Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Invincible’ Season 2 On Prime Video, Where Mark Deals With His Father Being A Bad Guy While Figuring Out How To Be A Superhero For Good

Two years ago, Invincible premiered to universally good reviews, mainly because the story about a teenager figuring out how to become a superhero while dealing with a massive betrayal was very well-executed, with lots of great voice performances. Season 2 is going in a somewhat different direction, but it looks like it’ll be just as compelling.

INVINCIBLE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Holes get poked through clouds as Mark Grayson aka Invincible (Steven Yeun) fights The Immortal (Russ Marquand).

The Gist: Mark is working with his father, Nolan aka Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) to ensure that everyone on Earth devotes their allegiance to the Viltrum empire. But there are still pockets of resistance, and the father and son snuff out one of them, which includes members of the Global Defense Agency and a man named Angstrom (Sterling K. Brown), who condemns them for causing so much death and destruction. Then he disappears into a green portal of some kind.

Then to the strains of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” we see the Mark we know from Season 1, staring at the spot where he fought with Nolan after finding out he worked for Viltrum. He aimlessly flies around helping people and thwarting crimes. But he’s out of sorts, as is his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh), who was devastated to hear Nolan thought of her as more of a “pet” than his wife.

Mark goes back to his high school for the first time since the battle, but he tells his girlfriend Amber (Zazie Beetz) that feels he needs to get out there as Invincible and make up for not helping the people in Chicago during the battle of his dad. He meets with Global Defense Agency director Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins) and asks to be added to the Guardians of the Globe team, but Cecil doesn’t totally trust him, given that it’s only been a month since he battled Omni-Man and needs more time away from being a superhero.

In the meantime, the Mauler Twins (Kevin Michael Richardson) are sprung from prison through two portals that open in their cells; the man who sprung them is named Angstrom Levy (Brown). He has the ability to open portals to hundreds of parallel dimensions, and he has brought over Angstroms from those dimensions; he has a machine that will put their knowledge and memories of those dimensions into his brain so he can work to make his world a better place, and he needs the Maulers’ scientific knowledge to help him… as long as they don’t hurt anyone.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Invincible is more or less a cleaner, more sincere take on The Boys.

Our Take: The first season of Invincible, created by Robert Kirkman from the comic he co-wrote with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley and developed for TV by Simon Racioppa, dove into Mark’s origin story as the son of a superhero and how he managed his developing powers. But after the battle Mark had with Nolan at the end of Season 1, the second season takes on an entirely new direction. How can Mark prove to everyone that he’s not his dad while trying to recover from the trauma of being betrayed by and losing his father in one fateful stroke?

It would be a pretty rich story to mine even without the presence of Angstrom and the knowledge of all of the other dimensions in his brain causing problems for both Invincible and the rest of the GDA. There are already a ton of characters to keep track of on this show, from Debbie’s fellow superhero widow Olga (Grey Griffin), to Mark’s reclusive friend Eve (Gillian Jacobs) to the rest of the Guardians of the Globe. Now we’re going to have to keep track of all of the different versions of these people, along with Mark and Nolan, in other dimensions.

We’re ready for all of that, because the story of Mark’s struggles to be a superhero for good and not evil is just that compelling. One of the things that did trip us up at the beginning of this episode was seeing Mark and Nolan working together for Viltrum. Did something change between seasons? But that could have just been a function of the two years between seasons, which a recap of the first season provided by the show helped a lot. It was disconcerting to say the least, but it also showed just how powerful Mark could be if he did end up following in his father’s footsteps as an evil superhero.

Invincible is a show that is crammed with celebrity voices, but doesn’t just put those voices out there; all of them do a fine job of embodying their characters, even if we do recognize the voices. That helps viewers get into the story without constantly pointing out which big name is doing which voice, and it’s a story that needs viewers’ attention, given how complex it will potentially get.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Let’s just say that Angstrom is no longer the pacifist he said he was, and one of the Maulers is pretty pissed off.

Sleeper Star: Jason Mantzoukas is funny as the off-kilter Rex Splode. It’ll be fun seeing him competing with Jay Pharoah’s Bulletproof, a new member of the Guardians.

Most Pilot-y Line: As Angstrom explains the dimensions to the Maulers, one of them says, “You must have been a fun kid to babysit.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Invincible‘s second season has changed from a coming-of-age superhero story to one where the hero has to figure out his place while not becoming evil like his father. The second season looks like it’ll be more complex than the first, but we’re confident that the second season will be as cohesive as the first.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.