"Invincible," Season 2: review

Mark (Steven Yeun) and Eve (Gillian Jacobs) have a moment.

Season 2 of "Invincible" ran for eight episodes from 2023 to this year. The first four episodes aired on Amazon Prime Video from November 3, 2023, to November 24. The last four episodes aired from March 14, 2024, to April 4. Streaming services are still working out the kinks in how they deliver a series: some prefer to tease the series out by releasing only an episode a week (cf. "Rick and Morty" and "Reacher," Season 2), or they release everything at once. The risk in releasing everything at once is, as you can imagine, that there's a paroxysm of bingeing followed by a total flatline of viewership. This is why more and more streaming services are opting for the slower way of delivering episodes. It's frustrating for the viewer but better for the streaming service's numbers. That said, most viewers hated the "break it in two" approach for this show, and Amazon has promised that Season 3 will be released without a huge hiatus at the halfway point.

The story for Season 2 teases the eventual arrival of the Viltrum Empire on Earth. Nolan Grayson, a.k.a. Omni-Man (JK Simmons) and one of the top Viltrumites, was supposed to prepare the planet for his empire's arrival, but by the end of Season 1, after he had beaten his son Mark (Steven Yeun) to a pulp, Omni-Man had left Earth. Part of Season 2, then, explores the question of where Omni-Man went, plus the implications of a Viltrumite leaving his post—something never done before in Viltrumite history. The season also explores the difficulties that Mark and Amber (Zazee Beetz) face as Mark is constantly called away by Global Defense Agency head Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins) to solve this or that world-threatening problem. Mark, now in college, is lured away from Earth to the planet Thraxa, where he meets his father, who has become the emperor of the insectile Thraxans, beings that live for only one Earth year, a fact that makes them very future-oriented and unwilling to find fault or assign blame when things go wrong. Mark is deeply conflicted about meeting Nolan again: Omni-Man, before he left Earth, had plowed a path of destruction across the planet, killing thousands of delicate human beings whom Mark saw as his true kindred. Nolan tries to convince Mark to help him defend Thraxa from an imminent attack by Viltrumite agents intent on bringing Nolan in for having abandoned Earth. Meanwhile, other subplots include a potential attack by sequids (hive-mind mollusks) from Mars; an attempt by the Lizard League to take over the world, resulting in Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas) getting shot in the head; Mark's mother Debbie (Sandra Oh) trying to move on with her life; Mark's discovery that he has a half-Thraxan half-brother named Oliver because Nolan has bred with Andressa (Rhea Seehorn); Cecil's assistant Donald Ferguson (Chris Diamantopoulos) finding out a horrifying truth about himself; Dr. Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown), who can create portals to different universes in the multiverse, becoming Invincible's sworn enemy after a horrible accident leaves him deformed and saddled with the combined memories of hundreds of his alternate selves who all encountered evil alternate versions of Invincible; cyclopean Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) undergoing a surprising transformation after (1) trying to recruit Mark to help with a rebellion against the Viltrum Empire and (2) having a near-death experience. Mark also encounters the frighteningly powerful Viltrumite Anissa (Shantel VanSanten, Becca Butcher in "The Boys"), who reminds Mark he has a duty to take over his father's work of preparing Earth for the Viltrum Empire's arrival... there's a lot going on, and in the background is the fact that, even as Mark and Amber's relationship becomes rocky through no fault of their own, Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs) is in the background, pining for Mark.

I'd heard that the quality of the animation for Season 2 had been improved, but to me, everything looked much the same. The complicated interweaving of multiple subplots kept the story interesting as the action moved from place to place, especially with Nolan being captured by the attacking Viltrumite agents on Thraxa and taken to a prison ship for execution. Nolan's time on Earth had changed him, but not in time to stop him from murdering thousands of Earthlings before leaving the planet. The Nolan we meet on Thraxa is remorseful and compassionate—something he doesn't understand about himself, having been a loyal Viltrumite for centuries. Perhaps the most noticeable change, maybe in response to fan reactions, was Amber's personality, which went from bitchy know-it-all to something a bit nicer and more toned down. The Amber of Season 2 is still unhappy that Mark has to leave on his missions for the Global Defense Agency, but she's more or less resigned to this as part and parcel of life with a superheroic boyfriend. One thing I always found strange about Amber was the race-swapping: she's black on the TV show, but white in the comics, and absolutely nothing is made of her race in the TV show, which makes me wonder why the showrunners decided to change her race. In fact, that's a general question for any race-swapped character in any show: if race really doesn't matter, why do the swap at all? In any event, I'm not bothered by Amber's complexion; the character has problems, but race isn't one of them.

I've heard that the Amazon show diverges somewhat from the plot of the comic books (I'd heard the same about "The Boys"), but for the most part, I've been enjoying the complicated story. I'm a bit disappointed that Season 2 has, like every other TV show and movie, gone in a multiversal direction with the introduction of the portal-creating Angstrom Levy, whose power is a biological version of Rick's portal gun from "Rick and Morty." I'm intrigued, though, to see where the relationship between Mark and his father goes, and whether Nolan will ever reconcile with his estranged, Earthbound wife Debbie, whom the Viltrumite Nolan had previously referred to (while the Global Defense Agency listened in) as a "more like a pet." All of that will be explored in later seasons, I guess. I was intrigued by an interesting twist relating to Mark and Eve in the very last episode: Mark meets Eve's future self when he's trapped in a desolate alternate universe by Angstrom Levy, and this Eve, twenty years older than the Eve he knows, confesses she was in love with Mark. She implores him to go back to his own universe and timeline and to tell the younger Eve he loves her or to tell her he doesn't so she can go on with her life. This will have implications later on, I'm sure.

Overall, the story of "Invincible" remains intriguing and hasn't gotten stale. I keep hoping for better-quality animation and for Jason Mantzoukas's voice work as Rex Splode to become less annoying, but aside from those complaints, I've found the series to be watchable and enjoyable. I look forward to whatever's coming next. We're building up to a huge Viltrumite war, so Season 3 ought to be a blast.