Emotional highs amidst a scattered story
Posted:
Oct 30, 2023 6:22 pm
The following is a spoiler-free review of Invincible season 2, part 1, which premieres on Prime Video November 3. Reviews of new episodes will run on Fridays through November 24.
Picking up shortly after the series’ first season, Invincible returns with a truncated “Part 1” that was split for creative reasons, but ought to have been allowed to play out to its full conclusion. The first four episodes of season 2 air weekly on Prime Video starting November 3, with the next batch of four set to premiere sometime next year, and while the continuing adventures of Invincible/Mark Grayson feature occasional emotional heft, they can’t help but feel scattered in their construction.
Still, the strengths of these episodes rival the gut-churning anvil that was dropped on us in last season’s finale, which saw the half-human, half-Viltrumite hero Mark (Steven Yeun) used as a battering ram to kill civilians before being beaten to a pulp by his turncoat alien father, the ruthless Nolan/Omni Man (J.K. Simmons). With Omni Man having fled the planet, Mark and his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh) are left to deal with the ensuing emotional crater. This makes for a remarkably effective throughline across all four episodes, especially as far as Debbie is concerned; as a human, her only outlets for dealing with superpowered problems can’t help but feel hopeless and insignificant.
Invincible Season 2, Part 1 Gallery
As for Mark, who struggles between rejecting his genocidal father and becoming him, his latent anger compels him to jump back into the superhero fold, under the watchful eye of Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins) and the Global Defense Academy, or GDA. However, Mark’s inner circle – his girlfriend Amber (Zazie Beetz), his superhero pal Samantha/Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), and his best friend William (Andrew Rannells) – can’t help but feel perfunctory. Creator Robert Kirkman (who also wrote the Invincible comics) and the show’s writers and directors are adept at translating Mark’s internal dilemmas into action and silent montages. But they often feel the need to repeat themselves by depicting entire conversations between Mark and the supporting cast that only serve to vocalize themes that were already expressed (with greater artistry) elsewhere.
Truncating this season also leads to a lack of clear direction, though this may end up looking different in hindsight. On one hand, Invincible quickly expands in scope, with a greater focus on the large universe these characters occupy and an emphasis on the wider ripple effects of Mark and Nolan’s climactic battle, which has implications on both sides of a major ongoing conflict among the stars. However, the happenings back on Earth feel distorted in their assembly. A new antihero enters the fray, in the form of Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown), a hyperintelligent enigma with dimension-hopping powers, who offers us glimpses into alternate realities which, in theory, ought to pose questions for Mark since they mirror his dilemma in several key ways. However, this multiverse concept is something few other characters interact with, if they’re made aware of it at all. Its usefulness in the comics is crystal clear, and it appears the show might eventually head in a similar direction, but by the end of episode 4, it’s left dangling in mid-air without a clear emotional or narrative purpose.
Other major developments draw straight from the comics in deeply affecting ways, from the larger, extraterrestrial goings on, to the question of what became of Omni Man after he fled from Earth. But as far as the larger ensemble goes – supporting heroes like Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas), Dupli-Kate (Malese Jow), Robot (Ross Marquand), and so on – their emotional entanglements and training woes feel slight in comparison. Their subplots arise only a handful of times per episode, even if that, before disappearing for lengthy stretches. It’s a wildly unstructured season compared to its predecessor, which had a much tighter focus on bringing the stories of individual characters to fruition, and more carefully carved out space for each of them.
Invincible is much more surefooted about what it is this time around.
What remains intact is the penchant for gore, and this time, it’s rarely presented with the tonal disconnect of season 1’s initial episodes. Invincible took a while to find itself and establish its relationship to existing comic/superhero tropes, and though its send-ups of existing Marvel and DC characters still feel a tad malformed – all the things Invincible wants to convince you it isn’t – the show is much more surefooted about what it is, with emotional pivots that play out at the extremes of silence and uninhibited anguish and are all made to feel part of the same fabric. It also helps that the performances are markedly (pun intended) improved pretty much across the board. The actors in the cast who are more accustomed to live-action sound more comfortable with expressing themselves through voice alone, especially Steven Yeun, who articulates Mark’s lingering rage at his father’s betrayal through the way he suppresses his dialogue delivery, making each line an act of struggle.
Apart from Mark and Debbie’s festering grief (and the ways they deal with it), explaining the overarching plot of Season 2 Part 1 – as anything but a setup for a (hopefully) clearer throughline in the next batch of episodes – is damn near impossible,. However, its emotional high points – usually through wordless montage – make it a worthwhile continuation, even though the show is yet to fully return to form.
Verdict
Anchored by leveled-up vocal performances, the returning Invincible maintains a strong throughline for Steven Yeun’s Mark and Sandra Oh’s Debbie as they deal with the fallout of last season’s violent finale. However, despite this compelling emotional core (and the show’s subsequent expansion in scale), season 2 becomes a shaky ensemble drama, owing to a scattered structure that tosses in supporting subplots almost at random, with few of them being granted the necessary time to breathe. It’s a promising foundation for the remainder of the season, even if it mostly establishes the puzzle pieces while fitting few of them together.
good
The first half of Invincible Season 2 features strong emotional high points and an expanded scope, but a scattered structure that fails to weave it all together.
Siddhant Adlakha
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