Here are my thoughts on Amazon Prime's sophomore outing of Invincible
There are spoilers for Invincible season 2 in this post. Proceed with caution. I finally got around to finishing up Invincible season 2 on Amazon. It's been out for a few months now, and following its mid-season break, I just hadn't circled back to it until this last week. Now that I have finished season 2, I'm glad that I did. Overall, it is a much slower season than the first one was. However, I think the character writing in this season was pretty strong. All of the characters seem to have much more agency, and I also enjoyed the ongoing theme of Mark fearing that he could turn out like his dad (Omni-Man).
I also love the animation and how bloody it gets, as well as how suddenly characters seem to die. That makes the silliness of the names like "Rex-Plode" or "Dupli-Kate" seem less silly as you watch these characters die on screen. There were also some real "Easter Eggs" in this show this season that I was wondering how they accomplished. For example we saw what might be "Spider-Man" and what might be "the Batman" but it is a dubious connection at best. So maybe "plausible deniability" is how they get away with that in a kind of "crossover." It was still fun though to hear Mark say Aquaman's line from Justice League, "I mean your a man that dresses as a bat...."
By the time I finished the last episode in the season, I felt like the show was in a "we're building for bigger things later." This makes me think season 3 is going to be pretty spectacular, and I wonder if we will see a certain rape scene in the show that I've heard is in the comic books. Seeing as it is pretty gory as is and that it doesn't seem to be pulling its punches, my guess is that it will end up being animated. For those who don't know, it touches on subject matter that media rarely addresses, especially with male victims and female perpetrators. The character in question is Anissa who is one of the Viltrumites...basically a very powerful being similar to Superman. She is a villain and an antagonist and she already beat the crap out of Mark this season, giving him a black eye and probably a few broken bones. Apparently she sexually assaults him in the comics. There are some though who say that it shouldn't be shown. My own opinion on this is that it should, because you just don't see that kind of thing happening to men on film (and it does happen to men). For example, I have a male friend who was raped by a former girlfriend of his, and he is still dealing with the trauma and she is still walking around free as a bird because no one will believe him.
Overall, season 2 of the show took time to linger. It took time to invest in character growth at a reasonable pace. I sometimes think that media has trained people to expect lightning fast development in 12 episodes or less without giving the audience time to actually process the story. The only thing I was disappointed in was the villain Angstrom. There was one episode to build him up as a villain and then one episode to quickly knock him down again. Ultimately, he ended up feeling a bit pointless, as if the whole season could have been done without him and not much in the plot would change. Certainly, nothing in the middle episodes was related to him at all. Anyway, I guess his abilities opened up both the multiverse and time travel, which will probably factor into future seasons. If anything, Angstrom's only reason to exist was to push Mark into new moral territory where the "villain" was a lot more gray. Ultimately, his powers are too "op" and too universe-breaking to keep around. So, that's why the made the Marvel and DC jokes/easter eggs and then killed him off. Just my opinion, anyway.
Anyone else watch Invincible season 2? If so, what did you think?
