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Is Invincible's fantastic "A Deal With The Devil" an outlier or a new standard?

One amazing episode does not a great season make—especially when the next one is a genuine letdown.

By William Hughes  |  February 6, 2025 | 10:14am
Image: Prime Video
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“A Deal With The Devil” (season 3, episode 2)

Now that is a hell of an episode of television.

After the slightly slow, hour-long setup that was Invincible‘s third-season premiere, its second installment, “A Deal With The Devil,” is the punchline. And the bullet-in-the-brain line. The face-melted-by-poison-gas line. The torsos-chopped-in-half, jaws-crushed, heads-exploded-in-geysers-of-viscera line. This is Invincible in full not-fucking-around mode, and it’s absolutely exhilarating. All that and we get a big damn kiss. What’s not to love?

Before picking up with the consequences of the premiere’s showdown between superhero Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and government heavy Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins), though, “A Deal With The Devil” feints backwards, cluing us in on Cecil’s backstory. Some of this is pretty expected: He got his facial scars—which are, in a fun twist, the only parts of his body that haven’t been replaced by the GDA—while working as a field agent, stopping superpowered eco-terrorists from melting thousands of people with some glowing green goo. And some of it isn’t, including the fact that Cecil spent multiple years in a prison for supervillains because he immediately put a bullet in those same baddies’ heads after his own boss (Bokeem Woodbine) tried to sell him on their government rehabilitation. Showing Cecil at both the start, and the end, of the same pragmatic path he’s been trying to walk Mark down all this time lends weight to the arguments that break out once we pick back up in the present, as Cecil takes a series of well-considered, carefully planned, and utterly disastrous steps in his efforts to get Mark back on side. By the time the episode is over, he’s successfully talked, cajoled, and secret-head-implanted his way into alienating half of the planet’s most reliable superteam and fully lost the services of the single most powerful weapon in his arsenal. Goggins, great as always, lets the full weight of the weariness at his botched day’s work filter into Cecil’s voice.

Not that Mark is innocent in all this, of course. His Viltrumite brutality in dispatching the zombified ReAnimen is shocking even to those members of the Guardians Of The Globe who have his back, and his inflexibility on the topic of the GDA working with murderers continues to carry ugly echoes of his feelings about his dad and his own killing of Angstrom Levy in the season-two finale. (Nobody in the episode brings this up explicitly, but seeing the Guardians HQ floor soaked in blood can’t help but invoke memories of what the place looked like after Omni-Man’s rampage back in the show’s pilot.) Mark’s moral code is typically a strength, not a weakness. But when it merges with his increasing comfort in applying shocking violence to those things he deems to be failing it, or threatening those he loves, well…you start to understand why Cecil might feel like the kid needs to have an off-switch.

What makes “A Deal With The Devil” really great TV, though, is the way it moves the focus beyond just its two primary combatants. Each member of the Guardians gets their own moment to weigh in on what they’ve seen, and while some of their brewing civil war is deliberately goofy (a happily returned Ben Schwartz is priceless as his Shapesmith reveals he’s sticking with Cecil primarily because he gave him a race-car bed), they also speak to important divides in the superhero team. Critically, that means giving Russ Marquand/Zachary Quinto’s Rudy something to do besides mope over his teenaged crush for once. Hearing Rudy acknowledge that team solidarity is nice, but currying favor with the world’s heaviest hitter is priceless—a touch of the old Robot that Invincible has been missing since season one. And all of these arguments work because almost nothing anyone says in them is wrong: Cecil does view his superheroic charges as expendable weapons; Mark is dangerously unthinking about the consequences of his actions. (Watch the way he steadily escalates the opening confrontation, because he still doesn’t grasp how goddamn scary he is to regular humans: When he suggests Cecil is scared of him being a whistleblower, of all things, it’s like he can’t even look straight-on at the fact that the guy is genuinely worried about getting ripped apart in the blink of an eye.) The split that forms in the Guardians in the wake of the fight has much more to do with individual feelings and personalities than ideologies—for all that the big blow-up takes on the cadence of the world’s worst Thanksgiving dinner political argument—and that’s what makes the whole conflict a hell of a character piece.

