Debbie Grayson (Sandra Oh) is tormented by a cabinet door that won’t shut. It suffered a shoddy repair job following the calamity that upended Debbie’s life one month ago, when her husband, Nolan (J.K. Simmons), the extraterrestrial superhero known as Omni-Man, revealed his mission to colonize Earth for his homeland of Viltrum. Nolan leveled the city of Chicago, killing thousands of people and nearly murdering their son, Mark (Steven Yeun), before flying off into the atmosphere. Debbie’s frequent trips to the kitchen for glasses of wine culminate in clashes with the door, which remains slightly ajar—a stubborn symbol of the anger and grief that she hasn’t figured out how to compartmentalize.
The second season of Invincible, based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, continues the previous one’s thoughtful exploration of the violence that shapes the lives of the show’s characters. When Mark’s powers awakened in season one, Nolan taught him how to fight, sparing no criticism. As Nolan struck Mark with blows, inspiring him with both terror and awe, the training sessions examined the fundamental cruelty at the heart of masculine bonding rituals. And while Dad is nowhere to be seen in the early goings of the second season, he proves even more oppressive in his absence.
Where Mark used to soar through skies in exultant liberation, his forays as Invincible have become rote, joyless affairs. His evil-smiting beatdowns, once irresistible fonts of catharsis and adrenaline, are now tainted by Nolan’s vicious legacy. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to be my dad,” Mark tells Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), who’s given up crime-fighting to help rebuild Chicago. “What if that happens? What if I become him, and I don’t even know it?”
Invincible’s caped demigods are afflicted with the same agonies as mortals: domineering bosses, harsh performance reviews, and destabilizing reorganizations. Mark reports to Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins), a government superhero handler, who expects him to answer every call and follow every order. Cecil also manages the Guardians of the Globe, a young Avengers-esque squad adjusting to the demands of their gruff new captain, the Immortal (Ross Marquand). Unfortunately, scenes featuring the Guardians tend to lack momentum and novelty, and as a result often feel like disappointing distractions from Mark’s and Debbie’s stories.
Other side arcs, in contrast, more compellingly play with structure and tone to assess the toll of Nolan’s rampage and subsequent disappearance. In episode three, “This Missive, this Machination!,” Paul F. Tompkins narrates an excursion to Talescria, the base of operations from which Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) searches the universe for a warrior capable of defeating the Viltrumites. The bit has the lighthearted air of a Saturday-morning cartoon—until it erupts in a scene whose shocking gruesomeness recalls Nolan’s melee with the Guardians in season one.
Much of the sequence transpires in close shots of Viltrumites pummeling a foe, his blood splashing onto the inky purple and blue haze of the cosmos. Occasional bouts of slow motion convey the Viltrumites’ might, their punches seemingly reorienting space and time. Then, we cut to a distant shot of the carnage, set against the backdrop of a massive planet. Even when dwarfed by the celestial body, the butchery of the Viltrumites exerts the scene’s gravitational pull. The grandeur of the image, tempered by the rending understatement of John Paesano’s score, deftly frames violence as a primordial force, central to sentient life since its genesis.
In the first episode of the season, “A Lesson for Your Next Life,” viewers learn that there are myriad parallel Earths, and that in most of them Mark allied with Nolan to conquer the planet. This conceit could have felt tired, given our contemporary pop culture’s obsession with multiverses, but the series smartly uses the existence of alternate worlds to suggest the inevitability of the brutal imperialism that Nolan and the Viltrumites champion—as well as the enduring possibility, however unlikely its success, of rebellion.
The Mark we know was one of the few to spurn his idol, and his choice captures the hope that courses through even Invincible’s bleakest moments. While infinite realities will spawn countless empires, the show understands that no tyrant is untouchable and no fate inevitable.
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