Ryan Shoots First: Invincible (S2 Ep1) “A Lesson For Your Next Life”
Let’s start with a Hot Take… Invincible > The Boys.
Now that I have your attention let’s talk about the long-awaited Season 2 premiere of Invincible. Season 1 was like a love letter to the heroes we grew up with all with a 90’s cartoon Bruce Tim-like feel. But you know with a lot of blood and some of that practical “What if superheroes were real” type scenarios we’ve all spent too much time talking through. It’s hard not to make the comparison to the other Amazon hero show, The Boys, with its adult-themed edge but while that show serves as a hardcore deconstruction of the hero mythos and capitalism through the lens of a superhero world. Invincible is at its core still a superhero story. Yes it’s brutal sometimes but our hero is a hero, he has ideals and wants to save the world, and that differentiates him quite a bit from The Boys.
But whether you watched Season 1 from the beginning or just saw the meme of Omni-Man and Mark, Season 2 is a great time to jump in. We start with a very big break from last season’s finale as we see an alternate view of the events of Mark and his father’s battle. This sets the stage for this season’s main arch in appears as we see what could have been. Mark at his core gives a lot of Peter Parker vibes and I think that is why I identify with him so well. He is trying to balance everything with high school and girlfriends and a life but while also being one of the strongest heroes in the universe. Throw in his well-established “Daddy Issues” and you have a complex hero which also gives off Young Clark Kent vibes. So yes you throw Peter and Clark into a blender and put a DC Animation-Verse flavor on it you get Invincible.
It will be interesting to see the tone of this season with Omni-Man somewhat out of the picture for a bit. Sure you can read ahead in the comics and the show sticks pretty faithfully to them but that’s no guarantee it will stay that way. Still with this premiere, we set the stage for the show for the foreseeable future with a motivated new threat and a somewhat disjointed broken Mark still trying to find himself in the revelations of recent events. His body may be invincible but his mind is not.
Observations
- Did I miss something?
- Injustice Invincible?
- Man, this is messed up
- We doing multiverse stuff already?
- I like the twins, brains and braun
- Sterling K. Brown, big new hire for the cast
- That’s a good way of thinking about the multiverse, so many movies games and TV we’ve never seen!
- So he’s like Kang too
- I can’t tell if they changed a bunch of voices or if I just haven’t watched this show in a while
- Oh this will go great I’m sure
- Back into the fire Mark
- I mean they did warn him he couldn’t do that
- I like how Mark isn’t content with just “They brought this on themselves”
- Those two always manage to survive
- And a villain is born
