Invincible’s first season ends with tooth-shattering, bone-rattling immensity in “Where I Really Come From.” This will contain spoilers for the finale so please do yourself a favor and watch the episode first.
1. The scale and grandiosity of violence
This was a violent show, that much was obvious. I mean every episode we get a logo covered in a grindhouse movie level of schlock blood, but “Where I Really Come From” turns that up to 11. Invincible and Omni-Man’s fight is one of the most kinetic, bare-knuckle and outright disturbing superhero fights in any media to date. It was… Amazing. This is established so perfectly from the outset, where other episodes have started with something softer or contextual, here we’re introduced with the raining blood and refuse of the Immortal’s bisected corpse.
The animators deserve so much praise for the perfect scale and choreography they imbued this fight with across each of its set-pieces. From the start each punch feels downright CRUNCHY, like that moment where Nolan instantly and precisely catches Mark’s punch and twists it to the brink of breaking. The movement is so well captured too, like the twisting cinematography of the missile chase, or that jolting distance of Nolan punching Mark miles away. It captures that sense of invulnerable people of human mass reacting to inhumane levels of force and thrust, watching Mark crash through Chicago like a bullet sent a chill through me. The whole episode has this knack at showing these beautifully rendered landscapes and then cascading them into twisted metal and blood splatters. It’s the utmost extremity of collateral damage.
This episode really embodied what I loved most in the comic, fights that lasted entire story arcs and took their violence beyond any threshold of expectation. It made me so paranoid for the people caught in the crossfire that every time I saw a regular person’s face amongst this chaos I was just afraid for their life, and I was right to be worried! The moment that fighter pilot took off his helmet I knew he was doomed, but even then I still wasn’t ready enough for whatever THAT was. Watching Mark crash through each person on that train made me feel sick, which is a testament to the show. Where so many other films and series try to build remorse through building familiarity with victims, Invincible instead stops lingering on its mass calamities. Like when Nolan and Mark sheer through that boat and all we see is a few scattered corpses, instantly dead and drowning. The fact that the whole sequence only lasted about twenty minutes is astounding, it felt so much longer and I was still left wanting more.
2. Viltrumite Blood
Omni-Man and Invincible’s fight really is a great display of how their upbringings bred their full-fledged sadism and pseudo-masochism, respectively. Nolan is a creature of flippant violence while his son has trained himself to be an expert punching bag out of necessity. I genuinely cannot think of a single other superhero fight that felt this realistically impossible to win for the hero. There’s no ex-machina here, only Mark’s ability to hold out in the hope of his father faltering physically or emotionally. So having to watch people get ground into paste without there being even a chance of Mark preventing it makes us question any possibility of a resolution that doesn’t end in total attrition.
It’s Mark’s indomitability and Nolan’s maliciousness that really makes this whole conflict sing. When Mark finally lands that string of punches he feels like a genuine comeback king because we’ve been with him through all that violence, and when we see Nolan reduce him to a crater of blood buried in the snow we react with full fledged disgust at the knowledge of Nolan’s capacity for carnage. There’s a line right at the start where Nolan says “It’s me Mark, it’s just me,” it’s probably the best line delivery from JK Simmons this whole season, and it really haunted every punch he threw for me. There’s just that knowledge that Nolan can reconcile the harm he’s causing and just keep hitting Mark over and over, only ever feeling the guilt of it when he sees his son simply can’t get back up from the brink of death.
Continued belowThis comparison is so visually and thematically strong through the episode, crescendoing in every scene they share, and lingering beyond tangibility even after he’s gone. I loved how Mark seemed to lose muscle mass through the fight while Nolan looks so full of being and presence. This really comes to the forefront in the soft cut between Mark’s childhood adoration and his adulthood betrayal, it makes the beating that much more unbearable because it’s illustrating layers of pain.
“Where I Really Come From” also leaves the pair in interesting mental spaces. Where Nolan once spouted his ideology to sway others, his final lecture to Mark is an attempt by Omni-Man to sway himself. He’s looking for an excuse not to kill Mark, and by pleading through a veneer of derision we’re seeing that his Viltrumite beliefs are becoming affirmations more than certainties. It’s a very softly framed way to show how he’s losing faith in his moral core. Meanwhile Mark, while faced with the collapse of the life he knew, is being slowly introduced into this wider space of independent heroism (more on that ahead) and the literal vastness of the cosmos. Where other media treats that immensity with existential dread, Invincible takes care to show how Mark finds comfort in that cosmopolitanism of space, where so much life exists that universal misery feels a little less possible than it did just a couple days ago. It’s a little spark of hope following a violently pessimistic crescendo.
