The process by which Invincible has had to condense and consolidate the plot beats of the original comic, coupled with the opportunity it's granted the writers to tighten up and emphasize its themes on a second pass, has resulted in a newfound appreciation for how unbelievably fucking good Angstrom Levy's whole character concept is. What's that, Mark? Your main emotional crisis this season is your fear of turning out like your father? Here, have an archnemesis who's out to kill you because his memories were inadvertently overwritten with the lived experiences of hundreds of alternate versions of himself whose friends and families were slaughtered in worlds where you did, in fact, turn out exactly like your father. Because it turns out that that is in fact the multiversal norm. That you turn out like your father. And now you're left to wonder what set of arbitrary coinflips pulled you back from that abyss in this dimension, and whether your luck is going to continue to hold into the future.

RESIST VILTRUM! JOIN THE RESISTANCE TODAY!

I simply would not do this. Like if I was a villain there'd be certain heroes I'd be willing to risk fucking with but the guy who blows shit up by flying through it is NOT one of them. Hell, if I started robbing this house by ACCIDENT and Invincible flew in I'd be like "shit my bad" and go to jail immediately.

lol I did it first

@ me when Levy broke Debbie's arm, yeeted Oliver and kept placing Mark in endless different dimensions

Basically Invincible Season 2

Invincible

Season 1: March 25 - April 29 2021

Season 2: November 29 2023 - April 4 2024

Gonna be honest, the season two finale of Invincible doesn't have the same PUNCH as the season one finale.

STILL a really fucking good episode, though! Like, holy shit, I was left BREATHLESS in so many points, engaged in every second. The problem is that Season One felt more...focused. The main thing was Mark's fight with Omni-Man being the center of attention throughout most of the episode. Even when we were doing the "clean up" portion of the finale, wrapping up what we could, it's done in a way where there's not much to "clean up" and what IS left is minor stuff that can take no time at all.

Here, there's more stuff to clean up. More stuff to wrap a nice little bow on to make things nice and tidy. And the main thread of the episode is Mark's fight with Angstrom, a battle that ends halfway through the episode so we can dedicate more times to these other little plot threads, like Allen and Nolan being in prison, Rudy and Monster Girl's relationship, or what The Immortal is going through. And this...VERY out of nowhere "That's sexist" joke that can easily be written out of the whole thing.

Now, when the second half of the episode is focused on MARK and everything he just went through, trying to process what happened and how to move on from it, THAT'S when it's good. I didn't mind a half-hour of runtime left when we focused on Mark. But when the episode goes back to these other characters, showing us that their stories aren't done, it reminds me that there's no real...closure this season.

Like, Season One ended in a way where there's still room for more, but it felt like a proper ending to ONE story. Or rather, ONE chapter in Mark's life as Invincible. When he talks with Allen about everything that's happened and we're given these little glimpses of the dangers to come. And when it cuts back to Mark shrugging off the inevitable and saying "I guess I'll finish high school," I was left satisfied. I was excited for MORE, don't get me wrong, but I was left fine with how the story ended THERE. It had one main narrative, had it come to a close, and ended with a "See you next time" segment that made it feel like a proper ending.

Here...there's no proper ending because there's really no proper story this season. Season One was primarily focussed on Omni-Man and they mystery of WHY he killed the Guardians of the Globe. When we got to the big fight at the end of Season One, it felt like a natural conclusion to everything the season built up. This season never really focused much on anything. It's pretty much characters going through the motions after the events of Season One and certain things that happen in Season Two. Angstrom is the biggest offender of this as his entire story was hyping him up for a big fight...yet we never saw him. We never really saw him prepare for fighting Invincible or figuring himself out. The MOST we got from Angstrom is in this episode and, yeah, he was a great and tragic character, but he wasn't THAT satisfying of a final villain. Nowhere near how Omni-Man was this opposing threat that left audiences dreading the final confrontation. If we got to see him built up more or had an entire subplot based on him dealing with being this new supervillain now, it would have made the final battle have more of that punch. Instead, while what we DO get is still good--REALLY good, I cannot stress that enough--it's not as strong as Season One.

And maybe that's just a problem with me. I shouldn't go in expecting a story to...out do itself. Especially with its second season when the showrunners have EIGHT planned. But...I don't know. While I do love most of that happened in the finale and A LOT in Season Two...it definitely felt less--

--from criticism.

AJ and Chainsaw !! 😋😋

SPOILERS ‼️

to me the biggest surprise in the s2 finale was that angstrom didn't show mark any of the dimensions where he's evil. not even necessarily meeting the other marks, but at least seeing the destruction and carnage they caused

when i heard that this season would tackle mark's fear of becoming his father, and that the main villain would be angstrom levy, i immediately thought "oh, he's going to force mark to see alternate versions of himself committing atrocities and that's going to break him"

and then that doesn't happen at all. angstrom just sends mark to random places which, sure, is accurate to the comic, but it completely kills the tense mood of the scenes at the grayson house. the episode was tonally all over the place and i just feel like that was a major wasted opportunity

I made basically this exact post a while ago when this season of Invincible started, but I really appreciate that in this episode they went out of their way to demonstrate to the audience via montage that Angstrom Levy is after Mark's ass specifically because he was driven insane by the botched transfer process giving him the memories of hundreds of alternate versions of himself whose friends and family were personally murdered by Invincible. This was also ultimately what was implied to have happened in the comic but it wasn't conveyed as effectively, so it ended up reading a lot like he was mad specifically about Mark fucking up the transference process, maybe mixed with some broad form of degenerative insanity resulting from his mutation. This version is a lot more pointed about it, which makes the tragedy- and particularly the tragedy of Mark breaking down after his apparent first kill- really pop.

Angstrom: "I created you! You created me!"

Black Samson: "Invincible, why did you create that guy?!"

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck this. I've never hated an animated man like this before.

INVINCIBLE S2E8 (MINOR?) SPOILERS

Oh no, it's him..

maybe the spot and angstrom levy should start a support group.