Invincible Season 4 Goes Full-On Space Opera — And It’s About Damn Time
War has finally come to Viltrum.
Let no one say that nothing ever happens in Invincible. The Prime Video series, based on the graphic novels by Richard Kirkman, is famously eventful, notoriously gory, and unabashedly adult. Even when it focuses on the “quieter” aspects of its superhero world — like the trauma every day people experience in the wake of a villain attack or alien invasion — it’s all in service of a greater goal. It only makes its characters feel more real and watchable; their circumstances easier to relate to.
That said, I’ve been waiting a long time for something very specific to happen in Invincible. For years now the series has been building up to a major event, the Viltrumite War, which will see the title superhero, aka Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), teaming up with his father to free the galaxy from the planet Viltrum. Granted, it’s the kind of thing that can’t be rushed, as J.K. Simmons’ Omni-Man is a Viltrumite himself, and until very recently was working to colonize Earth to bring glory to that fascistic, warmongering empire. He beat his son bloody when he refused to help him in that pursuit, and likened his human wife (an immaculate Sandra Oh) to... a pet. He was utterly irredeemable — until he wasn’t. In Invincible’s second season, after a lot of introspection, Omni-Man utters the words that hit like the Viltrumite’s trademark finishing move: “I think... I miss my wife.”
That’s a crazy thing to say, as Omni-Man also happened to move on from Debbie pretty quickly, siring another son with a bug-like Thraxan just months after revealing his true nature. Still, any remorse from that interspace colonizer is a fantastic sign, even if Invincible has taken its sweet time testing its legitimacy. Season 3 might have withheld the redemption we’ve all been waiting for, opting to focus more on Mark’s efforts to rebuild his life, but its follow-up delivers on the promise of Nolan’s regret, and more. Season 4 finally brings the war to Viltrum, pitching superhero pastiche into something much more cosmic, urgent, and devastating.
Mark’s arc is hijacked by Omni-Man’s redemption tour — and not a moment too soon.
As with past seasons of Invincible, though, it takes a bit of time to build up to that conflict. Season 4 spends much of its first half tying up some loose ends, with early episodes feeling more like one-off adventures — another alien invasion here, a sidequest with Oliver (Christian Convery) and a small-time crime lord there — than space serial. Invincible makes it clear that Earth has far more to worry about beyond a Viltrumite conquest, introducing more threats than Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins), the director of the Global Defense Agency, can reasonably handle. That’s also what gives early episodes their zip: there’s little time to worry about the nitty-gritty of a new relationship when a power-hungry Amazon (Danai Gurira, in a brief cameo) is draining the nation’s power grid, or when the starfish-shaped, body-jacking aliens known as Sequids are staging a horrifying attack.
But Invincible does still squeeze in plenty of the interpersonal glut it’s known for. Debbie contemplates truly committing to her relationship with the nice, normal Paul (Cliff Curtis), and there’s some movement on Mark’s bond with Atom Eve (Gillian Anderson), who’s grappling with the loss of her powers on top of more unwelcome drama. Their dynamic has long felt like one mutual trauma dump, and that doesn’t change as Eve leans on Mark and he rehashes his fears of becoming a Superhero Who Kills. Giving into that impulse could make him more like his father than he’d like, but that internal monologue grew stale last season — and after surviving the joint assault from a small army of Invincible variants and the Viltrumite known as Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Mark might need to suck it up and make peace with his reality. (When you’re Earth’s last defense against an unstoppable race of Übermenschen, you gotta break some eggs — sorry!)
The dawn of the Viltrumite War takes up half of Season 4, but the rest is meandering and messy.
Mark’s angsty navel-gazing is no less tedious in Season 4; fortunately, it’s no longer the focus. Though it gets a major boost with some impromptu mentorship from Damien Darkblood (Clancy Brown) and what could be the spoileriest, gnarliest battle he’s ever faced, some of the season’s best episodes hardly feature Invincible at all. His ongoing struggle is mercifully hijacked by the Nolan Grayson Apology Tour, with the remorseful villain finally beginning to reckon with the pain he caused as Omni-Man. He joins forces with Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) to recover the only weapons that could weaken a Viltrumite, allowing Invincible to ease up on all the superhero deconstruction and instead remix the imagery of sci-fi franchises like Star Trek and Flash Gordon.
This journey across the galaxy forces Nolan to reckon with more tangible evidence of his cruelty, setting the scene for a confrontation with the family he destroyed. The hope of reconciliation with Mark, Oliver (whose Thraxan DNA has rapidly aged him into an angsty teen), and even Debbie becomes real in these moments, and it’s a welcome change from the Earth-bound focus of past seasons. Sure, they all sprinkled pulpy space adventures in here and there, but Season 4 thrives in that reality. Plus, it’s just nice to get more from Simmons, whose work as Omni-Man has always been a major highlight of Invincible.
Oh also delivers another shattering performance as Debbie labors to hold her newly reassembled life together. Nolan’s return might be the compelling drama this show has been teasing for years, but Invincible doesn’t hesitate to depict how it could break Debbie all over again, or question whether his impulse to “make things right” — if he even can — is entirely altruistic. The series has always banked on little moments that make us ache for these characters, and this season might give us a few of its best. But if it had one flaw, it’d be its attempt to balance those interpersonal beats with its expanding world.
The interpersonal clashes with high-concept worldbuilding more than ever in Season 4.
Invincible has always been the kind of superhero show that feels the most like a prestige drama, proving just how much one can explore within the genre. With the Viltrumite War so close to finally unfolding, however, it could stand to hone its focus. Early episodes are overstuffed with plot threads, and most may be genuinely engrossing, but that doesn’t stop them from muddying the thesis of the season.
Too much story isn’t a bad problem to have, necessarily, but it’s been holding Invincible back from the beginning. Maybe it’s that Kirkman is struggling to kill his darlings as he adapts the material he helped create; maybe eight episodes just aren’t quite enough to make each installment feel like a fully realized arc. Critics screened all but two episodes of the new season — but even if that two-part finale delivers on the confrontation between the Coalition of Planets and Viltrum’s final boss, Grand Regent Thragg (an underutilized Lee Pace), its dithering focus still kept the season from reaching greatness.
It’s a quibble, but it also speaks to one of the only truly frustrating parts of the series, Mark’s petulance aside. Invincible is so close to leveling up, if only it’d pick a heading and stick to it.
