Invincible Season 3 Review

A strong season that ends on a bummer note, Invincible Season 3 nudges several plots and characters forward, albeit incrementally. However, it never really brings it all home. Looking back, its numerous threads (even the most powerful ones) remain unwoven, and dangle out the side of an awkward, unfinished tapestry. It’s hard not to see these eight episodes as incomplete, despite all they do correctly.

There’s much to be praised in season 3, including its confrontation of Mark/Invincible’s godlike powers. The vengeful, Aaron Paul-voiced supervillain Powerplex plays a key part in this and his mission to make Invincible pay for the destruction of Chicago prompts some intriguing, lingering questions. Will learning about Nolan/Omni-Man’s actions on Earth shape Oliver’s rosy view of his father? How will Mark walk the fine line between people’s ire towards Nolan and his own forgiveness? And what should be done with the series’ most dangerous supervillains? Oliver, for one, is in favor of killing them. At times, Mark is too, but his role in causing so much death pulls him in one direction, while his faith in locking people up and throwing away the key tugs him in another.

Mark technically reaches a conclusion by the end of the subpar, thematically incoherent finale, “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up.” But the dilemma he faces there – courtesy of an all-powerful, otherworldly being posing a threat to his loved ones, friends, and colleagues – isn’t really connected to what’s tearing him up inside.. Across season 3, he reckons with the complex factors that might push someone into a life of crime, whether they’re a dire financial situation or deep hurt caused by Mark himself. Concluding that arc by pitting him against a genocidal conqueror gives rise to far less rigorous drama, but at least it leads to Mark concluding the season having made a concrete decision about his own heroism.

This season’s high points typically involve things the show has never really done before, like the Cecil-centric flashback “A Deal With The Devil.” That one-off not only gives us vital background on the GDA boss, but it also fleshes out his complicated moral code. It’s hard not to wish such care and attention had been paid elsewhere – for instance, to the ever-evolving Nolan, who only appears in a handful of scenes by the end of the season.

There’s also all that Angstrom Levy business, which feels like an incomplete holdover from season 2, given how much of it is set up in post-credit scenes. The inter-dimensional supervillain’s time on Invincible is no closer to resolution, but at least it yields the fun prospect of a number of Invincible variants for Steven Yeun to voice. Sadly, facing down numerous evil copies of himself doesn’t seem to have made much of a mark on Mark either, one of several half-baked late-season developments.

Mark’s mother Debbie remains the heart and soul of Invincible: A regular person trying to exist between the worlds of the everyday and the superheroic – and in season 3, that balance includes dating the delightfully out-of-his depth real-estate agent Paul. It’s hard not to love her. Supporting characters like Kate, Immortal, Rex, and Rae veer in and out focus, usually once per episode, though it’s hard to see much having come of these appearances. None of it feels organic; instead, things change because the scripts and the comics that inspired them say they should. Between these mechanical, linear steps, and Mark’s sulking and indecisiveness, Invincible’s third season can sometimes feel like it’s running in place. This may not always be a negative thing, given how much of it involves Mark revisiting the past. But that eventually bleeds into what’s happening around him in the here and now, like how the action of the finale mirrors, but doesn’t make the same impact as, season 1’s devastating conclusion.

Despite some moments that feel haphazard and toothless, the good outweighs the bad – with these episodes, and Invincible as a whole. Much of this success rests on the series’ depth of character and the way it makes us feel for its heroes and villains, super or not. Those qualities have been taken for granted in recent episodes; it’s only a matter of time, one hopes, that Invincible gets back on track with a more focused story and a more coherent structure.