After 15 years, Samuel L. Jackson is getting his turn as the lead in a Marvel Cinematic Universe project. The man who put the Avengers together is branching off on his own for the upcoming Secret Invasion, which sees Fury returning from space to stop an escalating war for Earth between humanity and a radicalized group of disgruntled Skrull refugees.

The last time we saw Fury on-screen, he and the Skrulls seemed to be in perfect harmony. The post-credits sting of Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed that the Fury who was working with Tom Holland's Peter Parker was actually Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in disguise the whole time. The real Fury was somewhere out in deep space aboard a Skull ship, sitting with his feet up sipping on a cocktail on a virtually-generated beach before getting back to business.

Unfortunately for Fury, by the time Secret Invasion rolls round, his lackadaisical approach to their re-homing has seen a rebel faction of Skrulls decide to take matters into their own hands. Led by Kingsley Ben-Adir's Gravik, they set up camp in radioactive wastelands deep within Russia, plotting to seize control of the planet they're already on instead of waiting for a new world, and they intend to use their incredible shape-shifting abilities - as well as force - to claim their new home.

All of this takes a toll on Fury, as Jackson explains to Empire Magazine. He's lost his eye-patch, his goatee has grown out, and this is a world-weary man that needs help wherever he can find it. The chance to lead a Marvel project was long in the waiting for Jackson, who relished the opportunity to flesh out Fury's backstory - although he hopes he'll be around for much longer too.

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in Secret Invasion
Image via Disney+

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What's Going on With Nick Fury?

"Here you have a guy who's showing his face, and showing his age. It's an opportunity to humanise someone that everybody thinks is superhuman. He's trying to solve a problem without people who have superpowers, and there's a very good explanation for that. That'll come up.

We're also filling in blanks about Fury's life that we don't know. We're meeting people he knew when he was out there on his own, before there were Avengers or anyone else. I had to figure out some stuff and work out some new things, which I've been trying to do for a while. It's great to have an opportunity to find out who he was and delve into how much of a toll his job actually takes on his personal life.

I love playing him, and I love the fact that they're opening him up to all these other possibilities and this whole life that he has. So hopefully I'm not done, and in this new phase of the MCU I'll still be floating in and out of there somehow, some way."

Secret Invasion is currently slated to premiere on June 21 on Disney+ and will include six episodes. Check out the trailer for the upcoming series below: