Happy Invincible day to all who celebrate
Another season of Invincible entails new faces and new problems for Mark and the people closest to him. Still (physically and mentally) beaten up over the events of the previous season, Mark and every other hero are just doing their best to try to get things back to normal. But normal never lasts long in this world.
The first of the new faces this season is Dinosaurus, played by Matthew Rhys. Not much is known about him yet, besides the fact that he thinks the world would be better off with Mark dead. And it was revealed that Dinosaurus is also a man who sometimes switches places with him. And this interaction is the first sign of a changed Mark, as he debates whether to kill the man before him, before the Guardians arrive.
Throughout the episode, Mark is hit from all sides with feelings of guilt and PTSD from the previous season’s events, starting with Dinosaurus. It happens again when Mark and Eve have dinner with Eve’s parents. Eve’s dad does his usual guilt tripping, this time to Mark. And Eve’s mom hints that her own relationship is a cautionary tale. But the most important part of this scene is when Eve uses her powers to try to cheer Mark up, but something weird is happening with her powers.
The next new face of Invincible is Universa, played by Danai Gurira (yet another Walking Dead reunion, we love to see it). Universa is drawn to energy and uses her staff to maintain/control it so she can take it back to her dying planet. As Mark and Eve fight her, Eve’s powers go even more awry, with everything she creates turning into some atomic slush and disappearing. Though Universa is taken down relatively easily, Mark has to leave Eve as another sequid invasion begins.
When Mark arrives, it’s a race to stop the sequids before they can break through the force field containing them. With the forcefield dropping at any moment, and a hero racing to get Mark a device to stop the sequid host, Mark makes the executive decision to kill him. If it wasn’t clear at the beginning of the episode, it should be clear now that Mark has changed. For better or worse, that’s something that will get answered over the course of the season. What may be an even bigger surprise than Mark’s deliberate choice to kill, in the final scene, Conquest is awake and wastes no time breaking out of his prison, and presumably makes his way back to Viltrum.
Invincible is at its best when focusing on its characters, and in this episode, Mark is obviously the standout as the main character, but Debbie stands out as well. Mark and Debbie represent different directions of accepting change. Mark has become angrier and more somber, while Debbie has become happier and more open to change. While Mark undoubtedly goes through much more physically compared to Debbie last season, she’s also experienced a lot, with and without Mark. Reminders of Nolan are still prevalent for her, and there’s not a day that she’s not worried about her boys. While Debbie grows with her acceptance to change by taking it a step further with Paul, Mark is nearing a crossroads concerning what the right thing to do is, and if he knows himself to be able to make those decisions.
With season 4 being a three-episode premiere, my overall thoughts will be for the three episodes combined, and will be at the end of the third episode’s review. But for now, onto episode two.