Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
[voices] Steven Yeun, JK Simmons, Sandra Oh, Gillian Jacobs, Walton Goggins, Clancy Brown, Andrew Rannells, Seth Rogen, Ross Marquand, Zachary Quinto
Intro:
Season 2 is as sharp, engaging, emotional and gory as the first, with genuine surprises along the way and a lot of pathos to boot.
The first season of Invincible, which dropped onto Prime Video in 2021, was a red hot shot of adrenalin right into the main vein of superhero fans. Oh sure, violent superhero content was nothing new, and Prime’s own The Boys certainly provided that in gore-streaked spades, but generally speaking, animated capes and tights adventures skew a little younger in terms of audience appeal. Invincible changed all of that. Violent, complex, darkly comedic and thought-provoking, the show proved that superhero animation for adults is a viable sub-genre. And then, for various reasons involving both the spicy cough and just how damn slow animation is to complete, the next season didn’t appear for two bloody years! And when the second season did drop in November of 2023, it was only half the season. Friends, teeth were gnashed, hair was pulled, clothes ripped. It wasn’t pretty. Anyway, the second half of season two is dropping by the time you’re reading this and the result, thankfully, is very solid indeed.
When we last saw Mark Grayson aka Invincible (Steven Yeun), he’d watched his father Nolan aka Omni-Man (JK Simmons) get beaten close to death and kidnapped by a group of narky Viltrumite wankers. Episode five picks up almost immediately, showing the tragic aftermath of the epic mid-season finale and the emotional damage that poor Mark is suffering through. Of course, a hero’s work is never done and before long, Invincible heads back to Earth to deal with more evildoers, relationship woes and university deans wondering where the hell he’s been for the last two months.
The best thing about the second half of Invincible Season 2 is that it actually manages to pull together all the dangling subplots and pay them off in a satisfying manner. Wondering why the hell we were spending so much time with Donald (Chris Diamantopoulos)? We get a satisfying pay off. Curious to see if that intriguing Angstrom Levy (Sterling Kelby Brown) storyline was going somewhere? It does. And what of Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), well, you’ll see but it’s cool. The only downside to all this is the fact that the main story, involving Omni-Man, is relegated to piece moving, setting the table for the (thankfully confirmed) season 3.
The back end of Invincible Season 2 is as sharp, engaging, emotional and gory as the first, with genuine surprises along the way and a lot of pathos to boot. The voice acting as usual is excellent and the animation, while occasionally a little simple (a fact that’s referenced in one amusingly meta moment), does the job well. Not everything is resolved of course, however the next season is currently in production, so let’s hope it arrives some time before 2026!
