Invincible is one of the most faithful comic-book adaptations of all time—and not always to its benefit. The show’s first season played a bit more loosely with the timeline of Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley’s original Image Comics series (notably by moving the reveal that there was something terribly wrong with Nolan Grayson to the end of its first episode, as opposed to 10 months into the comics’ original run). But in an inversion of usual practices, the longer the show has gone on, the more closely it’s hewn to its source material. “You Were My Hero,” for instance, is an extremely straight adaptation of two issues of the comic series, originally published in 2008—even down to having an impromptu title card halfway through its runtime, name-checking the title of the issue in question. As it happens, those two issues are both pretty good: punchy, self-contained stories that progress the series’ long-term storytelling while serving as exciting adventures in their own right. “You Were My Hero,” thus, makes for good TV. But the more time I spend thinking about the show’s so far wildly inconsistent third season, the more that underlying devotion to canon seems to be at least partially at fault.
The first half of this week’s episode is essentially a fable, with decapitations, as Mark and Eve’s efforts to finally have a real first date get interrupted by time travelers Fightmaster and Dropkick, insisting Mark is the only one who can save their dark future from itself. Despite his general weariness with people wanting him to get in spaceships, go through portals, etc., the cheerfully oppressed duo turn out to be completely right—although not strictly because of Mark’s martial might. No, as we’ll eventually learn, this is yet another universe where everything is ultimately Invincible’s fault, in this case because his future “Emperor” self left The Immortal in charge of the planet for thousands of years and apparently never bothered to check in to see if his chosen regent had gone completely, batshit, “murder-millions-of-people-with-robots” crazy. The whole situation culminates in trapping Mark in the show’s most convoluted “Okay, but it’s okay to kill people sometimes, right?” conundrum to date, where The Immortal basically promises to go on doing future tyrant shit unless Mark outright mercy-kills him. Cue the head pop, a reminder to keep Immortal’s head and body separated lest they re-attach, and much rejoicing/PTSD had by all.
These are Big Ideas, and they’re treated here with a swiftness that borders on glib. But part of Invincible‘s appeal at this point is that its characters have earned a level of nonchalance toward, say, finding out Future You has wrecked the world again that keeps the entire episode from descending into a miserable slog. Yes, Mark is extremely upset by getting railroaded into another murder, even if he seems mostly nonplussed at the idea that he’s destined to be an emperor. The key to it working comes first and foremost from Steven Yeun’s voice: Nothing he runs into during his trip to the future is especially surprising to Mark; it’s just an exhausting bummer, one more reminder that great power comes with an incredible capacity to fuck it all up for everybody else. That tiredness comes through in the performance and works to build up a contrast when Mark returns to Eve in the present day. And the two shake off the blues by flying around the world before ultimately saying “I love you.” The accompanying montage of past moments of the pair together is cheesy, sure—“Your Man” by Joji feels like a “first thought, best thought” needle drop for this kind of montage if there ever was one—but it also helps underline that the show has been building this connection since its beginning. Invincible‘s top-level plotting might feel start-and-stop at times, but its emotional through-line has been a lot purer, and the payoff here is strong even before we get the return of Paul F. Tompkins’ Narrator for another space-based cutaway from a Mark Grayson sex scene.
Which brings us to “Locked Down, But Not Out,” and, speaking of voice performances, hey, holy shit, huh? Tompkins is having obvious fun with his Stan Lee-esque announcer, but once you layer in Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, and Michael Dorn (returning as first-season antagonist Battle Beast) trading quips, one-liners, and taunts, this is one of the show’s most joyfully bombastic offerings of dialogue ever. Meanwhile, after more than a season of presenting the rank-and-file Viltrumites as the end-all, be-all of fighting power in this universe, watching Allen, Nolan, and BB hand these guys their own asses is extremely satisfying, especially since someone has clearly turned the budget dial back up for this episode. Allen’s battle through the alien jail is fast-moving and emphasizes the character’s new-found power, while the fighting style of the Viltrumites—sudden, heavy blows that inflict absolutely brutal wounds—plays well to the show’s animation, allowing quarrels to be rendered in what are almost static panels without losing touch with their kinetic pace.
