Skylar Savarin

“Invincible” is an adult animated superhero show created by Robert Kirkman (“The Walking Dead”) and based on his comic book series of the same name. After his father’s Earth-shattering betrayal in the first season, Mark Grayson continues to save the world as the superhero Invincible while also balancing his personal life with his superhero responsibilities. Throughout his journey, he must directly confront his biggest fear: becoming his genocidal, power-hungry father. The series features the voices of an excellent ensemble cast, including Steven Yeun (“Beef”), Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve”), J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”), Gillian Jacobs (“Community”) and Sterling K. Brown (“American Fiction”).
Before I delve into the latest season, I think it’s important to briefly review the first season, which was released back in 2021. “Invincible” benefits from nuanced writing and excellent performances, with leads Yeun, Oh and Simmons being the standouts. The show’s 2D animation feels fluid and makes the action sequences feel kinetic. The action sequences are also surprisingly brutal in their violence, almost traumatically so. The first and final episodes of the first season have some incredibly violent moments that are still burned into my memory.
Thankfully, this second season follows suit, improving on the first season in practically every single way. Despite one glaring flaw in season two’s episode rollout, I think it’s safe to say that “Invincible” is probably one of the best comic book shows on television.
The only problem I have with this season is something that quite a bit of fans took issue with: the structure. While both seasons of the show had eight episodes, season two was split into two parts, each consisting of four episodes. Parts One and Two also had a roughly four-month break in between them. This wasn’t even the only show to do so recently, as the most recent seasons of both “American Horror Story” and “Chucky” had been split into two parts with a similar gap between them. However, while those two shows were released in that way due to last year’s actors’ and writers’ strikes, “Invincible” seemed to be doing this for narrative reasons rather than anything else.
In an interview with Collider, Kirkman explained that the events of episode four may cause audiences to want to take a break. If anything, this decision made me genuinely forget that we were even getting new episodes of the season, so by the time Part Two started in mid-March of this year, my reaction was just, “Oh yeah, I forgot the season hadn’t ended yet.” It was a distracting decision, and I hope the upcoming third season doesn’t follow the same release model.
With that said, the second season of “Invincible” was still fantastic largely due to its performances and characters. Mark, Debbie, Nolan and Allen continue to be the show’s best characters, both due to the performances of their actors and how they are written. The most surprising strength to me in terms of the series’ characters was Rex, in large part due to how he evolved over the course of the season. Throughout the first season, Rex was a punchable, comic-relief scumbag. The writing of the character, in addition to Mantzoukas’ performance, reminded me of Sokka from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” but if Sokka’s initial misogyny was turned up to 11. We see him mature quite a bit throughout the second part of season two, and while he’s still a flawed, comic-relief character, he’s more genuinely likable than he was in the show’s early stages.
“Invincible” also continues to be shockingly violent, both in terms of its explicit gore (seriously, I didn’t think I would ever see someone get elbowed in the mouth so hard that their jaw tears in half) and due to the audience’s possible attachment to the victims of said violence. For example, there’s a scene in the season finale in which a character gets their arm broken, and despite it not being as graphic as other moments in the series, it was still the most effective moment of violence in the season for me — and that’s all because I cared about who the violence was being inflicted on. Granted, it is still plenty gory (arms aren’t supposed to bend that way), but it shows that you can still shock audiences without blowing someone’s head up. But also, I’m perfectly cool with seeing someone’s head blow up in this show, so please keep going all out with the violence.
All in all, the second season of “Invincible” delivered pretty much everything I wanted as a fan of the show. While the release structure is something that I hope won’t be repeated going forward, Kirkman’s clear focus on characters, actors, visuals and action continues to shine, and I can’t wait to see where season three takes us.
RATING: 8.6/10