Review: Invincible “You Gave Me No Choice; I’ll Give You the Grand Tour; I Gotta Get Some Air”
Mark, this is good news.
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
As Mark, Eve, and the rest of the world still slowly recover from both the Invincible War and Conquest’s attack, the world moves on. The Sequids make their move in trying to infect and invade Earth, stopped by the newly reformed Guardians of the Globe and Mark, while Eve feels her powers begin to fluctuate. Off in space, Nolan and Allen unite with some of Allen’s friends and Nolan learns the true source of the virus that decimated the Viltrumites.
OUR TAKE
Invincible is back! And just like last season and first (not the second), we’re getting a three episode premiere, which is already almost half of the season. And as much as I do like the episodes dropped here, I really wouldn’t mind if we just got two or even one, especially because, as these are all forty five minutes or longer, this is basically the length of a feature length film with a LOT to pick apart and discuss. As such, I’m unfortunately forced to skim over some rather interesting details that we’ll hopefully get to talk about down the road. So, to focus on the key essentials, the first episode is basically a recovery story…or at least as good of one as these characters are going to get, as this is truly a job that never stops. Being a superhero in this universe is practically like being an on-call EMT nurse with no benefits where you might end up fighting a giant dinosaur man on occasion. Mark, as always, is just trying to do his best to protect people and have consistent morals, but the world continues to test him, so after the Sequids (those brain squids that Mark accidentally brought back from Mars) force his hand, he forces that hand through the head of the astronaut who was still left in their control, marking (haha) his first real and deliberate kill. We’ve gone on about how this story handles the moral quandary of superheroes killing far better than other cape based media, but suffice it to say that we’ll definitely be seeing some ripples from this choice.
There’s plenty of significant stuff in the third episode, bringing the return of the Flaxans (that’s right, ANOTHER alien invasion), the regrouping of Machine Head’s Order, and the separation from two teammates, but we’ll be able to cover that more fully next time with the fallout of it. With the time remaining, I gotta talk about the second episode and what it reveals to us about Nolan’s past and ever changing feelings about the Viltrumites. We know that the vast majority of his race was wiped out by a sudden plague, leaving less than fifty remaining pure blooded members, which is something they’ve hidden because even one of them is an apocalypse for other worlds. What we didn’t know was that Nolan witnessed the virus’ effects first hand, along with the deaths of many of his comrades. While he has changed a lot of his perspective about his people since he came to Earth and gaining understanding about their threat to the universe, Nolan being raised among them naturally leads to some hesitation about needing to fully wipe them out. But after a fun space odyssey with Allen (well, fun for Allen at least), Nolan meets Thaddeus, the rogue Viltrumite, who admits to have created the virus, forcing Nolan to finally take a stance and go back for Mark, which we’ll see later. And maybe Oliver? Either way, this is an AMAZING start to the season, and next week is the halfway point…already. Oh, and Conquest survived and escaped, who could have seen that coming. Not Cecil, apparently.
