Recent news about the upcoming Captain Marvel movie confirmed that a Skrull Invasion, led by Ben Mendelsohn's Talos, will threaten Earth in the film. First introduced in 1962's Fantastic Four #2, the Skrulls are actually a deviant strain of an earlier version of their race that was experimented on by the god-like Celestials. Their standard form is green-skinned and reptilian-like, but they have the ability to change their form to such a powerful degree that they can avoid detection by those with heightened senses and even telepaths. The ability of Skrulls to shape-shift has come in handy in their attempts to claim Earth as their own, though they've only really tried twice.
In their very first appearance, the Skrulls send a scouting team of four down from a mothership floating in orbit to clear the playing field for a full invasion. Their plan involves transforming into the Fantastic Four and tarnishing their reputations, ensuring that Marvel’s First Family is in no state to thwart their impending invasion.
The Skrulls succeed and even kidnap the Fantastic Four to make sure they don't get in the way. However, The Fantastic Four escape and overpower the unsuspecting Skrulls. Then the superhero team pretends to be the Skrulls (in their shapeshifted forms) and convince those on the mothership that Earth is too powerful to invade, showing them pictures of the monsters and giant ants that guard the planet (pictures taken from other Marvel comics, in fact!)
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At the end of the issue, Reed convinces the remaining Skrulls on Earth to transform into cows before he hypnotizes them into forgetting their previous identities. The Skrulls are then left free to live out their days in peace on a farm. Following the Fantastic Four's bamboozling of the Skrulls on the mothership, the shape-shifters don't try another full Skrull invasion of Earth again for 46 years, with the release of 2008’s Secret Invasion.
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Written by Brian Michael Bendis and pencilled by Leinil Francis Yu, Secret Invasion capitalizes on the idea Skrulls could be literally anyone and plants seeds of mistrust within the Marvel Universe. With the superhero community still reeling from the events of Civil War, which tore families, friends and teams apart, there is already a heightened sense of paranoia, especially within the Avengers. The government-backed Mighty Avengers -- led by Tony Stark -- seek to apprehend the underground New Avengers. However, the New Avengers soon encounter a Skrull sleeper agent posing as Elektra, and this begins a steady reveal that the Skrulls' invasion of Earth has already been underway for years.
In the pages of 2006/2007's New Avengers: Illuminati, it’s revealed that the secret group known as the Illuminati -- which is made up of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Black Bolt, Professor X, Doctor Strange and Namor -- is working behind the scenes to protect the Earth from threats too big to reveal to the wider superhuman community. One mission involves them travelling to the Skrull homeworld shortly after the Kree-Skrull War to promise that any more invasions of Earth would result in serious consequences.
Empress Veranke of the Skrull Empire captures the Illuminati and studies them before they make their escape. Armed with intimate knowledge of superhuman physiology, Veranke plots for years to plant Skrull sleeper agents throughout Earth, so that her people can fulfill an ancient prophecy claiming the Earth as the true home of the Skrulls following the destruction of their own homeworld at the hands of Galactus.
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The Skrulls’ Secret Invasion is extremely effective. They disable S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers, attack Thunderbolts mountain, transport the Baxter Building into the negative zone and distract the superhero community by breaking dozens of supervillains out of prison. However, Mr. Fantastic comes up with a way of exposing hidden Skrulls, which forces Veranke’s hand. The last stand of the Skrull invasion in Central Park is ultimately thwarted by almost every superhuman in the Marvel Universe (as well as Norman Osborn, who kills Veranke with a well-timed shot).
Since their defeat at the end of Secret Invasion, the Skrull population has been seriously impacted, and it would take a long time for them to come close to being the threat that they once were. Of course, the Captain Marvel movie will likely handle the Skrull invasion differently, and we have no idea just how big of a threat the Skrulls really are. We’ll have to wait for the movie, which releases in 2019, to find out if they could in fact be planning a secret invasion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jude Law as Mar-Vell, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos and Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau. The film arrives March 8, 2019.