After a two-year-long wait, Invincible returned to our small screens last week and took fans by surprise with its rather somber storytelling. It was understandable because the impact of Nolan’s actions on Mark and Debbie was unimaginable. So, the slow-burn process of fleshing out the character gave audiences the chance to deal with any leftover feelings of shock and grief that they had from the previous season. By the end of the first episode, though, the show became pretty gory again as Mark took on the Mauler twins and the big bad of season 2, Angstrom Levy, who turned into a big-brained dude after he tried to inject the thoughts of every single version of himself from the multiverse. As one of Levy’s alternate versions had suffered at the hands of an alternate version of Mark, he vowed to kill the Mark that we know and love, or kill every version of Mark in the multiverse. As if that wasn’t enough, The Immortal warned Mark that he was being observed by him because of Nolan’s actions.
Spoiler Alert
Debbie and Mark grow Apart
Episode 2 of the second season of Invincible opens with the graduation ceremony at Mark’s school. William, Eve, Amber, and the rest of the school are in attendance, but Mark isn’t because he is busy fighting Doc Seismic (again), who intends to decimate the Washington Monument. Now, the way the scene is cut together reminded me of Spider-Man’s introductory sequences in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, where it oscillates between a graduation ceremony and Spidey catching The Rhino (before he becomes The Rhino). Depending on your taste, that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Well, after the graduation ceremony, Mark, William, Eve, and Amber go to Eve’s treehouse to hang out and talk about their summer vacation. Amber has her community service, and William wants to binge-watch stuff. When Eve talks about cleaning up Chicago, it gets a little awkward because Chicago has been ruined because of Nolan and Mark’s fight. To ease the tension and in order to take Mark’s mind off the ever-looming presence of Cecil, Eve conjures a virgin mai tai so that Mark stays sober while having fun.
At the United States Space Agency, the astronauts who have survived the mission to Mars talk about killing the Sequids who are taking over Mars. When the head of the institution asks Livingston to chime in on the matter, he excuses himself because that’s actually not Livingston; it’s a Martian pretending to be Livingston. Next, we see Atom Eve fixing a building and turning an abandoned site into a community park, thereby putting the actual workers over there out of a job. As soon as she’s done, she gets a call from her mother. Debbie tries to take some time off and gets Mark to take some time off, too, by going on a vacation. Mark reminds her that he has to be a superhero, and superheroes don’t get to have a vacation. He essentially refuses to acknowledge the fact that Debbie is trying her level best to keep the last two members of the Grayson household together. If Mark was a normal teenager, Debbie would’ve been able to keep him around until he pulled down his walls and let her in. However, Mark is a teen who can literally fly away, and that’s why she fails to do the same. At the headquarters for the Guardians of the Globe, The Immortal puts his team through a grueling training session and then fornicates with Dupli-Kate, much to Rex Splode’s dismay because he thought that she was going to be “his girl” forever. Dupli-Kate states that that’s not the case at all.
Atom Eve Has Another Falling Out With Her Parents
Martian Man was a pretty famous member of the Guardians of the Globe until he was ripped to shreds by Omni-Man. Seeing clippings of his heroics motivates Livingston, as he thinks that he’ll be accepted as a hero, too. Invincible is tasked with looking into Darkwing sightings, which is understandably odd because the superhero is dead. Apparently, he is in a place called Midnight City, which is a portion of a city that has been cursed to be in a state of perpetual darkness by the Midnight Magician. Well, the rumors are kind of true because Darkwing’s protege, Night Boy, has taken on the mantle, and he’s fighting crime in his stead. It’s all clearly inspired by Batman (Midnight City looks like Gotham from Batman: The Animated Series) and Robin. That said, Night Boy, currently Darkwing, evidently has superpowers, unlike his predecessor, who wasn’t really invincible. He has made an exoskeleton that can withstand superpowered blows to the body, and Night Boy can conjure dark portals that can be used to trap people in a void. Mark struggles with the void, but as soon as he gets a hold of Night Boy, he threatens to kill him if he doesn’t get him out of the void. This little interaction is interesting because it’s a moment where Mark isn’t being monitored by anyone except for the person who already sees him as a villain (or the son of a villain). Mark has been saying that he isn’t like his father or that he doesn’t want to be like his father, but in this moment with Night Boy, his behavior becomes just like Omni-Man’s.