On a deeper level, the mini-episode (all of which constitutes the installment’s mammoth “post-credits” scene) also continues to explore the moral redemption of Nolan Grayson—and it’s here that casting J.K. Simmons continues to be one of the single best decisions Invincible‘s producers ever made. Simmons was convincing as the fake, charming Nolan of season one and he was terrifying as the monstrous conqueror lurking beneath the façade. But building on the slightly sweet shock in his final season-two line (“I think I miss my wife”), here we hear Simmons continue to find registers of warmth beneath all the brusqueness and mustaches and head explosions. “Forgiving” Nolan is going to be a long, hard road for all of the people he betrayed (and an audience who, not to belabor the point, watched him commit mass-murder while using his son’s own face as a weapon). But hearing Simmons committed like this, you can at least understand how Invincible trusts it might be able to eventually get you from here to there.
So, with one last big reveal—the otherwise overwhelming power of the Viltrumite fighting force is being deeply undercut by the fact that there are only about 50 pureblood members of the species left in existence—we cut back to Earth for one more bit that could have been pulled straight out of a teenage sex comedy. That’s the kind of gag Invincible was a lot more comfortable with back before all the torso explosions, but it’s also not unwelcome. If nothing else, it puts a cap on an episode that feels like a much-needed reset from the recent dramas with Oliver and Cecil, giving the whole package a pleasantly episodic touch after a run of more serialized storytelling. (Not that we don’t get a little bit of Cecil material, as Mark semi-casually smashes his way into the Pentagon to accuse the GDA of spying on him.) And while I’d feel more assured about what comes next if this season didn’t already feel like a yo-yo in quality—genuinely, I’d love to see the individual episode budgets for this season, because it feels like they’re vacillating wildly—that doesn’t mean the show shouldn’t be rewarded when it puts forward something this confident, fun, and pleasantly self-contained.
Stray observations
- • Rex and Shrinking Ray’s relationship—friendship? slow-burn romance?—takes up the episode’s cold open and continues to be a cute look at the practicalities of superheroing as a metaphor for post-high-school life. “I almost got scurvy once!”
- • Rudy and Robot are starting to creep everybody out by switching back and forth between talking. I’m just glad to hear Zachary Quinto getting more lines.
- • “Well, that was a terrifying way to start my morning.”
- • The show’s limited facial ranges kind of kill the “Future Mark looks way more miserable when he goes to retrieve his clothes from his past self” gag.
- • For a minute, I suspected the King would be Rudy—on account of all the robots—but obviously The Immortal makes more sense given how far in the future this is implied to be.
- • When the title card finally drops (16 minutes in!) it shifts to a very Viltrumite white-on-gray color scheme.
- • Mark has no time for The Immortal’s blatant foreshadowing: “You look thin! Weak! Have you been sick again? I thought they found a cure for—” “This isn’t about me.”
- • One of the colder moments in Mark’s confrontation with Immortal: the old man genuinely not recognizing Dupli-Kate’s name.
- • Dear robots: When transporting a prisoner named “Dropkick,” it may behoove you to put football handcuffs on his feet, too.
- • I mostly like the future plot but Immortal shooting down all the reasons Mark might not kill him had some real “The DM already wrote this part out” energy.
- • Given that it’s adapting plot points originally published in 22-page installments, it often feels like this show would work just as well, if not better, in a half-hour format. This episode, in particular, might feel stronger with a little bit of space between the bummer first half and the more exultant second one (not that the “20-minute-long post-credits stinger” gag isn’t cute).
- • “Oh my god, this again.”
- • Battle Beast remains a cool design, but chowing down on all those mooks does leave him looking like a kitty-cat that’s drunk too much Kool-Aid.
- • Rogen’s not doing a complicated vocal performance as Allen, but it’s genuinely fun. “Good to see you, man. Did you get a haircut?”
- • The double-head-punch skull explosion is taken straight from the comics; it looks pretty good in animation.