Meanwhile, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note how much better this second episode looks than the premiere. Some of this might just be the ways that budgets got allocated, but the improved visuals also speak to style: Mark’s face-off against the ReAnimen in the GDA White Room has some of the most beautiful battle shots this show has ever done, the stark blankness of the backgrounds emphasizing the raw violence of every thrown fist and the surreal way Mark’s body gets lost in the space. And when this show wants to really flex its gross-out muscles, there are few series better: The shot of Cecil melting from his exposure to toxic gasses in the intro is so gnarly as to be practically Scavengers Reign-esque. That attention to detail extends all the way to the episode’s last flashback and the moment that presumably solidified Cecil’s belief that a humanity without countermeasures against its superpowered “protectors” is a humanity that’s well and truly fucked. Showing a just-arrived-on-Earth Omni-Man casually disassembling a giant sea monster, ultimately tearing the giant beast fully in half, is one last reminder of what kind of force the Viltrumites can bring to bear on anything they deem a problem. Meanwhile, seeing that Cecil was on to Nolan from the very first day he showed up on the planet—even as he made the episode’s titular Faustian bargain—is a good reminder that, even if he had to take the better part of an L this time, it’s never a good idea to count out the world’s most dangerous mortal man.

Episode grade: A

Stray observations

  • • We never get exact details on what Knuckle Buster (Kari Wahlgren) and Force Fist (Chris Diamantopoulos) were keeping in those glowing green vats, but it was clearly some pretty nasty shit. (From surface observations, it’s basically “the gas that turns you inside out” from that one “Treehouse Of Horror” installment.)
  • • At some point, the show is going to have to clue us in on what “rehabilitation” actually entails; it’s clear it’s a bit more than standard therapy, and it raises questions about when, if ever, Darkwing is going to snap and fall back into old habits.
  • • The title card continues to glitch out, jumping between different color schemes. This episode: blue-on-grey.
  • • The reveal that backstory Cecil has taken total control of his supervillain prison block, imposing order on chaos, is a fun one.
  • • “You see things one way and you won’t make room for any other viewpoint. You threaten people who disagree with you.” “I don’t threaten!” “No? Because you’re scaring the shit out of me right now.” (Mark’s “I’m not even doing anything right now!” is the most teenage-petulant he’s been in a grip.)
  • • Goggins remains incredible in this episode: Cecil is clearly pissed, but it expresses as irritation, frustration, and sadness at what a waste this all is—not rage. “For fuck’s sake, I’m not trying to kill the kid.”
  • • Rex is trying to change: “The new me takes your feedback and thanks you for your constructive criticism, before ignoring it complet—”
  • • One creepy moment comes when Cecil orders the ReAnimen to shut down…and they don’t seem to immediately respond.
  • • Mark’s brother Oliver also pops in just long enough to remind us why having a 10-year-old with superpowers is genuinely terrifying: “Well why didn’t you kill him already?”
  • • Eve’s reassurances are also less reassuring than they could be: “I know you. You don’t hurt people if you can help it.”
  • • Still, the scenes between her and Mark are a very necessary antidote to all the darkness and violence of the rest of the episode. Mark might not know what to say in response to fighting his pissed-off dad-boss, but he’s navigating his teenaged love affair fairly well!
  • • “Invincible is the most powerful superhero on the planet. It’s a simple fact. And someday, I might need him on my side.”
  • • Oh, and Debbie went on a date, and Eve started taking her architecture classes. Invincible can never escape the gravity of its serialized storytelling, even in its most propulsive installments.
  • • Still no update on that weird guy who was spying on Mark last episode—although one of the GDA drones in Cecil’s flashbacks has similar glasses. One way or another, long-form storytelling is afoot!

“You Want A Real Costume, Right?” (season 3, episode 3)

Image: Prime Video

It was inevitable, of course.