Anyway, Night Boy takes him out of the void, Invincible incapacitates him, and Cecil tells Invincible to bring him to the Global Defense Agency (GDA) headquarters. Cecil is confronted by Debbie, who reprimands him for making Mark think that being a superhero is the only thing he should be doing at the moment. Cecil says that it’s all “under control,” and Debbie accuses Cecil of drawing satisfaction from the fact that he is getting to control Mark the way he couldn’t control Nolan. Cecil tries to say that he is giving Mark what he wants without letting him lose sight of what Mark should become to be a true superhero. Before Debbie can process this, she’s shocked to see Donald. So, yes, Donald’s presence is absurd because he died last season. He blew up while trying to kill Omni-Man. Given how he’s back and how he remembers Debbie, it’s obvious that he is a clone of the old Donald and he’s imbued with the deceased Donald’s memories. However, his presence raises a bunch of questions: Is this Donald aware that he is a clone? Also, was the last Donald a clone? Who was the original Donald? Why is Cecil keeping Donald alive? Is he someone special? Well, we’ll have to wait a while to get the answers. Atom Eve meets up with her parents only to realize that they haven’t been doing very well financially because Eve’s father is working at a burger joint, and he refuses to take Eve’s help since she is a superhero and he still thinks that a man should be the earning member of a house. She gets a work-related call, so she doesn’t get to finish the argument. So, she gives her parents a golden apple and tells them to sell it and get whatever they want.
Has Angstrom Levy captured Mark Grayson?
Mark takes Amber on a date to Las Vegas, but that’s when he gets a call from Cecil to take care of some unfinished business with Atlantis. King Aquarus was murdered by Omni-Man, and apparently, the Atlanteans are angry about it, and they want to destroy the Eastern Seaboard if Omni-Man’s next of kin, which is Invincible, doesn’t show up before them. Contrary to popular belief, Mark doesn’t have to marry Aquarus’ widow to cool down the situation; he has to fight a depth dweller, i.e., a giant sea creature. While Mark takes on the Kraken-like monster, the Guardians of the Globe fight the Lizard League (they are truly a menace because they’ve been defeated several times, and yet they keep coming back). Debbie is seen waging a battle of her own as she encounters a misogynistic man mistreating his wife. She loses her cool because the man reminds her of Nolan. Mark manages to defeat the depth dweller, even though he nearly drowns in the process. Cecil tasks Donald with analyzing the audio file from Mark’s fight for some unspecified reason. Donald asks Cecil why Debbie was so confused earlier after seeing him, and Cecil avoids giving a direct answer by blaming it on her trauma, which further increases the confusion around the resurrection of Donald. Atom Eve returns to see that her father has thrown away the golden apple. She tries to convince him that it’s okay to ask for help, but her father retorts by saying that Eve’s help is destructive because the community park that she had constructed out of thin air in Chicago has crumbled. The place was unstable. That’s why the city’s authorities never built anything there. So Eve did more harm than good with her powers.
Debbie has a full-on breakdown back at her home, and this time, Mark stays to comfort her instead of jetting off to his own room to sulk. The narrative shifts to the Guardians headquarters, where the team gives the newly introduced Shapesmith (the Martian in disguise) a tour of the place. It’s weird that they know next to nothing about this guy, and they’ve brought him to one of the most secretive places on Earth. Shapesmith gives them a generic superhero backstory, while we see the Sequids using the real Livingston to eradicate the Martian empire and venture off into the unknown to conquer other places. King Lizard takes over the Lizard League, which is supposed to be ominous. But, based on what we’ve seen already, they’ll probably be mildly annoying.
At the end of Invincible Season 2, episode 2, Angstrom Levy shows up to meet a captured Mark Grayson, who explains how he has been imprisoned. It’s an alternate version of the character we know, and he evidently exists in a relatively unknown area of the multiverse. This iteration of Mark also joined hands with Nolan. But they were one-upped by the GDA with the help of quantum bombs. The female versions of Cecil and Donald show up, too, in order to question what Angstrom is doing in there. Based on Angstrom’s answer, he is collecting information from every corner of the multiverse on how to kill Mark. There’s no proof that Viltrumites can actually be killed, and that’s exactly why Angstrom is going to fail. That said, it’ll be interesting to see him gather all this information and rain hell on every version of Mark, Nolan, and maybe every Viltrumite in existence.
