Three Takeaways From the 'Invincible' Season 2 Finale

In the Season 1 finale of Invincible, Omni-Man nearly kills Invincible at the end of a catastrophic conflict that’s televised across the world. His eyes bloodshot and filled with rage, Nolan Grayson is mere punches away from beating his own son to death in the snowy peaks of a remote mountain range. But Nolan stops and looks down at his bloodied hands in shame and confusion before flying off into the depths of space, leaving Mark behind.

Eight episodes later, the Season 2 finale, which premiered on Prime Video on Thursday, positions Mark in another climactic battle against a formidable enemy who’s threatening to hurt his family: Angstrom Levy. Except this time around, Mark is the one left standing at the end of the fight, staring down at blood on his hands that doesn’t belong to him. As the horror of his actions dawns on him, Mark looks down at Levy’s corpse and says, “I thought you were stronger.”

The finale, aptly titled “I Thought You Were Stronger,” is the culmination of a season centered on how Mark deals with the aftermath of his fight with his father and the revelation that Omni-Man was never truly Earth’s greatest hero, but rather its conqueror-in-waiting. Whether it’s by trying to maintain his disintegrating relationship with his girlfriend, Amber, or his need to make up for all of the lives he couldn’t save in Chicago at the end of the first season, Mark aims to prove to the rest of the world—and himself—that he isn’t like his father. It’s why he holds back his full strength against his enemies—an admirable flaw that Omni-Man reprimands him for when they’re reunited on the planet Thraxa, and one that nearly gets him killed (again) in their fight against the invading Viltrumites. In “I Thought You Were Stronger,” Mark finally drops his self-imposed safeguards against Levy, and the result terrifies him.

Through two seasons, Invincible continues to be a refreshing blend of powerful storytelling, exhilarating action, and terrific voice acting from a star-studded cast led by Steven Yeun. It’s a faithful adaptation of the comic book series created by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley that still manages to modernize and update its source material in exciting new ways that keep it engaging for longtime Invincible fans and the show’s new audience alike. Along with The Boys and its spinoff Gen V, Invincible has made Prime Video a destination for subversive superhero stories. And as Kirkman aims for the series to reach seven or eight seasons, there’s plenty of Invincible still left to come.

Here are my main observations about the second season, its finale, and where the series may be heading from here.

Invincible’s Character-Driven Storytelling

As memorable as the show’s twists and bloody action sequences are, what makes Invincible work so well is its focus on its characters.

With Mark at its center, Invincible’s second season explores how the show’s main and supporting characters are all adapting to life in a post-Omni-Man world. Beyond the challenges that Mark experiences as he faces his father’s infamous legacy, he has to learn how to balance his life as a full-fledged superhero with his responsibilities as a college student and a boyfriend to Amber. By the end of the season, Mark recognizes that he can’t be present for Amber in the ways she deserves, just as Nolan wasn’t always there for him and his mother due to Omni-Man’s world-saving responsibilities. After Amber is threatened by the Viltrumite Anissa in the seventh episode and Levy takes Debbie and Mark’s half-brother, Oliver, hostage in the season finale, Mark decides that he has to drop out of college and commit to his superhero training full time.

Even Angstrom Levy, for better or worse, is a villain whose primary purpose is to reflect Mark’s evolution and emotional journey. Despite the flashiness of his dimension-hopping abilities, Levy’s powers are designed to showcase traces of who Mark is across the infinite multiverse. “By the time you get to the finale of Season 2, you can see that this is really just a character-focused story,” Kirkman told The Ringer last month. “The Angstrom Levy story line, his access to the multiverse, it’s really just to give us hints of Mark’s personality that we may not be seeing yet that may also be present.”

In the Season 2 premiere, Levy is introduced as a sympathetic character whose quest to pool the knowledge and resources of every version of Earth across the multiverse to improve each planet is portrayed as noble, if unwieldy. After his decision to work with the Mauler Twins backfires thanks to Mark’s interruption of their plans, Levy’s origins make for the foundations of a compelling villain. But following the premiere, he largely disappears from the season, aside from his brief appearances at the ends of several episodes to remind the audience that his threat is still looming. (By the time Levy returns to the forefront of the story in the finale, even Mark barely remembers who he is at first, referring to him simply as “that guy,” much to Levy’s displeasure.) Levy’s absence might detract from some of the suspense of his eventual battle with Mark, but he still serves his purpose of providing a foil for Mark, who demonstrates his own growth and what makes our universe’s version of him unique.

Though Invincible is the series’ first priority, Mark is far from the only character with a compelling story arc in Season 2. Debbie struggles with depression and alcoholism through the first half of the season as she deals with her husband’s horrific betrayal and how little she really meant to him, but she finds new purpose through her work and in motherhood, including her new role as the primary caretaker of baby Oliver. Atom Eve continues to explore her potential beyond a life of crime-fighting, as she tries to use her powers to make a difference in the world outside of her role as a part-time superhero. Omni-Man—as old as he is, and as many atrocities as he’s committed as a colonizing Viltrumite warrior—begins to see the value in life and the error of his people’s ways as he prepares for his execution on his homeworld. Even Donald Ferguson, an agent of the Global Defense Agency, gets one of the season’s most engrossing story lines as he discovers that he’s a clone and is forced to come to terms with the fact that he’s died 39 times, losing a piece of himself each time.

