Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Secret Invasion finale.

In the wake of the finale of Marvel’s Secret Invasion, it’s clear that there will be some strong ripple effects felt across the world. Even though Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) has possibly met his end in the wake of that MCU power-off battle with G’iah (Emilia Clarke), his decision to play the long game in terms of sending his Skrull rebels to infiltrate the highest roles in government is now leading us to question everything we thought we knew about at least one of our favorite Avengers. With the reveal that Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) has been replaced by a Skrull, the question now becomes: for how long?

With U.S. President Ritson’s (Dermot Mulroney) decision to go on the warpath against Skrulls of all kinds, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) may have his work cut out for him moving forward — and we can only speculate how the events of this finale will set up incoming stories like The Marvels and the Armor Wars movie, especially for Rhodey. After the finale’s premiere on Wednesday, Collider had the opportunity to catch up with director Ali Selim about some of the episode’s most pivotal moments. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Selim discusses how long Rhodey has been a Skrull, the season’s Western influences, filming the fight sequence between G’iah and Gravik, and more.

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COLLIDER: You spoke with my colleague, Perri Nemiroff, before the season started about the shots in Episode 5 that pay clear homage to certain spy movies. Now that the episode is out, I would love to know when and where you leaned into those influences in that episode.

ALI SELIM: At a certain point, the performances and the story take over from specific visual references that inspired us while we were prepping. But for me, the story has always been a movement from a noir espionage story into Nick Fury realizing that this was his own battle, and he becomes sort of a classic American Western gunslinger on Main Street. And so, as we moved through the presidential ambush in [Episode] 4, we really leaned more on Western references, like The Searchers and Unforgiven. The end of Episode 5 is a very clear love letter to John Ford’s The Searchers, and the beginning of Episode 6, where he’s walking into Skrull Town, a very Western kind of feel. But, from the very beginning, we had abandoned the sense of noir in the final three episodes and leaned more on a couple of classic American Western references.

Image via Disney+

The confrontation moment with Gravik and Fury, who is eventually revealed to not be Fury — in terms of filming on the day, how many people on set knew that it wasn’t the real Nick Fury, or was it shot as straightforward as possible in a way where it wouldn’t be spoiled?

SELIM: It’s the trust in the crew that has been with Marvel before and will be with Marvel again. We shot in London at Pinewood Studios, but we didn’t feel the need for any deflective scenes where we shot a fake scene just to deflect the spoiler of it all. Everybody was aware of what we were doing and in the moment. The big thing between Sam and Kingsley took days and days to shoot, and they both knew, and we both knew. But then, when the reveal comes, everybody who was on set watched Sam step off the mark and Emilia [Clarke] step on the mark for the transition to happen. But your question was how many people? 39. [Laughs] I don’t know. I mean, we didn’t hide it from anybody.

Speaking of the fight between G’iah and Gravik, it’s really the first time that we’re seeing both of them tap into these powers that they’ve been given. What’s the blend between shooting a fight like that on the day, practically, in the studio, and then things that had to be input with the visual effects of it all? How are you able to do as much practically as you want to do versus having to rely on the visual effects team to fill in some of those things?

SELIM: That fight is entirely visual effects, giving visual effects what they needed. Part of it was the complexity of the choreography of the shape-shifting from one power to another. We always had a sense of the story, and we storyboarded it out — it goes from this power to this power to this power. Then, when you get into stunts and second unit, there were certain constraints where it couldn’t go from this power to this power to this power because of the way it had to move, or [G’iah] had to move.

Because of that, the feeling always was, as much of this that can be passed on to visual effects, the better, so that we have that freedom to choreograph it in a more elegant way than maybe a prosthetic would have allowed us to do or constrained us or backed us into a corner. That said, it’s also a show that relies heavily on practical sets and practical props to make it feel more human and more human-scaled, and less effect-y. So it’s a balance of those two things.

Image via Disney+

With the knowledge that we have now, that important characters have been replaced by Skrulls, did you have conversations with Marvel, with the actors, about that specific timeframe? Were there any clues given or passed on as to when they might have been replaced earlier?

SELIM: Yeah, none of it is me running wild. [Laughs] There are a lot of conversations with Marvel, but it all ends up in the script that Rhodey has been a Skrull, and we can only assume he’s been a Skrull since [Captain America] Civil War. And yet, I think the definitive answer is not as much fun as letting the audience go back to Rhodey scenes and unpack it and see what they think. I think that’s what Marvel would say, too. “Yeah, it’s an idea, but definitive? Go explore, see what you come up with.”

One thing that fans have been pointing out in the finale is the identity of the man that Sonya Falsworth unveils when they find everyone hidden in that Skrull facility at the end. Can you confirm that actor’s identity?

SELIM: I can’t. There were moments where we thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun if that was Chris Evans?” And then there were moments where we thought maybe it should just be an anonymous person to show how much the Skrulls are grabbing anybody. So, I’m not deflecting your question, I just don’t really know the answer — other than he’s just a guy.

All episodes of Secret Invasion are available to stream on Disney+.