Invincible S2 has finally arrived on Prime Video! If you have made your way to this review, you must have already seen the incredible premiere episode, A Lesson For Your Next Life. This way, you can read and recap what happened with FULL SPOILERS! If you haven’t watched the episode yet:
Are you still here? There’s FULL SPOILERS ahead! Go watch it on Prime Video and come back later (that’s the quote, right?)
Now that we got that joke out of the way, onto the review!
The Plot
The episode kicks off in a way that was unexpected but brilliant. We see Mark Grayson/Invincible (Steven Yeun) join forces with his father Nolan Grayson/Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) and enslave Earth for the Viltrumite Empire. Naturally, there is an underground resistance movement featuring characters we’ve come to know and love, like Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), and Rudy Connors/Robot (Zachary Quinto/Ross Marquand).
Unfortunately, a member of the resistance named Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) leads Invincible and Omni-Man right to the secret base. This results in the deaths of the remaining Guardians of the Globe and Mark paralyzes Atom Eve instead of killing her. While the rest of the resistance is rounded up for execution, Levy escapes via a portal. This reveals to us that what we just witnessed is an alternate timeline/universe where Mark joined Nolan instead of fighting him.
Also Read: Invincible S2 – Part One Review: Back and Better Than Ever
Once we arrive back to our reality of Invincible, we get a montage that helps illustrate what has happened a month after the brutal Season 1 finale, appropriately set to Radiohead’s “Karma Police”. We follow Mark as he flies around doing a number of things, both heroic and not. He visits the mountainside where Omni-Man nearly beat him to death, then battles a villain in an elephant costume. He follows this by stopping a high-speed chase/robbery and promptly helps an ambulance get to the ER very quickly.
Mark does all of this with such a somber look on his face; this makes it clear he’s trying to put off dealing with the depression he’s going through. However, during a standoff with two villains, Mark experiences flashbacks to his fight with his dad, which proves he’s nowhere close to being over that traumatic experience.
We then check in on the Mauler Twins (Kevin Michael Richardson) at GDA’s high-tech prison. A version of Angstrom Levy breaks them out and compels them to work with him for the common good with the threat of leaving them stranded in a deserted alternate dimension. Levy doesn’t reveal his plan all at once, but it includes the same mind-swapping device that the Maulers built for Robot last season so he could operate in a fully functioning teenage body. We learn that Levy wants to use the device to absorb the memories of the other versions of himself from across the multiverse, with the intent of using them to solve all of humanity’s problems.
Mark shows up just in time to stop this from happening, leading to the Maulers and alternate versions of themselves attacking him all at once. However, we learn that Levy is a pacifist, and as he proclaims “I won’t build my utopia with blood!”, he throttles the machine to explode, accidentally killing not only most of the Maulers but the other versions of himself in the process.
The explosion also enlarges Levy’s brain to such a point that it has left him disfigured. Levy is driven mad by the memories of his other selves, particularly those from realities attacked by Invincible and Omni-Man, and blames Mark for his grotesque appearance, swears vengeance, and escapes. Despite all of that happening, we get to see the episode end on a more promising/positive note, with Mark and his girlfriend Amber (Zazie Beetz) both getting into the same college. This is exactly what Mark needs right now: a chance to get away and heal from his trauma in a new environment.
In Conclusion
I thought this was the perfect way to start the new season of Invincible. The multiverse is a concept we’re very familiar with, so it will be fun to see how they play with this idea moving forward. While the conversation scenes might be long for some (they worked for me), the incredibly choreographed action sequences more than makeup for it. Also, make sure you continue watching until the credits finally roll. Much like Season 1, we get multiple mid-credit scenes that play a big role in the plot moving forward. It’s great having Invincible back and I can’t wait for the next episode!
Rating: 10/10
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