Invincible S2E8 Television 

Five Thoughts on Invincible‘s “I Thought You Were Stronger”

By | April 8th, 2024
Posted in Television | % Comments

Invincible meets its end… for now and hopefully not for long. The end of season 2 is here, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It remains gory and spoiler-y regardless. Let’s get right into it.

1. Blood-soaked remorse
Before things go particularly wrong, Angstrom Levy puts up a good fight for Mark. I feel like he would be a more menacing villain overall if the show either leaned in all the way to his build-up and had him prominently preparing to fight Mark through the season, or if he really did disappear behind the scene for the whole mid-season. His two minutes an episode leaves his plot feeling obvious by the time it starts.

I do think we get to see some more great sides of him though, that line of Mark being “careless” by having other dimensions in which his identity is public is great, mostly because of the kernel of implication it carries about what he should have done to prevent that. Without spoiling the comics too much, I like them bringing Angstrom Jr into the series here. An evil Invincible obviously suffers under the current surplus of evil Superman stories, but it is used well here to show how all the different Angstroms rolling around in his head are clamouring over one another without their hatred.

All that’s to say, Angstrom’s arc is very much a build-up to his death and what it can do to rock Mark. The titular line for this episode is one of the most memorable from the comic and while it maybe lacks a bit of oomph in the show, there is still so much emotion here. It’s memorable enough that I feel like we can credibly see it reverberate through the remainder of this series.

2. Who doesn’t love the multiverse
Anyone creating a comic adaptation who has a multiverse storyline thrust upon them in the 2020s must feel like they have inherited a poisoned chalice. It’s arguably the most over-saturated and poorly handled plot conceit of the genre, and it’s now the big fireworks moment of season 2. Where season 1’s finale was the most culturally influential episode of the series, and put it on the map for those who hadn’t been following along, there was definitely a feeling by the midpoint of the finale that it was attempting to use gimmicks to hold itself in the conversation to the same degree.

It was always going to be hard to complete, and I appreciate that it’s trying to take an entirely different angle, but it just fails to use its new avenue for spectacle to really discern this show from the flood of competition in the genre.

There is a good argument to be made that I am not the target audience for most of this stuff, I’ve never played Fortnite, and as a kid who grew up with Australian free-to-air TV I have absolutely no attachment to Josh Keaton’s Spider-Man. T-Rexes are funny I guess. Now obviously everyone was hoping for a proper official Spider-Man crossover, and it would have felt like a real turning point to have had it, but this worked too. I like that he’s the perfect character to give enough comic relief to acknowledge the Multiverse trappings are a little played out. I love the Professor Octopus design too.

I can’t describe how sick of the gimmick I was when they entered the Walking Dead dimension. I just wish Mark got to see universes of strong parallels to broaden his character in the same way these alt-Earths are used for Angstrom. Instead it’s just easter eggs and hijinxs, and it will leave every viewer’s memory within weeks.

3. Escalation/resolution
This episode does an absolutely remarkable job at building and unfurling its tension throughout, playing comedy, terror and horror one after another with few stumbling points along the way. From the morning jogger oblivious to Invincible’s urgent flight in the background (except you CANNOT play Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” without giving me Christopher Walken to go along with it). Similarly there’s a real fear that bubbles up in the lead-in to the Invicible v Angstrom Levy clash. Mark’s floating with this rigid restraint, portals are forming and Oliver’s crying grounds all of it.

Continued below

Sterling K Brown is just an awesome VA, and another reason the intensity of the moment lands, he’s one of the few people they could pick with a level of vocal gravitas to match JK Simmons. By the point we really do see Debbie get hurt, the gravity of the moment has been so clearly established that it makes the gore hit incredibly viscerally. Similarly, the hazy, unfocused camera after he kills Levy that finds Mark in a perfect reversal of his greatest beating from the “500 years” scene is perfect. It tells you so much about why this killing was so distressing for Mark.

Away from Angstrom, our final moment of the season, Nolan’s “I think I miss my wife” is a great last note that uses its mundanity to perfect effect. It gives an otherwise disposal section of plot more impact even than Eve and Mark’s last scene.

4. Before the curtains close
Speaking of how things wrap up, there are a lot of almost-too-tidy bows wrapped around the various sub-plots that have rattled through the eight episodes we’ve enjoyed this season. Both the Kate/Immortal and Robot/Monster Girl reunions are conveniently tropal, in my mind at their own detriment.

It should have felt more plot-convenient, but I actually really like the time travel deus ex machina that saves Mark from the wasteland Earth. These Guardians of the Globe have the most Cory Walker-y designs ever, especially Bulletproof. It really made them stick with me straight away. I’m also a sucker for time traveler spoilers, so I loved Eve’s talk to him and that glimpse into the idea that Mark got back home on his own in this original timeline but became something else along the way.

Speaking of designs and little touches in the art, I loved some of the smaller detailing through this episode. For one we finally got to see the Pentagon’s revered parking in rear, what a paradise, it went on forever. Plus I loved seeing the Immortal’s original costume hanging up in his shack. It makes it feel like both the characters have existed before now, but also some adaptation chronicling them, like history lost some 1950s “Omni-Man and the Immortal” comics.

5. Mark’s final scorecard
There is one thing a show’s season finale can do to earn my endless respect, and I was very grateful to see it here. There’s no cliffhanger ending. We don’t need to see Conquest looming over Earth or Dinosaurus emerging from out of a shadowy alley, we end this season all about a world shaken by the loss of it’s greatest protector in an equally uncertain, but more clearly defined pause-state.

So how well did this season do by its end? It was, for all its peaks and valleys, just sort of fine. It’s consistently engaging, but lacked so much novelty in comparison to its preceding comics and season. It felt like it hadn’t grown past what came before, and was dulled by the fact that it’s playbook was now clearly established and had no remarkably new creative choices to rejuvenate it.

The best encapsulation I have for it is a shot in this finale episode. Near the episode’s end Mark is rocketing over a lovely city skyline rendered in fish-eye. It’s a gorgeous shot and shows a hurt, rudderless Mark. But we’ve seen that shot, it’s the same shorthand and the same message as the ‘Karma Police’ sequence from the season’s first episode. This season has been beautiful and breathtaking all in the most monotonous places, powerful emotion left banal by virtue of its repetition.

And that’s it! Thanks for following along, I’ll keep it brief, seeing as we’re sure to talk again when the next calamity arrives (and maybe if we’re well behaved we can have another fun mid-season interlude). Ciao until then!


//TAGS | Invincible

James Dowling

James Dowling is probably the last person on Earth who enjoyed the film Real Steel. He has other weird opinions about Hellboy, CHVRCHES, Squirrel Girl and the disappearance of Harold Holt. Follow him @James_Dow1ing on Twitter if you want to argue about Hugh Jackman's best film to date.

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