Invincible’s second season isn’t as powerful as its first. But it establishes a floor for Robert Kirkman’s superhero series: Even its weakest, most scattered episodes prove to be pretty good. Across eight episodes, Season 2 establishes a familiar rhythm, with emotional high points that work wonders and odd story structure that creates a fair amount of wheel-spinning. Some of the drama plays like a running gag, but in the end, it works just fine.
The wounds Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) sustained at the hands of his supervillain father are the crux of these new episodes. Anytime he expresses doubt, listlessness, depression, or rage – especially in conversations with his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh), who deals with her own issues of abandonment – Invincible is at its emotional apex. Mark’s scenes with characters like Amber (Zazie Beetz) and William (Andrew Rannells) are necessary to provide a delightful reprieve from all the misery, so it’s a relief the show isn’t just about the Graysons, but the further it widens its net to include other characters, the less finessed it becomes.
The tradeoffs are padded episode runtimes and stories that tend to go in circles. Supporting characters appear, establish themselves as key parts of the story, and then go away for long stretches of time. (Case in point: Sterling K. Brown-voiced inter-dimensional traveler Angstrom Levy, a villain whose disappearing act was exacerbated by the four-month hiatus between Episodes 4 and 5.) Subplots like Robot’s romantic tension with Monster Girl and his attempts to “fix” her reverse-aging curse receive obligatory, once-an-episode check-ins that go nowhere interesting. And despite the violence inflicted on these characters, death no longer seems to stick. For a show that began with a superhero massacre, that’s disappointing.
Invincible tends to lose focus whenever Mark and Debbie aren’t on screen, and the absence of Grayson family patriarch Nolan (J.K. Simmons) looms large over the ensemble. He’s an all-powerful, all-punishing father, as much a god as he is a scumbag dad — which makes it all the more complicated when Nolan has a change of heart on another planet, far away from Mark and Debbie while their wounds are yet to heal.
Mark’s personal trials and tribulations both satirize and exemplify the dilemma central to most superheroes: one of identity. This isn’t just a matter of living a double life and keeping secrets from loved ones, but of Mark figuring out who he is in the wake of his father’s betrayal. Scenes of Invincible wandering the skies, purposeless, are among Season 2’s most indelible images, and enough can’t be said about the tremendous sense of resilience and vulnerability Yeun and Oh bring to Mark and Debbie, respectively.
Unfortunately, Walton Goggins’ performance continues to be a weak link. A debonair onscreen presence, he gives us almost nothing as DGA head honcho Cecil – not even a hint of the low-key, chilling modulation that seems to be the point. On the plus side, his right hand man Donald (Chris Diamantopoulos) gets something resembling an interesting arc with his tale of biomechanical replacement. Unfortunately, Kirkman and crew would rather have their characters talk about the effects of these changes, which we rarely see or feel, instead of exploring the emotional and psychological implications of this sci-fi concept. It’s a disappointing echo of Robot’s (Zachary Quinto) cloning subplot from Season 1.
This is where Season 2’s uneven structure inadvertently works in its favor. If an episode is lagging, it’s never long before it cuts away to something hopefully more interesting. Usually, it succeeds by turning its attention to Mark and Eve’s (Gillian Jacons) fraught self-esteem as burgeoning superheroes or Debbie’s quiet struggles with re-adjusting to daily life. She receives an additionally captivating and complex storyline midway through the season after choosing to raise Nolan’s child from another woman (and another species).
All this builds to a climax involving Levy, which is a bit of a head-scratcher given how little he factors into the rest of the season. (It also means the show doesn’t really take advantage of its multiverse concept.) The creators are familiar enough with what works about Invincible at this stage, to the point that all they need to do is recall images of Nolan from the end of season 1 in order to make a statement. Whether this means re-purposing footage in the form of flashbacks, or even slotting Mark into familiar poses and environments – an especially chilling use of animation, given his fears of becoming his father – it usually leaves a searing impact. It all makes for a strong foundation from which to launch a previously greenlit Season 3 that Kirkman swears won’t take as long as its predecessor.
Verdict
Despite its scattered structure, Invincible’s second season shines a light on its strongest elements long enough to leave a lasting impact. Supporting characters veer in and out of focus, but Mark, Debbie, and Nolan make a powerful dramatic trio, even when they’re far apart. The show has too much going on at times, but it’s at its best when it lets its central family be difficult and uncomfortably ugly – which is to say, covered in blood and bone fragments.