And you might ask yourself: Which inevitable thing are we talking about here? Young Oliver Grayson finally getting well and truly into the “family business,” i.e., the utterly ruthless removal of threats to his loved ones in ways that leave him soaked down to the knees in blood? Or Invincible‘s reversion to the mild lethargy that marked this season’s premiere? The answer is, unfortunately, both, as “You Want A Real Costume, Right?” drops the show right back into its version of “soap opera mode” after the infusion of energy that was “A Deal With The Devil.” Admittedly, “soap opera” here is a wide enough label to include brawls with lava men and the evisceration of not just one but two Kevins Michael Richardson. But this is still an episode of TV that’s about slowly moving the pieces forward inch by inch instead of making the big, sweeping moves we all know this show is capable of.

Things start strongly, with an artful sequence showing off the day-to-day lives of third-tier henchguys Tether Tyrant and Magmaniac, previously glimpsed in both the show’s first and second seasons. Wordlessly, we watch the two of them try like hell not to be supervillains, working to eke out a life they can share together without having to watch mothers and children cower from them in fear. Thematically linked to the episode’s final big speech, it’s a lovely meditation on the fact that nobody is “just a mook” to the people who love them, evoking classic comic-book sequences like The Invisibles‘ “Best Man Fall.” The tension of the sequence, meanwhile, comes not from wondering if the two will end up getting pushed back into old habits, but how badly this show’s occasionally hyper-bleak world will punish them when they do. Consider it a merciful gesture, from a show that doesn’t always grant them, that the pair wind up back in prison instead of the morgue.

Because this is, after all, The Episode Where Mark Has To Confront That His Little Brother Is Kind Of A Sociopath. The hints have been there for a while, with Oliver performing remorseful behavior when threatened with punishment, before immediately bouncing back to his next enthusiastic plan. Or the way he breaks promises the second his growing brain can develop a justification to do so. This exact episode primes us for the worst with its title card, which flickers its colors over to Omni-Man white and red and then underlines things when Oliver starts literally calling himself “Kid Omni-Man.” By the time he’s stalking toward the second Mauler—who’s desperately trying to surrender—with murder in his eyes, it’s hard not to start sympathizing with Cecil: It turns out it’s not all that easy to control a petulant child who could tear the average human limb from limb with barely a thought, eh, Mark?

(Speaking of Cecil, he shows up briefly for what is, not coincidentally, the episode’s best scene. The character remains a joy to watch operate, whether he’s bald-faced lying to Oliver by telling him he just “stunned” the incredibly dead Maulers or twisting the knife on Mark when he inevitably shows up for some mild threatening. Invincible spoiled us with a bounty of Walton Goggins last episode, and I was feeling the deficit with this one.)

Oliver’s plotline concludes with another big Sandra Oh speech, as Debbie once again tries to drill into her son’s alien brain the idea that life is fundamentally precious (even the lives of violent, but extremely amusing, superpowered dickheads like the Maulers). Invincible takes on, as its primary obsession, the question of power and what you do with it. The show has posited on more than one occasion that Debbie is the main determining factor in Mark not using his own power to just kill his way through every problem that presents itself to him. (Although it’s worth noting that he is now completely committed to calling Angstrom’s death last season “an accident,” which is…a very self-absolving way of describing those events, especially when we hear Oliver mimic the excuse in an effort to get himself out of trouble.) It seems just as likely, though, that most of Mark’s sympathy for “normal people” comes from spending 17 years of his life as one. Without that grounding, it’s not clear whether all the group hugs in the world will stop Oliver from solving problems Viltrumite-style the next time he can find an easy way to justify it to himself. It’s one of the less comfortable aspects of watching Invincible that it enjoys layering the language of family love and togetherness as Spackle over genuine trauma and growing danger and counts on the viewer to know that stock sitcom solutions can’t stop the next bout of violence to come.

