The second season of Invincible has come and gone, leaving us splattered in blood and begging for more. Despite the weird release schedule — the first half of season 2 was released back in November of last year while the back half aired starting in March — the show has held the interest of fans as it expanded the story, built out the mythology and introduced new character. Mark Grayson's life has gotten very complicated, very fast, and it was already a mess when we left him at the end of season 1.
We have a while to wait before the arrival of Invincible season 3 (although the wait will be much shorter than the one between seasons 1 and 2, happily). In the meantime, let's celebrate the best of what the show gave us over the past few months. Here are all eight episodes of Invincible season 2 ranked "worst" to "best," those being relative terms:
The first season of Invincible benefited from a strong sense of focus. The superhero Omni-Man, aka Nolan Grayson, killed the Guardians of the Globe, this world's version of the Avengers or the Justice League or whatever superhero team you want to sub in there. Meanwhile, Nolan's son Mark discovers that he has superpowers of his own and starts fighting crime under the name Invincible. We don't know why Nolan did what he did. How long before Mark and his mother Debbie find out what happened?
That plotline gives the first season a strong spine. The second season is looser and more complex, with more plotlines and characters fighting for space. Omni-Man has left Earth and Mark is working with government operative Cecil to try and keep the planet safe. The superhero Atom Eve has left the new Guardians of the Globe and is trying to make it on her own. A Martian living in secret on Earth decides to try and become a superhero. Cecil's assistant Donald discovers that he's a cyborg. All of these plotlines are touched on in Episode 202, although none of them touch each other. It makes for an episode lacking in momentum, since none of the individual plotlines really have the space to arrive somewhere interesting.
We also don't get any of the brutally violent set pieces Invincible is famous for, although Mark's battle against the Batman-like Darkwing II and later a deep sea monster are fun to watch. As you can guess by the title, this episode leans into the fun side of the show, which is entirely valid. Everything works, but most of it is transitional, and nothing hits as hard as we know the show can in its best moments.
7. Episode 201, "A Lesson For Your Next Life"
The season 2 premiere picks up the pieces from the season 1 finale, when Omni-Man revealed that he was here to prepare Earth for Viltrumite takeover, killed thousands of people, beat his son nearly to death after failing to convince him to turn to the dark side, and then left. There's no coming back from something like that, and Mark and Debbie both have dark clouds hanging over them.
But the world still needs saving, so Mark goes on more adventures. He meets Angstrom Levy, a multiverse-hopping do-gooder with dreams of advancing human civilization forward. As you can guess from motivations like that, by the end of the episode he suffers a horrible accident and ends up a deformed, half-crazed supervillain bent on revenge against Invincible, whom he blames for his downfall. It's good setup, but it'll be quite a while before we see any payoff.
That's Episode 201 in a nutshell. It's prepping us for major twists and turns to come later; see also Cecil replacing Rudy with the Immortal as new head of the Guardians of the Globe. All of this needs to happen, but we haven't reached cruising altitude yet.
We get closer with episode 203, "This MIssive, This Machination," which is divided in two halves. In the part of the episode set on Earth, Debbie has an upsetting encounter at a support group for the spouses of deceased superheroes. Meanwhile, in a much more fanciful plot, Mark gets a visit from a bug-like alien disguised as his favorite comic book character, Seance Dog. The alien wants Mark to come with them back to their home planet, where Mark can help by stopping a storm of asteroids. But when he gets there, he finds someone waiting for him: Omni-Man, his father! Shock! Drama! Scandal! But the rest of that story will play out in another episode.
The best parts of Episode 203 involve Allen the Alien, who may be the best character on the show. We get a full backstory on this lovable space bro, meet some of his loved ones, and then...see him get torn to shreds by a trio of Viltrumites before his boss pulls the plug on him.
So that's upsetting, but it's also very thrilling, and I was right in my assumption that they weren't going to kill off a deightful character like Allen quite that quickly. But again, we have to wait to see how that turns out. These first few episodes of Invincible season 2 have that in common; there are a lot of exciting scenes, a lot of interesting character developments, but this is a serialized show and a lot of them only work as setup for something more entertaining down the line.
5. Episode 206, "It's Not That Simple"
"It's Not That Simple" follows up on Episode 205, "This Must Come As A Shock," which ends with our characters way up sh*t Creek without a paddle, and also there are holes in the boat and the water is full of flying piranhas. Some of the Guardians of the Globe are up in orbit trying to stop a Martian ship full of parasitic Sequids from taking over Earth, while the others are planetside having a surprisingly difficult time fighting the Lizard League, C-tier villains who have found their groove at the most inconvenient time.
The start of the episode wraps up both of these plotlines, with the highlight definitely being Rex Splode getting shot in the head, barely surviving, and then beating the hell out of King Lizard while he oozes blood from the gaping hole in his noggin. The rest of the episode is much quieter, and it just can't compete with the adrenaline rush of the first 10 minutes.
Again, the stuff that happens is important, like Mark and Amber discussing their relationship or Mark piecing together that his dad left clues about how to defeat Viltrumites in a series of pulpy sci-fi novels he wrote and self-published. But Rex was the MVP of the episode, and his best scene was over pretty quick.
In this case, the setup is better than the follow-through. In Episode 205, we learn that a ship full of Martian Sequids is headed for Earth, and that the Lizard League is attacking a government compound. The Guardians of the Globe split up to deal with the crises, and it goes spectacularly badly all around.
