"Invincible" Year Three

Minor spoilers ahead.

Well, "Invincible" is back with a vengeance.  Having spent its previous season mostly on Mark Grayson's angsty personal life and setting up a new status quo, "Invincible" is putting Mark through the wringer again as a superhero.  In the early part of the season, we find Mark still recovering from his confrontation with Angstrom, and trying to strike out on his own away from Cecil's influence.  Episodes are devoted to his relationships with a new girlfriend and his family members.  Younger brother Oliver (Christian Convery) is now old enough to be a budding superhero himself, though one who needs a lot of guidance from Mark and his mother.  

However, most of the season is spent on Mark discovering that he's woefully unprepared for the threats he has to face as the most powerful superhero on Earth.  There's a sense of foreboding that carries through the whole season.  As the danger keeps escalating, Mark is confronted with more difficult moral questions.  In one episode, he ends up on a dystopian future Earth where the only way to save everyone is to do something unthinkable.  In another, he's faced with a sympathetic new enemy that hates Invincible to the point of self-destruction.  We have some excellent guest stars, including Aaron Paul as the superpowered Powerplex, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a Viltrumite named Conquest.    

The pacing this year is much better, with no midseason hiatus and far more momentum driving the bigger storylines.  Supporting characters like Debbie are still very much in the picture - she's got a new love interest named Paul (Cliff Curtis) this season - but they're far less prominent than they've been in the past.  Mark is at the center of almost every single episode, and it's to the show's benefit.  The time we do spend with secondary characters like Eve and Rex (Jason Mantzoukas) feels less like filler and more like necessary character building.  It's nice to see these characters grow and change in "Invincible," some for the better and some for the worse.  There are still the occasional check-ins with Nolan and Allen the Alien (Seth Rogan) in outer space that don't seem to be going anywhere, but we have plenty more going.

I feel like many "Invincible" fans are really interested in the show for its carnage-filled action scenes, and this season does not disappoint.  The action is more brutal than ever, with most of the animation budget saved for the last two episodes of the season, where it's almost wall-to-wall superhero beat-downs and wide scale destruction.  There are several points where the creators are really pushing at the limits of what's acceptable to show, so those who are sensitive to gore may want to steer clear.  Also, we get a love scene at last, not quite a sex scene, but probably as close as we're going to get in an American-made superhero production.  It's clumsy stuff, but I appreciate the attempt.  

I prefer the episodes that aren't so reliant on shock value.  The introduction of PowerPlex was the highlight of the year for me, representing the kind of ethically troubling conflict that most superhero media is keen to ignore.  "Invincible" is doing a far better job at exploring the more morally gray parts of the superhero mythos than shows like "The Boys," and taking advantage of the animated medium to dramatize situations that would be prohibitively expensive in live action - or just too gruesome.  It's also incredibly indulgent, of course, but the darker material is never played for laughs, and there's a certain grim, but refreshing candidness to the way that "Invincible" shows the amount of physical damage that would realistically result from a superhero brawl.  

After four years and twenty-five episodes, I am sorely tempted to go read the comic books, because I'm sure it'll be a long wait for future seasons.  However, it's comforting to know that the adaptation is in good hands, with "Invincible" creator Robert Kirkman still heavily involved, and Amazon Prime committed to finishing the series.   

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