There are almost too many intriguing characters and story arcs to fit into one season, which disrupts the show’s momentum at times as it divides its attention among plot lines that span galaxies and an expanding list of antagonists to keep track of. But thanks to the consistent attention that Invincible gives its characters as it develops their individual stories around the show’s central events, Invincible lands the vast majority of its emotional beats and creates a rewarding experience for viewers from season to season.

Multiversal Cameos

While Invincible leverages the multiverse mainly as a narrative device to explore Mark’s character, it’s also a means of having a little fun and giving the audience a glimpse into other worlds and realities. The creative team saved its biggest multiversal surprises for the finale. Angstrom Levy sends Mark through his interdimensional portals in an attempt to wear him down, and one stop features a familiar voice and a famous superhero. Or, rather, almost a famous superhero.

Mark lands in a dimension where Spider-Man and Doc Ock are in the middle of a fight, except because of copyright limitations, the mortal enemies are mere knockoffs of the Marvel characters. Josh Keaton voices the webhead, just as he did in the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series (and in a cameo for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), and Invincible throws in a gag that will surely delight some fans and disappoint others who were hoping for a genuine crossover. As Kirkland-brand Spidey speaks to Mark, he even gives a little nod to the Marvel hero’s recent multiversal adventures: “Look, I saw the portal; I know you’re from another dimension. Got way too much experience with that, especially lately.”

The scene is a spin on a moment that occurred in the comics, when Mark was similarly fighting against Levy and getting hurled from dimension to dimension. Since Invincible was published by Image Comics (and not Marvel), Kirkman and artist Ottley worked around any potential legal issues by not showing too much of Spider-Man and Doc Ock while still retaining their classic character designs:

Invincible no. 33 Image Comics

Ahead of the release of Invincible no. 33 in June 2006, the issue in which Invincible battled Levy, Image and Marvel even collaborated for a true crossover with Marvel Team-Up no. 14, written by Kirkman and illustrated by Walker. The comic depicts the events that occur while Invincible is visiting the Marvel Universe: Mark gets the chance to meet the Avengers (whom he is not all that impressed by), Aunt May, and Mary Jane Watson, and he gets to fight alongside Spider-Man.

Marvel Team-Up no. 14 Marvel Comics

While the animated series didn’t have the same chance to include an actual crossover (despite all of the speculation in the months leading up to the release of the second half of the season), Invincible still manages to work in a fun spoof with an assist from Keaton. And this isn’t the episode’s only comic book reference as Mark travels from dimension to dimension. Just as he did in the original comics run, Mark steps into what appears to be the zombified world of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and even Gotham City for a moment as Mark clowns Batman for the lack of imagination in his superhero name. (As the Caped Crusader is introduced with a riff on his theme music, all we can see of his costume is his cape flowing in the wind—but there’s no mistaking that man’s brooding presence.)

Over its original 144-issue print run, Invincible was full of Easter eggs and references to other characters in comics and pop culture. So far, the animated series has honored that legacy. Maybe there’s even another superhero crossover better suited to Prime Video in the seasons ahead.

The Future of Invincible

Although we’re now two seasons and 16 episodes into Invincible, Mark Grayson’s story is just beginning. Out of the comic’s 144 issues, the animated series has covered only about the first 47 of them—and even that isn’t an exact estimate, as some of the later issues within those 47 feature plot points that the Prime Video series has yet to incorporate. While the TV show has been very faithful to its source material, it also jumps around the timeline of the comics, as Kirkman and Co. pick and choose story lines to fit the needs of each eight-episode season.

“It’s really kind of [like] assembling a puzzle when we sit down to map out a season,” Kirkman explained to The Ringer. “A lot of work goes into that, and there are certainly some new innovations that are brought to the table in that process. But for the most part, it’s plugging in different things and figuring out what we’re going to expand and what we’re going to truncate based on where the story went in the comics.”

There was more than a two-year delay between the first and second seasons—as well as an almost four-month wait between the first and second parts of Season 2—due to production delays stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the show’s challenging animation sequences. While there is no release date set for Season 3, producer Simon Racioppa recently told The Direct that they “are deep in Season 3 at this point” and that the wait for Invincible’s next chapter will not be as long.

In the meantime, the second half of the season finale has already given us a good sense of where Season 3 is heading. After Mark and Angstrom Levy’s fight, the episode makes several stops around the Invincible universe to tease what’s around the corner. Allen the Alien has chosen to be captured by the Viltrumites so he can attempt to break Omni-Man out of prison and recruit him to join the Coalition of Planets’ efforts to take down the Viltrum Empire. Meanwhile, Nolan’s existential crisis continues, and he has an epiphany as the season ends: He misses his wife.

Back on Earth, Dupli-Kate surprises the heartbroken Immortal at his home, revealing that she had concealed her original body in a safe location and had been living her superhero life through her copies. And after a future version of Eve tells present-day Mark that she loves him and that she has for a long time, the newly single Mark appears to be on the verge of pursuing a new romance with Eve.

There’s a lot going on here, and that doesn’t even include the parasitic Sequid that found its way to Earth in the sixth episode, the fact that G.D.A. director Cecil Stedman previously recruited a mad scientist to mass-produce zombie-cyborg super-soldiers, or the impending Viltrumite takeover of Earth that Mark is preparing for. Amazon has yet to renew Invincible past Season 3, but the foundation has been laid for the series to continue for a long, long time.

Invincible is a story that’s built to last, and if the series continues to successfully adapt the comics while making well-calculated adjustments along the way, it may live up to its title.