Things are a little better up in space, although the images of the Sequid horde sliding and sliming all over the place is memorably scary. The real action is down on Earth, where Rex Splode, Dupli-Kate and Shrinking Rae find themselves having trouble dealing with the Lizard League, much to their surprise. The episode goes for blood, with Dupli-Kate's last two bodies getting smashed to bits, Shrinking Rae getting crushed inside the throat of a big and nasty Lizard League member, and Rex losing a hand before finally blowing off the guy's head. It ends up that none of these setbacks are permanent — superheroes are famous for bouncing back from the most dire of straights — but it feels terrifying in the moment.
I also have to commend actor Jason Mantzoukas for giving a crazed, unbearable asshole edge to Rex that's as fun for us as it is annoying for everyone around him, although he does show a softer side in this episode and the next. If Episode 205 had included the conclusions to these battles, it might be further up the list. Because it's not really a complete episode on its own, it doesn't quite crack the top three.
3. Episode 207, "I'm Not Going Anywhere"
Invincible features a lot of violent set pieces which hit all the harder because the show mostly looks like a Saturday morning cartoon you could have watched in the 2000s, and then for a few minutes an episode it turns into a bloody nightmare no decent network would air at 2:00 a.m. That contrast is key to the effectiveness of "I'm Not Going Anywhere." Most of this episode follows Mark and Amber around as they go on adorable dates. Then a Viltrumite shows up and threatens Amber, and we realize just how wide and deep the gulf is between these terrifying aliens and almost everyone else they encounter.
Mark and the Viltrumite, Anissa, get into a fight, and it's shocking and exciting in the way the best fight scenes of the show are. But Episode 207 keeps its eye on the emotional core: Mark's relationship with Amber. Shaken, Amber realizes that however much they love each other, she doesn't want to go through life constantly being terrified. Their breakup scene is tender and mature, with much love going to Zazie Beetz for her performance.
That's another of Invincible's secret weapons: beyond the lore and the drama and the violence, the voice cast is embarrassingly top-notch. Most of them could carry their own show, and the fact that such strong performers play supporting roles is nigh-miraculous.
The season 2 finale finds Mark face to face once again with Angstrom Levy, whom he last saw in the season premiere, when a scientific accident turned him into a monstrous supervillain. We've occasionally gotten glimpses of what Angstrom's been up to in the meantime, but Mark hasn't thought about him since, and I do think that hurts the episode a tad. This is the big finish to the season and it turns on a character who hasn't been front of mind since November of last year.
That said, the show played fair with this build-up, and Mark's battle with Angstrom is spectacular. Angstrom controls the multiverse, a concept that Marvel and DC have run into the ground on the big screen. Invincible is smart to confine this multiverse-hopping battle to one episode, so we can enjoy it without fear of it creeping into the rest of the show.
The battle is by turns terrifying, brutal and hilarious, as the show sneaks in little cameos from Batman (offscreen and unnamed so as not to invoke legal action) and Spider-Man (changed slightly so as not to invoke legal action). Invincible takes itself seriously, but it's happy to wink and nudge the audience from time to time. As in "I'm Not Going Anywhere," the finale gets a lot of mileage from playing with these contrasts; funny next to serious, meta next to bloody bloody bloody.
And man, does this battle get bloody. The battle between Mark and Angstrom turns intensely personal once Angstrom threatens Mark's mother and brother (Sandra Oh deserves a shout-out for killing it as Debbie all season). But once again, Invincible knows that violence isn't enough. The real power of the episode comes from the emotional fallout, as Mark reckons with the fact that he's crossed a line. By the end of the season, it feels like something has shifted in him. He can't go home again, which probably needed to happen if he's going to face whatever's next.
1. Episode 204, "It's Been A While"
When Mark arrives on the planet Thraxa, he finds out he is not here to help stop an asteroid storm but to reunite with his father Omni-Man, last seen flying away from Earth after killing scores of people and leaving Mark beaten nearly to death. It is an awkward reunion.
Omni-Man doesn't get as much attention in the second season as he did in the first, but he's still at the heart of this story, and an episode that revolves around him can't help but feel like an event. We're glued to our seats right from the start, when we see what became of Omni-Man after he flew away from Earth. Invincible has a habit of scoring montages with little-known rock or pop songs, and it's never worked better then at the top of "It's Been A While" as Nolan drifts aimlessly through the galaxy to a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Avalanche." The sequence that parallels Nolan's post-exodus malaise with Debbie's depression back on Earth is also a standout.
And all this happens before the fists start flying. Since Nolan abandoned his mission, the other Viltrumites are now hunting him down. A trio find Mark and Nolan on Thraxa, and no jaw, spine, or chest cavity is safe. Blood, limbs and organs fly willy-nilly. It feels as dangerous as the show has trained us to expect, and ends with Nolan being carted away while Mark is given his dad's old post: it's now his responsibility to prepare Earth for Viltrumite takeover.
The violence is breathtaking, but the show also remembers to develop Nolan's character. He isn't the same monster he was back on Earth, but he isn't quite a good guy either. Will he ever get there? We're all waiting on season 3 to find out more. The producers have already been working on it for many months, so we won't have to wait nearly as long as we did after the end of season 1. We might even dare to hope to be watching new episodes of Invincible by the end of the year.
Next. Omni-Man. Invincible creator doesn't think Omni-Man's story should be considered a "redemption arc". dark
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