Although the first episode of Marvel’s Secret Invasion series only premiered Wednesday, people can’t stop talking about its, um, final moments. Maria Hill, who’s been played by Cobie Smulders since 2012's The Avengers, has weighed in on what she thinks happened. The news has already pervaded most of the nerdernet, but just in case you’re lucky enough not to know...
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Maria Hill, right-hand woman to Nick Fury, has died, shot in the gut by a renegade Skrull masquerading as her friend and mentor. The question that fans have been obsessed with since Secret Invasion’s inaugural episode debuted is whether Hill realized it was a Skrull in disguise, or whether she believed she had been betrayed. Smulders has her own answer.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Smulders chooses the happier of the two options. “To have Fury see himself, to know that Hill thinks that Fury shot her—that’s the pain of that moment,” Smulders told the publication. “I like to think that she, by the time she passed, knew it wasn’t him. Initially, it’s terrifying and so confusing. But I’d like to think she got there.”
Personally, I agree with Smulders’ assessment, mainly because Maria Hill was a very smart, capable person who knew she was literally at that moment chasing shape-shifting aliens who wanted her dead, and thus were a much, much, much likelier culprit than the real Nick Fury. Maria Hill ain’t no dummy... er, weren’t no dummy.
This, of course, begs the question of whether Maria Hill is really dead, given that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, where theoretically an infinite number of Maria Hills could be running around. The character is rumored to star in The Marvels, which will premiere this November. Smulders says, “I don’t know anything about that,” as legally obligated by the ominous vow of silence Marvel Studios forces their stars to make. It hardly matters—these are comic book movie, no one ever needs to stay dead if a future story requires it—but there’s a much easier explanation. Maria Hill did appear in Spider-Man: Far From Home, only to be revealed to be Soren the Skrull in disguise, accompanied by Talos as Nick Fury, operating as the former SHIELD director’s agents while he was on vacation out in space.
Dead or not, Hill/Smulders had a hell of a run. Even if you don’t count Far From Home, she was in all four Avengers films, and appeared in Captain America: Civil War. Goodbye, Maria and Cobie. You’ll be missed. Maybe. Probably. Oh, who the hell knows—or rather, who the hell is allowed to say?