Spoilers follow for Invincible Season 4, Episode 7, “Don’t Do Anything Rash,” which is available on Prime Video now.
The tragedy of Thragg takes center stage in Invincible’s latest episode, its strongest one to date. The last time the show balanced its key elements so harmoniously — its gore, its scale, its emotional stakes — was arguably the Season 1 finale, a defining entry that took the series from good to great. “Don’t Do Anything Rash” launches the show into the stratosphere of stellar contemporary television. And while it’s an outlier in this regard, it’s also entirely worth the drudgery of any and all prior middling entries, tackling the story from an unexpected point-of-view that unveils powerful emotional dimensions.
The Viltrumite War kicked off in earnest last week, with a commendable episode whose climax promised further escalations in the form of the Coalition taking the fight to the retreating villains. However, before we resume the fireworks, the show takes us back several centuries to the rule of Emperor Argall, and the ascension of his right-hand regent — the young, ambitious Thragg — to the Viltrumite throne. Thaedus, still a Viltrum envoy, reads the tea leaves of brewing revolts and opposes Argall’s cruelty in a brief exchange that finally lays out the true colonial nature of Viltrum, via its use of enslaved aliens to mine precious resources. The planet’s foregrounding of authoritarian might makes perfect sense in this context, as a means to keep the wheels of its empire turning. However, these material origins are obscured by Thragg once Thaedus assassinates Argall from the shadows, forcing a changing of the guard.
Once Thragg assumes the throne, he calls for a purging of all weakness and potential betrayal, quickly seeding suspicion among Viltrum’s ranks until the planet engulfs itself in bloodshed. However, despite his nefarious ploy to further harden the planet’s hearts, he is also, himself, deeply hurt by Argall’s death. Dialogue later in the episode reveals that Thragg was raised from birth to be the strongest Viltrumite, and whatever the ulterior motives behind his training, what appears to have stuck most with him is the idea that might is right — a pure expression of fascist instinct, albeit one that still remains rooted in its leader’s emotional impulses. These flashbacks last only a dozen minutes, but it’s hard not to read into them the idea that Thragg loved Argall like a father figure, and his death has left him broken beyond repair.
This saga of fathers and sons continues on the Coalition side of things, as Thaedus recaps the plan, and leads the remaining warriors — Nolan, Mark, Oliver, Allen, Telia, Tech Jacket/Zoe and Battle Beast — into outer space so they can strike before Thragg and co. can recover. As they make their way to planet Viltrum, the episode’s travel downtime once again offers the chance to reflect. Per usual, the show employs pre-existing songs to enhance each scene, but rather than ill-fitting pop tracks (as has often been its bane), it instead opts for moving instrumentals this week, by the likes of Brian Eno and Phillip Glass.
While the supporting characters all discuss what they’d eat for their last meals — Zoe and Oliver pick burgers; Battle Beast, hilariously, picks his own blood on the battlefield — this morose bit of camaraderie is contrasted with a quiet exchange of uncomfortable possibilities as Thaedus and Nolan discuss the plan. Thaedus, who’s long turned against his own people, is dead-set on killing every remaining Viltrumite. Nolan, as a recently reformed soldier and a father of two Viltrumite kids, is perturbed, to say the least. While it may be the only way to truly protect the galaxy, it exists in a grey area even the once-dastardly Omni-Man is afraid to tread.
Once Nolan gives his sons one last, fatherly pep talk (scored with a rearrangement of the series’ closing theme), the Coalition, sans Telia, exits the spaceship and flies through Viltrum’s rings, made ceremonially from the bodies of fallen Viltrumites. But before the characters can process this macabre energy, the episode escalates tenfold, as the remaining Viltrumites reveal themselves to have been hiding amongst the corpses. In the distance, hovering above the planet’s atmosphere, is Thragg, appearing chillingly still.
The ensuing space battle is a nail-biting delight, with violent reversals that incapacitate even important characters, before old allies come to the rescue. It goes back, and forth, and back again before Thragg finally gets involved — which is to say, before he barely lifts a finger while deflecting the Graysons’ attacks, sending shockwaves even through the emptiness of outer space.
If the season has had one major flaw en route to this episode, it’s the lack of a discernible relationship between Thragg and Nolan (or really, Thragg and any of the heroes), but “Don’t Do Anything Rash” meaningfully spackles over this problem when the Grand Regent and the fearsome turncoat come crashing down to the planet’s surface. Amid the crumbling remains of the empire, and backed by a thunderstorm, they discuss who they really owe their allegiance to before the battle continues, and Thragg punches Nolan so hard that he burns up on his way back out of Viltrum’s atmosphere.
Poison darts, laser guns and lizard creatures temporarily turn the tide, but Thragg’s brutality proves too intimate, as he ragdolls Oliver to the point of knocking off his jaw and cutting off his arm. To Thragg, the half-Viltrumite, half-Thraxan is nothing more than a failed genetic experiment. As he flexes his strength with minimal effort, recalling the most vicious of Dragon Ball Z episodes, the Coalition is left with nowhere to turn — nowhere but towards fighting fire with fire, that is.
Nolan and Mark have rightly spent the season battling the Viltrumite parts of themselves — both intrinsic and learned — so what happens next makes for an especially shocking development. With the help of Space Racer’s Infinity Ray, Thaedus and the father-son duo burrow their way into Viltrum’s core, causing fiery, apocalyptic destruction on a scale the show has not yet seen. It’s terrifying and humungous, and for better or worse, it’s exactly what a Viltrumite would do to send a message. There are only about 40 Viltrumites left, and without their home, they have nowhere else to turn.
The resultant attack lasts what feels like an eternity and reduces Viltrum to dust, robbing Thragg of what little he still clung to, and causing him to explode with anguish (Lee Pace puts on a stirring performance). When the Grand Regent finally unleashes his full strength, he beheads Thaedus, disembowels Nolan, and is on the verge of blinding Mark when he shows uncharacteristic mercy, if only because there are too few Viltrumites left — too few he considers genetically pure, at least — and he’s suffered too many losses today.
The epilogue sees the remaining Coalition warriors (including the Grayson trio) recovering as they search the galaxy for the now quiet Viltrum forces. However, Mark comes to a chilling realization, born of both Thragg’s vengeful impulses, and from his desire to repopulate his fallen empire in his image: They must be headed for Earth. It drops like a boulder in the pit of your stomach, not only because of what’s already transpired this week, but because of how it sets the stage for all of this season’s themes and subplots to collide in what is sure to be a riveting season finale.
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