Secret Invasion: Ashes Of The Watcher

DISCLAIMER:

This screenplay is a non-commercial, transformative fan work based on characters and elements owned by Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company.

All rights to original characters, dialogue, plot structure, and story development within this script belong to the author.

This work is intended for creative display and tribute purposes only.

No copyright infringement is intended.

The story opens at the Smithsonian, Sam Wilson gives a restrained speech about Steve Rogers and the shield, refusing to fully accept it yet because he knows the weight of what it represents. Rhodey is present in the crowd, but the scene quietly hints that something is off about him.

Sam’s hesitation frames the whole part: he respects the symbol, but he is not ready to let himself be trapped by it.

At the same time, the Skrull refugee situation is collapsing. Talos is shown protecting a fragile hidden community that Fury once helped preserve, but the sanctuary is compromised when an injured Skrull arrives with news that Base 2 has been taken over by Gravik’s forces. Gravik is no longer just a rebel leader; he is organizing a wider war and building a new kind of power structure.

The public world begins turning chaotic and deceptive. The Hand, once treated as a shadowy cult, now presents itself as a force helping the displaced and hungry, while secretly operating as part of a larger destabilization campaign.

Everett Ross attempts a deal with them, but the meeting is violently hijacked by the Winter Soldier, except this is not Bucky, but an impostor used to frame him. Ross is brutally attacked, and the staged violence plants the public belief that James Barnes has become a threat. That false identity crime becomes one of the story’s key engines.

From there, the political machinery locks in. John Walker is elevated as the new Captain America in a grand public ceremony, with patriotic spectacle replacing uncertainty. But behind the scenes, the government uses declare Bucky Barnes a kill-on-sight target. Sharon Carter is present, and her reaction suggests she does not fully trust the official story.

Deep underground, the Skrull faction becomes even more dangerous. Mira D’Rann, reveals a breakthrough technology that can do more than imitate a person’s body: it can reproduce memories, behaviors, thought patterns, and mannerisms. Gravik sees immediate military value in it and pushes her toward testing it on important targets. The revelation that a Skrull can now become not just a copy, but a convincing behavioral replica, changes the nature of the threat entirely. It also explains how the impostors can be so convincing at every level.

Gravik’s ideology is developed in full through his speeches to Skrulls and his manipulations of The Hand. He frames humanity as a system that will always betray the weak, and he contrasts Talos’s patient diplomacy with his own hardline worldview. But the story makes clear that Gravik is not simply a nationalist or avenger; he is also using Skrull suffering as cover for his own appetite for control. He wants to become the central force that decides the future, not merely the protector of his people.

Sam and Sharon become the active human resistance to the lie. Sam refuses to accept the official accusation against Barnes, identifies old HYDRA code in the assassin’s movements, and realizes someone is trying to manufacture a war using copied identity and tampered footage. Sharon joins him, revealing that she kept hidden SHIELD backup data and knows how to disappear the evidence trail. Their path leads them to Maria Hill’s hidden safehouse in Jordan, where Hill confirms that Skrull infiltration is real and that trust itself is now the battlefield. Hill also points them toward Barnes in East Carpathia, giving the chase a concrete next step.

Meanwhile, Talos’s family arc turns into a reunion and a rescue mission. Talos evacuates the camp, orders the Skrulls to shift into human forms, and sends civilians to a secret underground base. He then finds G’iah, who has been secretly watching Gravik’s operation and surviving in isolation. Their confrontation is emotional and tense: she blames him for still trusting humans too much, while he admits he has failed to protect her properly. Still, they finally align and agree to work together to stop Gravik and recover Mira. There its also revealed Mira is actually G’iah’s sister and Talos’ daughter.

The climax of Part I is a full-scale trap. Walker leads a mission to the abandoned site near Base 2 in the forest, where his team is ambushed by Skrulls. Gravik overpowers Walker in combat, then literally becomes him by shape-shifting into his likeness. Walker is captured and taken into Mira’s memory-transfer pods, where a new Skrull, Thran, is transformed into a perfect Captain America copy by absorbing Walker’s memories and combat behavior.

The false Captain America returns in a live broadcast, gives a bitter speech attacking the legacy of the Avengers, then murders a city mayor on stage with the shield in a grotesque, televised act of terror. The world sees its new Captain become a monster, exactly as Gravik intended.

Gravik then appears in a media interview in his human form to weaponize the scandal, using deepfaked clips, distorted archives, and manufactured “evidence” to frame the Avengers and SHIELD as the real architects of war.

The part ends with Mira finally seeing the consequences of her invention. She then decides not to work with Gravik anymore