Season Review: Invincible Season Three
Amazon’s hit superhero show based on the classic indie comic came back swinging this year with what may have been its best season yet. Having met his reformed father out in space and faced with an oncoming Viltrumite threat, Mark Grayson, the hero known as Invincible, continues his duties protecting the planet from enemies inside and out. That’s a pretty general summary of the season’s plot but honestly, if you want to know more, I highly recommend just watching all eight episodes yourself. So, if you were waiting to see if I think it’s good, there’s your answer. If you want a bit more, let’s continue. Last season, while a solid follow up to the breakout hit that the first was, left plenty of viewers feeling lukewarm, which was not helped by the considerable break between the first four episodes of that season and the last. To be fair, animation is a complicated and time consuming process, at least when you’re doing it right, but that break also had a major impact on slowing the momentum that had been built up. With the announcement that future seasons will be released yearly with no breaks in between, it’s likely that the momentum will only continue to build. Hopefully the animators can keep up (and are paid well).
If this season had a central theme, I would say it is of Mark’s morals as a hero being tested. You could make that argument for the previous two as well, though it’s on display a lot more here. The first season put Mark in a pretty black and white system of good and bad until the end when he found out about Nolan’s murders. The second season mostly kept him there but with Nolan now in the bad, up until they met again and Mark had to deal with how his father was trying to reform, as well as Mark seemingly taking his first life against a villain. This season, however, threw him through the ringer morally, finding out his support system was capable of much darker deals than he expected, having to kill a friend at their request, face someone grieving over deaths he tried to stop, and even fight multiple evil versions of himself AND a powerhouse of a Viltrumite, all while trying to teach his rapidly growing brother how to be a hero when he barely knows how himself. And that’s all just stuff happening with Mark! Suffice it to say that nearly everyone in the show gets a spotlight moment, but if I covered them all, I’d be here all day.
Just know that this show is comic-booky in the absolute best ways. I know that superhero stuff is starting to wear out its welcome among some audiences, but that’s mostly because the ones making it have started resting on their laurels and made shows and movies that rely on the cliches and tropes instead of telling a story. Invincible corrects this, all while embracing the silly and awe-inspiring moments the genre provides. And it brings me great pleasure to know that we’re not even halfway through adapting the comics this story came from, with so much more to come that will very likely be improved after getting a second pass like the material used for this season did. The only possible downside I can see there being is if you aren’t a fan of death and gore, which this season really escalates in doing, especially towards the end, and I can see that being a real deal breaker for certain people, but otherwise it’s a damn near perfect season of television. Please check it out.
