Invincible, Amazon Prime’s animated series based on Robert Kirkman’s comic books by the same name, has wrapped up its third season. This super-series started in March of 2021 and is gearing up for anywhere from 7 to 10 seasons. The show centers on 17 year old Mark Grayson, played by Steven Yeun, as he follows in the footsteps of his superhero father, Omni-Man, played by J.K. Simmons.
As Mark’s powers continue to develop, he continues to face increasingly powerful enemies— but don’t worry, he’s Invincible. Season 1 is centered around the progress of Mark’s powers and the mysterious deaths of the biggest superhero group, The Guardians of the Globe. As the Global Defense Agency, the GDA, works to find the heroes’ killer, Mark works with Teen Team to keep the peace in their absence.
After a tough, season ending battle, season 2 opens on a twist. The focus shifts towards the development of the new guardian team’s dynamic, with many of the main characters, such as Atom Eve, played by Gillian Jacobs, getting more attention put towards their back stories.
In season 3, the stakes become higher with a new addition to the Grayson family. Season 3 focuses on the relationship between Mark and this new member, while also touching on Mark’s duty as his country’s protector and the struggles he faces with the GDA because of this.
In addition to Invincible’s action packed fight scenes, it also touches on some pretty tough topics. One of the most prevalent themes is forgiveness, especially in regards to a parent. Relationships and problems in this show are very rarely black and white, there is an incredible amount of care and complexity placed into the dynamics as characters are forced to make choices that aren’t always ideal.
There are also the very real ethical concerns of what and how much our world leaders should be doing to “protect” Earth’s people. Although we’re not dealing with superheroes in real life, the GDA represents a lot of the choices world leaders make on our behalf, a lot of the time without us even knowing. That being said, the GDA makes some pretty questionable choices under the guise of it being “for the greater good” and it makes the watcher want to consider both sides of the argument. That sort of conflict adds a lot of complexity to the show and I’ve really appreciated that so far.
The casting is fantastic and it’s so cool reading through the list of actors who were involved in the making of Invincible. Many of them overlap into other fandoms that I enjoy or just have other very recognizable roles that I’ve heard them in. Prime’s “x-ray” feature is really good for figuring out if you know an actor or not.
The animation leaves something to be desired, as a lot of fans have expressed, but truthfully, I don’t care. I didn’t notice until people brought up the issues with it and you can really tell that the animators put a lot of their effort into the fight scenes, which not to mention, there are plenty of. The animators also addressed this concern in a sort of meta scene of season 2, episode 7. It’s mostly small, standard stuff like recoloring character models to use in the background and it doesn’t take away from the message or story.
Something that I do appreciate about the fans of Invincible are the memes that they’ve created. The most popular has probably been an edited photo of Omni-Man which if you know, you know and if you don’t, it’s probably better that way. My favorite has been, “if he’s invincible, why can I still see him?” which is so dumb, I have no choice but to laugh.
I absolutely recommend this to anyone looking for an action-packed show with plenty of humor to combat the gut-wrenching dread of watching characters do exactly the opposite of what you want them to do.
