Invincible season four has come to a close, and it’s time once again to assess the damage of the long-awaited Viltrumite War and see how the flagship Prime Video adult animated series fared this time in adapting Robert Kirkman’s superhero deconstruction comic, which fans have lovingly called Western Dragon Ball Z.
Liked: Debbie reading Nolan to filth
Yes, we’ve already talked about it, but it bears repeating: Sandra Oh is a goddamn gift, and her performance as Debbie confronting Nolan after his piss-poor excuse for an apology will forever be famous. Throughout the season, Nolan’s feet were consistently held to the fire for ruining everyone’s lives, and he still burdened them once more with a war they didn’t ask for. Debbie’s moment felt even more satisfying because of how the comics rushed everyone into being cool with him, with barely any friction his way for all the damage he’d done, as if he were a golden retriever of a man who didn’t know any better.
He killed thousands of people, called his wife of like 20 years a pet in front of the world, had a child with an alien woman shortly thereafter, and basically thrust rearing the kid into Mark and Debbie’s hands. And because the Viltrumites are back for a fight, he expected a limp apology to button things off with Debbie, despite everyone telling him how bad of an idea that was. The dude sucks, and I’m glad the show continued its streak of expanding on the comics and remixing the sequence of events to hold characters more accountable for their fuck-ups.
Liked: More Viltrumite backstory
Speaking of expanding beyond the comics, another cool thing to see this season was how Invincible expanded what we know about the Viltrumites. Not all of it made them look particularly smart or cool as a race of ultra-powerful space titans, mind you—killing each other to purge the possibility of a betrayer in their midst after they’d already been chemically genocided makes no sense—but that was kind of the point. In the immortal words of The Walking Dead‘s Rick Grimes, “There are no rules, we’re lost” (or at least the Viltrumites are).
However, seeing just how lost the Viltrumites are as a tyrannical people, going so far as to have parents run a fade on their children once they’ve become adults as a tradition, really sheds light on how unga bunga the Viltrumites were before they were under Thragg’s rule. They’re basically dogs chasing a car for the thrill without putting any thought into the “and then what” that comes after, and seeing how a broken society led to Nolan being that much of a disaster of a man before humanity slowly reformed him does a good job of foiling the dangers that might lie in store in future seasons. And another thing, the fact that every Viltrumite does the hand thing as a universal finishing move is a neat detail that the show deserves more flowers for.
Liked: All of episode 4, actually
While some fans clowned on this particular episode online for being “filler,” I’m gonna go ahead and say it was probably my second-favorite episode of the season for that exact reason. Sure, I’ll have a bit of a gripe about the episode further down, but what I liked about Mark’s excursion in hell is that it did something the show has been doing pretty well that (again) the comics never quite did. It gave Mark some space to breathe and voice how he feels about all the insurmountable pressure and the queue of bullshit he has to deal with in the immediate aftermath (and sometimes during) the bullshit he’s currently getting beaten to a bloody pulp over.
We get Mark summoned into hell to help the demons because they confused him for his father (an eternal struggle he’s been battling throughout the show), as well as some perspective in his ongoing battle with what it means to be a hero and whether the existence of a heaven or a hell makes him any better or worse off for pulling his punches or going full ultra violence to protect his loved ones. Calling the episode filler simply because it wasn’t more Viltrumite-centric plotting is doing an incredible disservice to the character work the episode pulled off, giving us a peek into Mark’s psyche, which culminates in him bringing back the OG yellow and blue suit (thank god) and having more confidence in himself before diving headfirst into the Viltrumite war.
