Invincible Season 2 Review – The Best Superhero Show on TV

The debut season of Prime Video’s acclaimed superhero TV show, ‘Invincible’, was the biggest surprise audiences had received in a while. What seemed to be a typical standard comic book story caught everyone off guard with the mid-credits scene of its first episode. Invincible immediately hooks you and refuses to let go. It was unapologetically dark and violent, while conveying the irresistible charm of a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age comic book story.

While Invincible’s sophomore season may pale in comparison to the first, it wastes no time in establishing the floor for important story-lines in coming seasons. This season had a lot of promise, with just as much action and gore as the previous one; however, it slightly suffers due to its prolonged absence. Reintroducing characters you’ve forgotten about and forcing plot lines to circle back after several episodes, makes the viewer feel slightly disconnected with the story. That being said, unlike most superhero projects, Invincible shows no signs of superhero fatigue and the season acts as a huge stepping stone towards much bigger universal and multiversal threats that our titular character may have to face.

What I particularly loved about this season was the emphasis on the psychological compositions of the characters we know and love. There is a ton of baggage that they carry, and loads of emotional turmoil that they’ve been through. While many shows would discard these to rapidly move the story, Invincible doesn’t make this mistake. They give us time, time to process what the characters have been through, and how they’re dealing with it, which includes a lot of important foreshadowing for later seasons. The characters aren’t just lifeless moving drawings, but emotionally complex and very well-developed, all credit to the comic book and show creator, Robert Kirkman. That time to digest and breathe in the character’s problems along with them themselves, in particular, made this season engaging to watch, for me.

Invincible Season 2, even at its weakest, proves that it can pack a huge punch. Flurries of heart-wrenching emotional highs, particularly the emphasis on our character’s inner demons, makes us more attached to the characters than ever. Not only is Invincible psychologically and emotionally impactful, but it manages to do so without being overbearing. Chilling use of animation, along with dramatic foreshadowing and cryptic imagery takes the season to new heights and prepares us for a jam-packed 3rd season.

Similar to shows like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us, Invincible is completely unafraid to make its characters suffer. And boy do they put their characters through hell. Most importantly, this all is done for a greater purpose. To drive each character’s intricately built arcs forward, to progress the quality of the story, and benefit the overarching narrative. Often shows manage to make their characters suffer but fail to make the audience feel the weight of the decisions they make, their consequences and the distress it causes the characters. However, Invincible’s in-depth exploration of its character’s agony and issues refuses to allow any such problem threaten to hinder the story’s greatness.

The biggest enemy of the show is its release timing. Not only did Prime Video take 2 and a half years to give us the second season, but in turn, cut the 2nd season further in half, making us wait even longer for the 2nd part of the season. Such breaks in storytelling cause people to lose interest, subplots to get jumbled up and build up to become frustrating. While some people may have expected more from the season finale, I feel it did its job perfectly and served to set up future storylines rather than resolve ongoing ones.

Despite any criticisms you may have for the new season, you can not deny that the thematic progression and storylines are as streamlined as ever. Invincible is moving towards a much bigger picture, and I’m personally, as excited as I can be to see where the show takes it from here. The title screen is now also BLUE AND BLACK(no foreshadowing intended of course)!

From an outside perspective, I completely understand why someone would be reluctant to try out yet another superhero show. But I promise you amidst all the typical, boring and repetitive superhero projects, Invincible is a diamond in the rough. When I first saw the show, I felt the same way, as it released surrounded by several other mediocre Marvel and DC projects; however, by the end of the first episode, I was completely hooked. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly implore than you do because you are severely missing out on one of the best pieces of television currently running today.

The Verdict

Filled to the brim with emotion, depth, intense action, satirizing struggles and character-centric gravitas, Invincible Season 2 proves once again that the show is a bright light in a genre overpopulated by mediocrity. Invincible is what every comic book story should strive to be.

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