Created by Robert Kirkman, Invincible Season 2 takes place one month after the events of Season 1 and follows Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) after the Earth-shattering betrayal from his father. Mark is trying to get his life back on track as he makes new adversaries and allies, all while trying to suppress his greatest fear: That he may become his father!
The first season of Invincible served as a great adaptation that both satisfies long-time fans of the source material and creates new ones who never read it with its compelling characters, story, and animation. And after such an insane and emotionally brutal finale that shook every viewer to their core, many people like myself had been eagerly awaiting the return of these characters and seeing where the story could go next. After a three-year-long wait and an oddly chosen split of episodes the full second season is out in its entirety at last, but did it live up to the hype? In a lot of ways I feel it very much does and will definitely meet the expectations of many, but at the same time I do feel this season wasn’t as strong as a whole as its previous season for a number of reasons.
Invincible continues to be damn good in its second season which is incredibly well made and really hits hard when it needs to, making it stand out from many other comic book projects we have had in the past. However, the season also struggles a lot with having to tackle multiple story threads and characters from the source material, which makes this season a bit unfocused and a bit all over the place, at least in the first half, despite being very well-written, voiced, and animated.
The second half of the series on the other hand I feel saved the season as it manages to bring everything together and shine hugely with its emotional moments and immensely powerful storytelling, ending things on a high note.
To start things off I have to give immense praise to the voice cast of this season, both returning and new, because they truly did a fantastic job with each of their respective roles and gave us great arcs for each of their characters.
Steven Yeun continues to be the heart and soul of this series with his performance beautifully portraying this extremely relatable hero who endures so much as he is trying to recover from the events of season 1 while simultaneously struggling with a superhero lifestyle. He has the best arc of this season and his journey felt like the most consistent narrative, so I could not stop being invested in it thanks largely to the writing and Yeun’s performance. He gave his all last season and gives his all this season with his best voice acting to date, especially in the final episode of this season where he had to deliver one of the character’s most iconic scenes adapted from the comics, and boy did he deliver.
Also delivering the most amount of heart in this season is Sandra Oh reprising as Deborah Grayson, who like Mark struggles with the aftermath of season 1 but in her own way that doesn’t involve superpowers. She was shattered by the great betrayal of her husband and has been trying her best to attempt to move on and live the normal life that she deserves to have after everything she’s endured. And even without superpowers she truly is one of the strongest characters of this series whose heart and will is too strong to be broken so easily.
Other returning cast members also do a great job with reprising their respective roles but there were some definite standouts this season, including Gillian Jacobs as Atom Eve, Zazie Beetz as Amber, Ross Marquand as the Immortal, Chris Diamantopoulos as Donald Ferguson, Jason Mantzoukas as Rex, Seth Rogen as Allen the alien and of course J.K. Simmons as Nolan/Omni-Man.
Nolan isn’t as major of a character this season as he was in the previous but his journey in the aftermath of the events of season 1 is a really interesting one that non-comic fan viewers will find surprising and engaging. Seth Rogen delivers both comedy and heart with his role of Allen getting more time to shine this season as we explore his origin and the full scale of his mission to fight the Viltrumite Empire. Jason Mantzoukas also delivers great humor as Rex but we also get to see a unique exploration of his character that will make people who hated him before actually like him more this time around.
Ross Marquand excels at voicing multiple characters this season but his work as the Immortal is full of great emotional depth, making you really connect with the character on a deeper level compared to season 1.
We also have a bunch of new additions this season including standouts such as Ben Schwartz as Shapesmith, Rhea Seehorn as Andressa, Peter Cullen as Thaedus, Clancy Brown as Kregg, and Sterling K. Brown as Angstrom Levy.
Angstrom Levy is one of the main antagonists of season 2, a human who has the ability to traverse through the multiverse and wants to innovate and save his reality by gaining knowledge from his alternate selves. His plan would go south as Invincible intervened, disfiguring him, and gaining memories from all his alternate selves including ones from universes where Invincible turned evil. Driven mad, he becomes obsessed with getting revenge on Invincible and his entire family.
Now for a character with such an epic origin and motivations, he ends up becoming absent for a majority of the season, much like his role in comics, only appearing majorly at the beginning and end of the season. For me personally, I feel that they should have changed this up from the comics and made him a more central character this season, especially given how much he ends up having an impact on Mark by the end of the season, as well as the fact he is given an absolutely phenomenal performance by Sterling K. Brown.
While I do respect the fact that the creators of the show want to remain mostly loyal to the source material I do feel some changes to Angstrom’s role would have been very beneficial for the season as a whole, and would have given it more focus rather than tackle so many other threads all at once.
One of these threads includes the addition of a very controversial character from the comics that makes their first appearance in this season. Due to potential spoilers or potential changes for future seasons, I won’t go into why this character is so controversial, but I will say their appearance I found to be rather unnerving. The character is well written in their introduction and is voiced by an awesome casting choice but the future of the character could end up being a critical point for the series that could end up making or breaking the series for most viewers.
The season’s first half is good especially when it comes to its great character development but it struggles to weave together so many threads established from both last season and new ones in this season despite how well-written and acted the threads are. It is in the second half that I feel the season really turns the tide in a great way, offering a more focused narrative that ties up loose ends established in the first half and offers really powerful emotional moments that really do hit hard, especially in the finale. For me personally, I think this season’s finale is on par with the emotional and shocking impact of season 1’s finale especially with how it concludes Mark’s second season arc in a grand way that I found both satisfying and emotionally grueling. I found myself speechless by what happened and I feel it ends the season on a fantastic high note while also setting the stage for what will happen next season in a good way. My only wish was that the first half of the season was just as fantastic as the second half because then it would have made this season as a whole perfect in my eyes.
When it comes to the technical elements such as the brutal action, animation, sound design, visuals, and music all of it is honestly flawless. This is where I feel the show creators really took their time, not wanting to rush anything or cut corners, and the results hugely paid off. From bloody beatings to grand-scaled sequences this season knocks it out of the park on all elements.
This season may have not been as strong as the previous season in my view but its positives hugely outweigh the negatives. This series remains one of the best ongoing comic book adaptations made for TV and I remain eager to see the rest be adapted going forward, provided that they still give it the same amount of grand effort that they have been giving it so far two seasons in. I am going to give Invincible Season 2 an A- = 93.
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