Spoilers follow for Invincible Season 4, Episode 8, “Don’t Leave Me Hanging Here,” which is available on Prime Video now.
Rounding out Invincible’s strongest season yet, the grand finale “Don’t Leave me Hanging Here” follows up last week’s apocalyptic spectacle with a quiet, contemplative climax. It’s a daring swing, but it pays off by remixing the comic series’ conclusion to the Viltrumite War, putting the onus of a devastating emotional calculus entirely on Mark’s shoulders. It’s the show’s most psychologically-driven episode yet, building not only on this season’s split narrative and odd passage of time, but on Mark’s lengthy arc and fragile emotional state.
It begins with a rug pull that, while a little unsatisfying, sets the stage for what’s to come. Images of the remaining Viltrumites invading Earth, and completing their transformation into an all-out doomsday cult (via tsunamis and vicious bloodshed) are quickly revealed to be figments of Mark’s imagination, or what he believes he’ll find when he, Nolan and Zoe finally return home. He even jumps the gun and ignores Nolan’s strategies, charging back into the atmosphere only to find everything as he left it.
Well, more or less. The Viltrumites may not have launched an all-out invasion, but the threat of their arrival looms, and Mark and Oliver’s absence has taken its toll on their mother Debbie and Mark’s girlfriend Eve. Debbie, it turns out, has broken up with Paul in the intervening months, while Eve has torpedoed her lifestyle and fallen into a depressive pattern. The combination of her poor eating habits and — last we heard — her pregnancy have meant that she’s put on weight, which Mark is touchingly gentle about. However, when she finally comes clean to Mark, it’s not to announce that she’s expecting, as was the case when he left, but that she had an abortion, in part because his absence made her believe she couldn’t raise a child on her own.
It turns out 10 months have gone by on Earth (a reveal for the audience, rather than for the characters), and Mark has a lot to catch up on. However, every mundane scene, in which he catches up with friends, family or co-workers, is interrupted by ghastly visions of the remaining Viltrumites hurting those he loves. Unlike the opening scene, these are visually framed as panic attacks resulting from PTSD, with rapid cuts, and images falling in and out of focus as Mark tries to catch his breath. Even normalcy can’t feel normal just yet.
Elsewhere on Earth (or rather, just above it), Zoe reunites with her father as well, whose worry over her absence has — similar to Eve responding to Mark’s departure — resulted in poor health and lifestyle choices. It seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but the emotional impact of the ongoing conflict is far-reaching. Even the mundanity of Allen taking over Thragg’s leadership comes with bureaucratic red tape and, eventually, Coalition pushback against trusting Nolan, Mark and Oliver, owing to their Viltrumite blood. While Allen stands firm against the group’s genocidal intent, a message from his predecessor (revealed in a post-credit stinger) lays out the full extent of the new Scourge virus as a weapon that will, if necessary, wipe out not only the remaining Viltrumites, but beings with similar enough DNA — which is to say, everyone on Earth. By the end of the season, Mark isn’t the only one forced to make difficult choices.
Cecil, for instance, is still trying to bring the missing Guardians back from another dimension, even if it means endangering his own soldiers (and to a lesser extent, the supposedly-reformed Sinclair). However, the ruthless operative’s conversation with Nolan — who visits the crater where he first attacked Mark — lets us know that he’s still on his toes when it comes to trusting the former Omni-Man, despite his attempts to make up for his crimes. “Earth isn’t your therapy couch, Nolan,” he spits. It’s a line that pierces Nolan just as much as the echoes of his own words from the end of Season 1, about how 500 years could pass for Mark and he’ll be left with no one. His premonition appears to have come true for himself.
The most surprising choice, however, is arguably made by Debbie. She still resents Nolan and his presence on Earth, but it’s Paul of all people who convinces her that all this outer space hubbub is more a part of her life than she’s willing to admit. So when Nolan finally departs to take care of a recovering Oliver on Talescria, she packs her bags and forces him to take her too. This leaves Mark’s home empty for the first time, a loneliness he tries to stave off by taking a solo flight on Eve’s insistence. As usual, the show’s music supervisors deserve a raise and a round of applause for setting this escape to the haunting sounds of Death Cab for Cutie, but Mark’s attempt at respite is short-lived.
What appears to be a vision of Thragg turns out to be very real indeed when Mark makes contact with a punch, but the ruthless Regent is unmoving. Instead of a physical altercation, he presents Mark with an emotional conundrum. While this conversation and its ensuing revelations took place as soon as Mark and Nolan returned in the comics, building to it through nearly an hour of reflection adds tremendous emotional weight. As it happens, the remaining 37 Viltrumites did, in fact, make their way to Earth, but have begun quietly integrating themselves within human society in the hopes of reproducing and rebuilding their empire in the much, much longer run. Thragg offers an ultimatum in the form of an uneasy truce, and a secret Mark would be forced to keep alone: In order to stop the Viltrumites from unleashing on Earth’s population, all they want is to be left alone.
It would be a haunting return to a version of the status quo from Season 1, which saw Nolan biding his time before revealing himself on Earth, only the stakes are much more heightened. Mark’s traumatic flashes return, more quickly and intensely, but a brief moment of serenity marked by Eve’s face, safe and sound, pushes him to a disquieting moral compromise. He relents, allowing Thragg and his people to live among them, perhaps only delaying the inevitable.
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