"Invincible," Season 3: review

Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) goes after Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs)

[WARNING: some spoilers.]

I'm not sure I'd understand the Invincible series if I didn't listen to Charlie's commentary over at the YouTube channel Emergency Awesome. Charlie, a movie-lore and comics-lore nerd, does exegeses of various shows and publications—mostly shows. I get the feeling that he skews more left than right; he generally keeps politics out of his commentaries, never commenting on woke Hollywood, but he's made the occasional barbed Trump remark. Well, whatever. No one's perfect. Anyway, without giving detailed spoilers (unless he's doing a spoiler review), Charlie will often lay out the salient features of whatever movie or comics universe he's describing, and if it's a long storyline, he'll give some hints as to what to anticipate next, often while asking his commenters not to reveal details when they comment. It's mostly thanks to Charlie that I understand the Invincible universe well enough both to follow the story and to understand the story's greater implications. This isn't to say that the Amazon streaming show "Invincible" is poorly written and impossible to follow on its own terms; it just contains a lot of characters as well as a plot that seems to be moving toward, well, something, and it's good to have Charlie around to decode and demystify everything.

Season 3 has the moment in which Atom Ave (Gillian Jacobs) gets her ass handed to her by Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as the Viltrumite Empire moves closer to taking over Earth. I've mentioned this moment before in my review of Season 1. Eve doesn't stay dead, though; as Charlie points out, she has god-level powers that are unleashed only when she's in extremis, so she heals herself by instinct. Eve is able to revive herself during the battle and, while she doesn't beat Conquest, she softens him up enough for Mark/Invincible (Steven Yeun) to defeat him. Season 3 also gives us the death of a major character (whose death was faithful to the comics), the escape of Omni-Man (JK Simmons) from a Viltrumite prison with the help of Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), the evolving and deepening relationship between Mark and Eve, and the maturation of Mark's purple half-brother Oliver, whose mother was an insectoid Thraxan. Thraxans have a very short life span of maybe a year or two, but Oliver is half Viltrumite, and with Viltrumite genes being so dominant, he's ensured a much longer life than his fellow Thraxans. Those dominant genes are also the reason why Oliver looks like a normal human boy except for the purple skin. Oliver is still trying to figure out this whole superhero thing; sometimes he gets it wrong and causes chaos, but sometimes he gets it right. One argument that Oliver has with Mark is about when and whether it's ever justified to kill a villain. This question is explored repeatedly in Season 3.

Because Mark is aware, thanks to his dad and to the Viltrumite named Anissa (Shantel VanSanten), that the Viltrumite Empire is on its way to conquer Earth, Mark trains under Cecil (Walton Goggins), the special agent tasked with organizing superheroes and defending Earth from cosmic and Terran enemies. Season 3 gives us more in the way of multiple universes, hell realms, and time travel, and the Viltrumite Conquest doesn't arrive on Earth until the final episode. As usual, multiple plot lines interweave as Mark tries to figure out how to protect his family while still engaging in the superhero gig. Nolan/Omni-Man and Allen the Alien are also presumably on their way to Earth, with Omni-Man being repentant for all the destruction he'd caused on our planet, and for the insulting way in which he'd referred to his wife Debbie (Sandra Oh) as a pet back in Season 1. While in prison, Nolan admits to Allen that misses his wife, but she's now dating a regular human named Paul. I suppose Season 4 will reveal what happens to Mark's family when Nolan comes back to Earth around the same time the Viltrumite Empire does. (Conquest was just a vanguard, but as Nolan reveals to Allen the Alien, only fifty pureblood Viltrumites remain in the universe.)

Season 3 remained watchable for me, but as the stakes inevitably get raised (as seems to happen in all superhero stories), the battles become ever more titanic, and for an old guy like me, that can get numbing after a while. The dialogue remains inconsistent in terms of its cleverness and wittiness; the season brought back one of my favorite characters from Season 1, Machine Head (Jeffrey Donovan), from whom I was expecting another torrent of hilariously sharp-tongued banter, but Machine Head wasn't given much to do this time around. The story in Season 3 has been building out since the events of Season 1. While Earth faces multiple dangers from places like hell and alternate universes, the main threat remains the inevitable arrival of the rest of the Viltrumites. As Mark continues to grow in power, seeing himself as an Earthling first and foremost, we can see the shape of the conflict to come. I don't know all of the twists and turns the comic story will take, but I assume Mark and his father, along with Allen the Alien, will do what they can to defend Earth from the coming invasion.

The whole story is silly, of course, but Season 3 is a mostly successful continuation of the storyline from Season 2, and according to Charlie, while the animated show does diverge from the comics in certain ways, it's overall faithful to the original story. I'm rooting for Mark and Eve's relationship, and I hope to see a reconciliation between Nolan and his ex-wife Debbie, even if they don't get back together. Nolan has a lot to apologize for, and in a real way, it's impossible for him ever to make up for all the destruction he'd caused while on Earth. But Nolan's time on Thraxa taught him a thing or two about love and loyalty, and I get the impression that he's keen to apply those lessons back on Earth.

Season 3 was generally watchable and entertaining if a bit fatiguing with all of those titanic battles. The battle between Mark and Conquest, though, was gritty and personal (albeit shot through with way too much collateral damage); Charlie wryly noted that voice actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Steven Yeun had played opposite each other in "The Walking Dead," with Morgan's character killing Yeun's character, leading the showrunners to describe the Invincible/Conquest fight as "Steven Yeun's revenge." Except, as we find out at the very end of the season finale, Conquest isn't dead: he's just being kept under lock and key by Cecil, who wants to find out more about the Viltrum Empire so he can design proper defenses.

I have no idea how many more seasons of "Invincible" there'll be. From my own research, I know that Anissa will eventually come back and rape Mark, producing a son (who, I think, eventually dies). Fans of the comics series are generally pleased that the show hasn't stepped too far out of bounds; the showrunners seem mostly focused on respecting the lore, so I imagine the animated series will end approximately where the comics series does. As always, the show is an entertainingly messy and tangled web, peopled with all sorts of colorful characters, and for the moment at least, I'm still along for the ride.