3. ”This is Humanity”
Invincible has had as much to say as a parental story as it does as a coming of age one, but this finale looks to bottle and encapsulate that. On one hand we have Debbie’s unbreakable will to protect Mark’s optimism, and on the other the sheer parental abuse that underscores Mark and Nolan’s conflict. I genuinely didn’t believe I could feel that much mixed joy and pathos from a cheesy little league flashback, but those two diametric pillars made me love it.
At the start, Nolan’s argument almost feels convincing in its own twisted way. There’s this human tonality to it, because we’re once again seeing that he’s capable of that same candidness as Debbie, it’s part of his vernacular. This is just the first time he could be truly candid while embodying it. But, Debbie is still just so much more wise than him. Her speech during the flashback encapsulates this intangible emotionality that goes beyond time and achievement and every other factor we use to value life, and it supersedes anything he’s trying to outline with his purposeful utilitarianism. She’s the best mom. The fact that one of the first things she says to her son is “I’m so proud of you” when she could just be wallowing in the trauma and othering of that fight? God that’s beautiful.
4. So many of these people are just boring
I remembered being really worried that the Guardians would distract from the central conflict of this episode, and that made something click in my head for me. I think I’m just bored of them. The fact that their most redeeming feature of this episode is that they were just unobtrusive is such an indictment. While some of the characters are fun on their own, I’m sick of their story compared to the immensity of THIS climax.
In a show with a critically sharp core, the Guardians are indicative of this outer layer of chaff made to keep the show sitting more comfortably within its genre when it could just as easily move beyond it. I honestly don’t think I’ve mentioned Black Samson once, and looking back on it I’m sort of happy I haven’t had to.
In the same vein, Amber’s arc ends with that same non-committal intentionality its had throughout, she’s been robbed of any strong personal identity and instead waved like a carrot on a string until Mark was ‘mature’ (i.e traumatized) enough to ‘earn’ her, it’s lazy character progression in an otherwise thoughtful show.
5. Where do we go from here?
Outside of the episode for a bit, we were lucky enough to get a confirmation for seasons 2 and 3 just before the finale. It’s such a comfort knowing Amazon is willing to foster this show in the long term and let it progress into something even more special. Which is lucky since this season leaves us with a lot to continue onto. I think it definitely wraps up cohesively as a finale for the season, but there is a literal montage of all the things about to go wrong in the world, so I’m happy we aren’t just stuck dangling with that cliffhanger.
In a way, we always knew that season 1 would end with this showdown, while the show borrowed storylines from later in the comic run and fitted them in before Mark and Nolan’s fight, this conflict felt like the logical endpoint. That’s what makes season 2 so exciting, I really don’t know where that could end up! Will it be Mark’s battle with Eugene Levy? The revelation around Cecil? Maybe we’ll even see Conquest! I really feel like the coming seasons can thrive on that uncertainty.
It does seem pretty evident that we’re going to see Invincible in his government agent phase at the least, which I’m happy about! That was a really great set-up for him and it makes all of his chronic lateness a little more compelling, plus we get to spend longer with the sheer talent of Walton Goggins, who I really need to sing the praises of more often. Plus, despite how much I rag on Mark’s high school life, seeing him, Will, Eve and Amber hanging out at the end was pretty fun!
I really feel like seasons 2 and 3 have a chance to let this show settle into the story it really wants to tell with a protagonist in the mental state his writers most want to portray, and that’s really exciting to me! Bring on the bloodshed, preferably before 2023.
Food for thought:
– I literally refuse to call Robot Rudy.
– Poor Art 🙁
– Mark BURNED his signature sweater in space! LIKE IT WAS NOTHING!!
– Love hearing Seth Rogen’s coming from a weird orange jelly baby alien
– “Hate to Say I Told You So” by The Hives functions as a great outro for the finale just like “Broken Boy” did for the pilot. No matter how much they spent on royalties this season, it was worth it for this killer soundtrack.
What a fucking show. “Where I Really Come From” was an amazing endpoint to an immaculate season. Next up… Something else entirely, hopefully we all survive the wait.
