invincible s3
Another long one incoming.
Invincible is the absolute only show where I can watch a character get a fist blown through their abdomen, spewing out their intestines on the other side with their guts being ripped out next, and then proceed to say out loud to the screen, “get up, you're fine.”
If I could describe this season and the direction the show is going in general in one phrase, it would be “growing pains”. Invincible Season 3 is the quintessential example of something flawless with some major flaws that you feel really guilty criticizing. The action is as exciting as ever, the voice cast is insane, the single-episode set pieces are vast and expansive, the sweeping soundtrack elevates the experience to unbelievable heights, and the animation got… better. It's almost useless to praise the stuff that makes Invincible a perfect imperfect show.
But since its high points are so high, I feel like I’m trapped in animation quicksand, and all the creative decisions I don’t agree with are just things I’m going to have to live with. Case in point, the “no character can die mentality”. This really built to a boiling point for me when Angstrom Levy was revealed to be alive. The entire point of his character was to be killed by Mark. An enormous, pivotal stepping stone for Mark’s character development- gone, just like that. Completely destroying the entire purpose of the epic finale of the last season.
I truthfully, honestly envy the people that displayed extreme emotions to, or even cried about, Rex's death, and believed in their heart just by watching the show that he was gone for good. But for me, I started a make-believe countdown in my head, imagining the single-digit amount of episodes it would take for him to be revived. Why should I believe he’s dead when I was just shown in this episode alone- TWICE- that characters can survive impossible mortal wounds? The absolute only major character in the entire show so far that has died and stayed dead outside the original Guardians of the Globe, Rex’s death could have been so emotional for me, but it wasn’t. The characters’ ironic invincibility clause is so much of a problem for me that I genuinely lost a not insignificant amount of interest for the next season.
My proposed solution, and one that I’m not even sure would work, would be to verbally tell a new viewer that’s just about to start the season, “There is exactly one major, named good guy in this season that dies and stays dead forever. Every other character that dies on-screen will come back to life sooner or later.” This would cause a frantic guessing game in the audience’s head as to who will be the one to bite the bullet, and ideally cause them to latch onto every character and be scared for them (like how fiction is supposed to work). But even then, that’s a Band-Aid-on-a-bullet hole solution, since it requires prior viewing and isn’t made with the series’ creative style in mind.
Speaking of death, Mark’s continuation of his “killing versus no killing” character arc is extremely underwhelming. Less offensive is his convoluted distinctions to who he can kill and who he can’t, since I suppose Reanimen (human beings transformed into robots) are fair game to Mark despite the fact that his closest friend’s boyfriend is one. Clones of human beings are apparently fine too, since he uncharacteristically, literally tears the head and entire spine off a clone of Multi Paul and doesn’t even flinch, react or mention it again ever. More annoying, however, is the extremely forced approach to the arc’s unfolding, with every aspect of it being spoken aloud verbatim with little to no subtlety. Oliver, Debbie and Mark pretty much just tell each other exactly what to feel until they decide to change their minds, with visual representations or hardships or difficult decisions being left by the wayside. I could do nothing but shrug apathetically when Mark declared in the final scene that he’d kill for his family if they were threatened- just like he did in the last season. Grand.
At least the action is incredible. The Conquest fight in the city is breathtaking, and is on a scale undreamt of in the medium. The closest thing I can think of is the opening to Spider-Man 2 on PS5, with Mark tumbling through buildings and super men soaring through the sky and shockwaves that destroy anything in their path. The animation for that one shot with Mark’s hair flipping around shocked me, as it looked so different from anything else that it seemed like a different show for a moment there, and the fight was so tense it was hard to look away for even a second.
Powerplex is an additional star of the show, too, as his entire episode is extremely well crafted. He’s one of those villains where you kinda get where he’s coming from, and has so much nuance and depth that he feels like a real character. I’m the biggest Breaking Bad fan on the planet, so I was delighted to hear Powerplex brought to life and elevated to cult status by Aaron Paul, one of my favorite underutilized actors of all time, which brings me cleanly to another high point: the voice acting. Steven Yeun, for the third season in a row, is absolutely phenomenal, and not only gets to voice Mark, but eighteen additional alternate-universe versions of him with their own unique voices. You can tell he’s having so much fun in the studio coming up with those voices, man. The last performance I want to discuss is Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who absolutely kills it as Conquest. He’s intimidating and scary, but in a different way from JK Simmons, or really any of the other Viltrumite voice actors. The loneliness speech was the most bone-chilling dialogue in the entire season, carving out a terrifying three-dimensional nuance for Conquest in near seconds. Was he telling the truth, trying to disarm Mark, or just trying to get under his skin? Horrifying stuff. I genuinely think “I’m so lonely” will become the next “Think, Mark” or “I thought you were stronger.”
I think the individual, isolated episodes are what I liked the most. The aforementioned Powerplex episode, the tense and lightning-paced Invincible War, (I love how it's all one crazy, unforgettable episode, mirroring how it's a one-issue story in the comics), and the finale were great episodes on their own, but given that they each fail to move the story forward in their own meaningful ways, and that they completely change focus from episode to episode with little to no connectivity between them, these masterpieces only work in a vacuum. The first five episodes were extremely dull filler “beach” episodes- the Cecil plotline is dropped like a ton of bricks, and the clunky and forced Mark and Eve subplots have the thrill of counting down slowly from a thousand. In fact, the Viltrumite prison breakout (the only appearances of Nolan and Allen, leaving abruptly as soon as they appear out of nowhere) might be the only major thing here to actually set up the future of the series. Not only does this make the Viltrum empire seem lazy and less intimidating as a result, seeing as they’re taking their sweet time and the audience hardly gets a chance to check up on them, but it just makes more than half the season feel disposable and unimportant.
Since I’ve got to wrap this up, given that we all have jobs, I’ll touch briefly on the animation. It’s fine- it does the job. There’s so much discourse about it, whether it’s bad, comparing it to the comics, discussion on how people don’t understand how animation works, etc. It’s all been said before, but the only thing I’ll add is that it’s incredibly frustrating that people complained and complained about the long wait time in between Seasons 1 and 2 and how it was taking forever, and that as soon as seasons started coming out consistently and as soon as Amazon put more focus into punctuality than animation, that’s immediately when people complained about the animation. So frustrating that people pulled a 180 and whined about two things you literally can’t have at once, especially with such a small team. Pick one, people. My pick? I’d rather wait two years (or even longer) for something that looks like X-Men ‘97 than the alternative.
I want to like this more, believe me, I really do. I understand how bad it looks for me to praise the last season and call it the greatest thing ever made and then immediately come down hard on whatever's current and new. But I can't stress enough- the scale of the Invincible War is amazing. The Conquest fight was one of the most exciting super fights I've ever seen, maybe THE most exciting in animation, the performances from Yeun, Paul, Morgan and the rest are incredible, and the characters are as dynamic and interesting as ever. Just because I'm constructively criticizing does NOT mean this season is free from electric, unadulterated jaw-dropping perfection. It just means I'm putting out there that the creative decisions, heaven for some but baffling to me, are growing pains I'm going to have to live with if I'm going to continue to consume this show. I'm still excited for Season 4 and whatever comes with it, but not nearly as much as I was for Seasons 2 or 3.
Wait, guys, I just remembered Boss Baby is in this. Best show ever made?