Contrast Eve’s latest confrontation with her family, which is far less warm but all about setting reasonable but firm boundaries: no more powers around the house, but also no more making her feel like shit for using those powers to help people around the world. The ensuing trading of ultimatums might be less hug-y than Mark and Debbie’s efforts to instill a soul in Oliver, but they also feel far more, well, constructive. They’re of a piece with the show’s ongoing efforts to demonstrate Eve trying to use her gifts, superpowered and otherwise, to build things instead of the simplistic and thoughtless smashing and ripping of her brand new beau. See also her continued decision to not rejoin whatever the reformed Teen Team ends up calling itself, the better to forge her own path. (And if it feels like I’m sort of jumping from plot point to plot point by now, offering up a wide but shallow survey of the Invincible universe, that’s also the experience of watching this episode. Wait until I get to what’s going on with first-season crime guy Titan!)

This episode also includes first-season crime guy Titan. He’s doing crime stuff.

I kid, but “You Want A Real Costume, Right?” is genuinely all over the place, also checking in on Debbie’s dating life—she tells Cliff Curtis’ Paul her sons’ secret identity, a wild breach of trust—on Art’s costume shop (where he does some of his all-time worst work, if I’m being honest, eliminating the yellow from Invincible’s costume for an extremely drab offering that gets him dubbed “Invinciboy” in the press), and on Zazie Beetz’s Amber. (She’s good and gives Mark and Eve her blessing.) There are solid individual scenes here, with Mark and Eve’s growing romance being one of the clear stand-outs. But, discounting that great opening, the experience of watching this episode also can’t help but feel like watching 48 minutes’ worth of spaghetti get thrown at the wall to see what gets stuck in all the blood. None of which is helped by the return of the animation issues from the season premiere: With this many dialogue scenes, it becomes extremely noticeable how flat and static the show’s faces and bodies can get, slowing already slow scenes to a crawl and making action sequences feel like you’re watching a motion comic punctuated by occasional bursts of gore. Here’s hoping this episode represents a dip, not a return to baseline, and that the apparent return of an old enemy can help Invincible, and Invincible, focus as it makes its way deeper into season three.

Episode grade: B-

Stray observations

  • • I can’t overstate the loveliness of that opening sequence, from the surprising gentleness with which Tether Tyrant handles the hostages to the genuine horror that sets in when one of the godlike superheroes suddenly comes floating into view. (Oh, and the cute way it wordlessly incorporates the show’s usual title-drop gag.)
  • • “I’ll be careful, I promise. I won’t let him get hurt and I won’t let him hurt anyone else.” I think the show is still, fundamentally, on Mark’s side, but it really does like to hammer in sometimes how colossally full of shit he is.
  • • New Rex doesn’t say “That’s what she said.” He’s more of an “Did I do that?” kind of guy. (Just don’t let Mark’s former principal and dean hear it….)
  • • Okay, Titan is being forced to break Multi-Paul out of prison by “The Order” and its dragon-transforming heavy, Mr. Liu. This concludes your “What’s Titan up to two seasons after the last time we saw him?” update.
  • • I know I’m repeating myself but I really, really hate the blue-and-gray suit. It makes him look like a bug.
  • • I’m glad the Maulers almost certainly have a couple of clones cooking somewhere to bring them back, because Kevin Michael Richardson consistently gives one of this show’s best performances as the bickering baddies.
  • • Throwing Run The Jewels’ “Blockbuster Night, Pt. 1” under the action is a cheap trick to infuse vitality into a fight scene, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
  • • Has The Immortal won a single fight in this entire show?
  • • “We don’t usually murder children. But there’s always a first time.”
  • • That’s Sweet Tooth‘s Christian Convery voicing Oliver this season. He gives a convincingly creepy read on lines like “It’s not precious. People kill each other all the time, and most people aren’t even special like us.”
  • • The episode introduces an unseen new villain who’s been spying on Mark. Who could this mysterious man (who’s clearly voiced by Sterling K. Brown, who’s literally credited as Angstrom Levy in the episode credits) possibly be?!

 
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