are wondering if the conspiracy has gone so far as to affect the Khaleesi.
Emilia Clarke plays an as-yet undisclosed character in the series, and theories abound as to who she could be. In the Secret Invasion trailer, we see her walking with a menacing look on her face, but she remains unassociated with any of the main characters. We don’t see her sitting down with Nick Fury, talking to any other Skrulls, or anything like that. But generally, fans have agreed that yes, of course, Clarke is a Skrull, but which one? People have looked to the comics for answers and tried to find a role that would fit Clarke best. And there’s only one answer for whom the Mother of Dragons might actually be: Veranke, the Skrull Queen.
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Emilia Clarke Is a Skrull
Marvel Studios
The fan theories are that Emilia Clarke will play Queen Veranke, leader of this evil faction of Skrulls. And though we don’t know a lot of other identities of secret Skrull replacements, this seems like a good bet. Clarke had her breakout role starring as a queen who was somewhat dubious. Daenerys Targaryen began her journey as a character everyone could root for but revealed herself as someone who had been corrupted by power. She became someone who we didn’t think she was. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Clarke had a similar narrative for her character in Secret Invasion?
The chatter among fans is leaning heavily toward picking Clarke for a Skrull imposter. If nothing else, people believe it would be a fun match-up, which seems to be how fans are guessing who’s a Skrull and who isn’t. For example, Olivia Colman’s character (Sonya Falsworth) probably isn’t a Skrull because her big reveal will be that she’s a descendant of James Montgomery Falsworth (AKA Union Jack), who fought alongside Captain America. People think Don Cheadle’s character (James Rhodes/War Machine) will be a Skrull since Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard after the first Iron Man movie. And Martin Freeman (CIA agent Everett K. Ross) is probably a Skrull, just because, come on, it’s Agent Ross. As you can see, some of these theories have ground to stand on, and some are just funny.
The lack of knowledge surrounding Emilia Clarke’s character creates a huge range of possibilities for her character. Just about the only two shots we see of her in the trailer are her holding a gun and her walking through a door. In neither of those frames do we see a single another character to associate her with. We can’t tell if she’s good or evil, whose side she’s fighting on, or even whose side she’s pretending to fight on. Many people take this lack of information to mean that her character is waiting in the wings to have a big reveal, and Marvel is trying to downplay her involvement so that, when the truth comes out, it’s as big of a surprise as possible.
Who Is Queen Veranke?
Marvel Comics
In Secret Invasion, Queen Veranke is the leader of these evil Skrulls invading Earth. But it gets complicated because she is not the queen of all Skrulls, just a large radical faction. In the crossover comic book event, Veranke played the primary villain and was the leader of the Skrull empire.
But her political history began long before she was banished from the Skrull throneworld by emperor Dorrek VII. But when Galactus destroyed the planet, Veranke returned to seize control over her scattered people. As she rose in popularity, she created a Skrull theocracy and began her invasion of Earth to fulfill a prophecy that the Skrulls would one day conquer a blue planet.
Veranke’s assault on Earth began long before Secret Invasion when she snuck herself into the Avengers by impersonating Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman. The Avengers comics passed through a completely different line of events (House of M) before revealing that many of the heroes in the Marvel universe were actually Skrulls. The crossover event was so massive that many readers had actually been following Skrull adventures of their favorite superheroes for a while. Veranke had steadily replaced many trustworthy characters with Skrull imposters.
The fallout from Secret Invasion created a general distrust of any heroes on Earth, leading to the Marvel event Dark Reign, where Norman Osborn actually elevated himself to a position of power after publicly killing Veranke.
