Stream it Or Skip It?
One thing you can’t say about Invincible is that it’s a simple show. Just watching the “Previously On” recap before the first episode of the show’s third season confirms that. But somehow, Robert Kirkman and company manage to make each season about something distinctive, even while stories and changing relationships keep simmering in the background.
INVINCIBLE SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Mark Grayson, aka Invincible (Steven Yeun) grunts as he lifts a massive combatant who has the mentality of a child.
The Gist: Cecil Steadman (Walton Goggins), director of the Global Defense Agency, is training Mark hard now that Invincible is fully on board to work for the GDA. Mark is definitely responding, with all of his skills and strength improving exponentially.
When Cecil gets a call about the Declaration of Independence being stolen, he sends Mark, along with Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas), to get it back. As Mark and Rex subdue the pair who stole the document, they discuss the prospect of Mark asking out Eve (Gillian Jacobs) — until Multi-Paul (Simu Liu) descends on Rex and beats the living daylights out of him for killing his sister, Dupli-Kate (Malese Jow). What both of them don’t know is that Kate duplicated herself and is alive in exile, engaged to The Immortal (Ross Marquand).
After that adventure, Mark goes home and finds out that his little brother Oliver (Christian Convery) already has superpowers, something that he’s kept from their mother Debbie (Sandra Oh). Cecil gets alerted to it, and visits Oliver and Debbie to tell her that the tween should be training with the GDA, a notion Debbie refuses to listen to. Eventually, Mark tells his mother that he’ll train Oliver, but Debbie wants to make sure that Oliver won’t keep anything from either her or his older brother.
Cecil is shown seismic activity all over the country that seems suspicious. Then, suddenly all of the heroes — except for Mark and Eve, as Mark is busy botching his attempt to ask Eve out — disappears. Somehow, Doc Seismic (Chris Diamantopoulos) has managed to harness his powers, summon underground monsters, and capture all the heroes who perpetuate the U.S. government’s evil capitalist agenda. Mark and Eve get down there to fight Seismic and his monsters off, but what Cecil ultimately does to aid them puts him firmly in Mark’s crosshairs.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’ll keep comparing Invincible to The Boys, though it feels like both shows are approaching each other in terms of violence and cynicism as they move along their respective story tracks.
Our Take: Invincible, created by Robert Kirkman from the comic he co-wrote with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley and developed for TV by Simon Racioppa, continues to spin out complex and multi-threaded story arcs for all of its characters, and the show is so loaded with celebrity voices that it’s sometimes hard to concentrate on the story. But the stories are definitely compelling enough to follow.
Despite what seems like a complicated narrative, it does seem like every season comes down to a few main stories, with the rest playing out in minor arcs. Season 3 is essentially related to Mark, at his most confident and powerful, losing trust in Cecil because of who he has integrated into the GDA, while struggling to teach his little brother the nuances of being a responsible superhero.
Those storylines are pretty clear in the first episode, even if you have a hard time recalling what happened in Invincible Season 2, which debuted 16 months ago. As we see at the end of the episode, Mark’s father Nolan (J.K. Simmons) isn’t out of the picture, and might be cooking up a plan of his own, with Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) at the center of it. And we’re pretty sure there’s going to be more about Mark and Eve. But one of the things that Kirkman and company are good at is emerging a season’s primary storylines among all of the characters and their stories. But having such a deep bench (more on that in a second) helps when it’s necessary to divert to one of the other stories for a short time.
Sex and Skin: None, though the show is more violent than we seem to remember.
Parting Shot: Like we said above, Nolan is plotting something with Allen, and we don’t think even Allen knows what it is.
Sleeper Star: The voice cast of Invincible is so deep that Sterling K. Brown, who was nominated for an Emmy for playing Angstrom Levy in Season 2, can still be hanging around and not given anything major to do at first.
Most Pilot-y Line: Rex celebrates a victory by saying “my dick is out!” Granted, he was naked at the time, and it was a funny line, but it feels like a line that reminds viewers the show isn’t for kids.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Invincible continues to tell very human stories about Mark and the superheroes of the GDA, highlighting the main storylines of the season while keeping other stories cooking with a very good cast of celebrity voices.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
