Invincible: Steven Yeun on the Season 2 Finale's Big Death and ...

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Invincible: Season 2, Episode 8!

Invincible: Season 2 has been a real physical and emotional rollercoaster for Steven Yeun’s character, Mark Grayson. The season opened with Mark dealing with the fallout of his father’s betrayal, while the two characters were reunited in the mid-season finale. Since then, Mark has fought alongside Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), met the brother he didn’t know he had, and returned to Earth to battle villains like the unstoppable Viltrumite warrior Anissa (Shantel VanSanten) and the super-smart Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown). It’s a lot for one guy to take in, especially when he’s supposed to be enjoying his first semester of college.

Now that the dust of Season 2 has settled, IGN spoke with Yeun himself to learn more about how his character has persevered through the difficult trials of Season 2 and what’s next for Invincible in Season 3. Plus, Yeun reacts to that unexpected cameo in the Season 2 finale. Read on to learn more.

Invincible and Omni-Man’s Reunion

While not all fans were thrilled with Amazon’s decision to split Invincible: Season 2 into two parts, the series certainly picked the right mid-season cliffhanger. Mark is unexpectedly reunited with his father Nolan in Episode 4, leading to an emotionally charged and very violent confrontation in the mid-season premiere.

That reunion is one area where the animated series diverges somewhat from the comics. Mark is less happy to see his father and more conflicted about their reunion in the animated version, with the physical and psychological scars of their battle still being freshly felt. For Yeun, it was a change that just makes sense given Mark’s character arc in the series.

“I think that's a really tough moment. I think there's so much going on,” Yeun says. “I think there's so many layers to that. He loves his father, he misses his father, he's probably healed a little bit since their last interaction, and also he's just kind of twisted up about all the things that hurt him too.”

Yeun continues, “There's something about what it requires to be a father, what it requires to be kind of someone that maybe is sitting in a deeper awareness than somebody else. And sometimes you've got to be the villain. Sometimes you've got to be the hero. Sometimes there's just a lot asked of you, and you're not even conscious of that. So I think the uncertainty feels correct. The way in which a lot of things are converging at the same time feels correct.”

Mark and Nolan’s reunion proves short-lived, as the latter is captured by the Viltrumites and Mark is sent home. But Omni-Man continues to weigh heavily on the series in the remainder of Season 2, particularly as Mark finds himself being ordered to complete his father’s mission of preparing Earth for Viltrumite colonization. For a hero whose greatest fear is becoming like his father, this assignment is a terrifying prospect.

Mark’s inner struggle culminates in the Season 2 finale, when he battles the vindictive Angstrom Levy with his mother and brother’s life in the balance. Shockingly, Mark winds up accidentally killing Levy. He simply assumed his nemesis was stronger than he actually was. For Mark, this is yet another reminder that he could easily become the all-powerful tyrant the Viltrumites want him to be.

Yeun says, “It's him just really reconciling who he is and where he's from and how he was raised and the things that are inside of him. You are kind of touching at an unanswerable question in a way, of who we all are and what is life and what does it all kind of mean? What characters do we play in this life? And I think for someone like Mark, I think the biggest struggle is finding out new parts of himself. And life is, to me, a lot about awareness. And I think that is a hard journey, to become aware, and then not let that awareness take you down with it.

Invincible’s Spider-Man and Batman Cameos

While Season 2 ends on a similarly gloomy note to that of Season 1, it’s not all pathos and heartache in the finale. This episode also toys with the idea of the multiverse, with Levy repeatedly sending Mark hurtling through other dimensions and encountering the heroes of these alternate Earths. That includes a very Spider-Man-esque character named Agent Spider, who happens to be voiced by The Spectacular Spider-Man’s Josh Keaton.

It turns out the rumors of Spider-Man having a cameo in Season 2 weren’t so far-fetched. This is the show’s way of paying tribute to the comic book team-up between Spidey and Invincible from 2005’s Marvel Team-Up #14. And though Yeun didn’t get to record his lines alongside Keaton, he notes that this crossover was one of the highlights of working on Season 2.

“It's always fun. Josh is great. Unfortunately, I didn't get to work with him directly, but in my time working with Josh, it was so fun with him,” Yeun says. “I just go with the fun that Robert's [Kirkman] having with this. I think it's such a cool thing to watch him get to reimagine aspects of this comic book that he's been with for so long. And yeah, I'm kind of an admirer of the whole process. If anything, I'm just watching him have a great time.

Mark briefly teamed up with the real Spider-Man in the comics.

Nor is Spidey the only iconic superhero to cameo in the Season 2 finale. Mark also briefly encounters a caped hero who’s clearly meant to be Batman. With the series so willing to delve into the multiverse, we were curious if Yeun had any other crossovers he'd like to see in future seasons. His response? The gritty realm of Criminal and Ed Brubaker’s other crime comics.

“Man. If they let Invincible just tear through every single comic book, we should just go through all the Image stuff. We should end up in Brubaker Land or something like that. That'd be hilarious.”

What to Expect From Season 3

Fun multiverse cameos aside, it’s clear that Mark Grayson is struggling more than ever with the burden of being a hero. The Season 2 finale illustrates how easily his family can become caught in the crossfire, and by the end, Mark shows signs of retreating from the very idea of having a personal life. He even rejects the prospect of pursuing a romance with Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), despite her older self urging him on. Yeun told us that Mark will continue to struggle to find balance between his superhero persona and his ordinary civilian life in Season 3.

“I think that will just always be somewhat of a struggle for him,” Yeun says. “He's being asked to live two lives, and that's not easy, especially for a young man. So I think he's going to get more and more aware of himself over time, and that's the journey that I think we're all interested in seeing.”

However, there will continue to be one ray of light for Mark - his mother. Unlike so many superheroes, Mark Grayson isn’t an orphan. He has a healthy relationship with his mother, and the two have only grown closer over the course of Season 2 and with Debbie (Sandra Oh) becoming the adoptive mother to young Oliver. Debbie will continue to be a source of inspiration and stability in Season 3.

“I'm sure that keeps him from completely spiraling out. To have someone like his mother to keep him grounded or to just keep him not lost in himself is a big advantage,” Yeun says. “And in that way, it is also very interesting to just watch this allegory play out. I think we can get lost in the weeds of what it's like being a superhero, but I think what's the appeal of this show is the fact that it feels like it's grounded and it almost dissolves the mystique of superheroes as some separate special class of people. The truth is, they're just us. These are mythologies to reflect these human stories off of.”

Finally, we had to ask about the timetable for Season 3. Kirkman has been adamant that the wait for new seasons of Invincible won’t be as long as the gap between Season 1 and 2. Yeun couldn’t reveal anything about a potential release date, but he did reiterate Kirkman’s words that the process should be quicker going forward.

“I don't know the exact date, but I will say we're conscious of the fact that animation takes a while. And so I think the log jam is a little less log jammy.”

For more on Invincible, find out why Yeun is unlikely to play Mark Grayson in live-action and check out footage of Omni-Man in Mortal Kombat 1.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.