Invincible Season 3: Over ALREADY??
The latest season of Invincible has come to a close and without the mid season break, it felt short. Not just in the run of the season, but the plots and action all felt like a speed run. Titan takes front stage for the first half, and quietly disappears into the woodwork after using the most powerful superhero on Earth. The Invincible “War” was 2 in universe days, but little more than 20 minutes of screen time. About as much a “War” as we got an “Age” of Ultron. Even the changes made for the animation fall short as Ray became Rae, yet she couldn’t be present at Rex’s funeral? The character development continues to take a backseat to extreme depictions of gore, and it might leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Titan’s character is interesting. When written, it was probably a lot more original of a plot-line, now he feels a lot like a fan fiction version of Luke Cage. His manipulation of Invincible drives an early plot involving a criminal organization not unlike the “Legion of Doom” in DC comics, but is quickly discarded the second his personal goals are achieved. It’s fun for a quick episode, but in the greater universe that’s built, does it make any sense? How is it that Mark or Eve don’t follow up on him, seeing as how they were just used to perform a coup? Why doesn’t Cecil or any other authority seem to be aware of or trying to stop the criminal organization? There COULD be perfectly reasonable explanations, but the lack of actual answers isn’t serving the audience.
I’ll come right out and say it, the Invincible “War” felt like fan service, without any real connection to what we were given. We’ve barely seen any of the heroes responding before to be invested in their fights, let alone any understanding of their power scale to an evil version of Invincible. The evil versions of Mark give us very little of their backstory or motivations, acting as generic “bad guys” until they are casually tossed out of the story by the real villain. This could have been much more fun and had so much more potential than what we got. Imagine Mark running a Gauntlet of evil variants, one after the other, learning how they rose to power in their universe, instead of Mark sitting by Eve’s bedside for the majority of the action. The TV show has shown that it’s not afraid to make changes, so it would be nice to see the story fleshed out more to give it a chance to breathe better as animation.
Did you know that Rae was originally Ray? In the comics, Shrinking Ray is a male member of the new Guardians of the Globe and doesn’t make it out of the skirmish with the Lizard League. When Rae continued past Ray’s final resting place, fans of the comic probably hoped to see more of the Hero in action. Unfortunately, Rae retires and begins a relationship with Rex Splode, which is great growth for the character, but if you watched the season you know that it was just to make Rex’s death more impactful. To that point, why have such an emotional tie and not bring it up during his final moments? Where was Rae to speak at Rex’s Funeral? Does she even show up after the fight with Conquest? It seems like the writers aren’t sure what to do with the character since she has no plot in the comics to draw from, but what’s worse is that they seem to forget she exists.
Invincible is not a bad show. There needs to be more adult shows that can do more extreme scenes, because fans are getting tired of watching the Avengers slap each other around. The problems stem from this being a collection of good ideas that don’t have time to run their course. I know there’s more coming and we’ll get some answers, but in the right now we’re losing depth, impact and connection to the characters of the Invincible universe. I’m excited for Season 4, I just hope characters like Rae don’t shrink right off the screen.
