Invincible saves its best work for its most important moments—and that’s especially true of the two explosive, unrelenting episodes that cap off the show’s third season.
On Thursday, Invincible concluded Season 3 with one of the series’ finest episodes yet. The season finale, “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up,” comes on the heels of another exceptional installment that saw a small army of Invincibles—18 variants of Mark Grayson, all with distinct voices by Steven Yeun—invade Earth to wreak an even greater, wider scale of devastation than Omni-Man caused in Chicago at the end of Season 1. Much like in Robert Kirkman’s original comics, the Invincible War is a stunning, overwhelming chain of events that features the death of a major character, Rex Splode, among many others. And before Mark—or anyone else—has a chance to recover in its aftermath, an even greater threat arrives from outer space: Conquest (voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the strongest Viltrumite Mark has ever faced.
Through three seasons, Invincible has nailed just about every big moment pulled from its source material, even improving on them in many ways. The comic book medium has its advantages compared to animation, including fewer constraints—and thus, more creative freedom—when it comes to its art style. However, Kirkman and co-showrunner Simon Racioppa found numerous opportunities in the animated adaptation to fill the gaps between the panels on every page, bringing new life to the source material.
With the comic’s 144-issue run already complete, the creative team behind Invincible has been able to selectively choose what elements from the story they want to include or expand on. That’s also contributed to the shrewd pacing of each season around the stages of Mark’s life and superhero career. Much of Invincible’s second season explored how Mark was grappling with his near-fatal encounter with Omni-Man in Season 1, as he dedicated himself to never becoming like his ruthless father. Through the introduction of Angstrom Levy and his ability to travel between universes, Invincible showed reflections of Mark across the multiverse and that many of his variants were not quite as virtuous as him. Season 3 delved deeper into Mark’s journey as a superhero as he struggled to navigate how to wield his immense power, including the costs of his actions—or inaction. And all of that character development culminated in an extremely satisfying payoff in the last two episodes of the season.
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In Season 3’s penultimate installment, “What Have I Done?,” we witness how dangerously close Mark is to becoming the kind of monster that his father revealed himself to be in Season 1. The 18 villainous Mark variants destroy major cities around the world, each taking varying degrees of pleasure in doing so. There’s even a great parallel to the iconic fight scene from the series premiere, when Omni-Man killed almost all the members of the Guardians of the Globe, as a version of Mark takes his father’s place against the latest iteration of the superteam. As Mark eventually discovers, the Invincible War is orchestrated by Levy, the very man who Mark believed he killed and has been haunted by ever since. If he had truly taken Levy’s life that day, none of the subsequent tragedies would have unfolded.
When Mark is faced with another enemy in Conquest, who’s even more dangerous than Levy, he doesn’t hold back. “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” is essentially a four-act fight that lasts for almost 30 minutes straight. Mark and Conquest battle each other across the planet, contributing even more to the recent devastation—and death toll—in the process. It’s somehow more brutal and shocking than Mark’s previous duel with Omni-Man, with its own twisted version of Omni-Man’s lethal train scene: Conquest uses Mark's body as a battering ram to tear through a beach full of civilians. Conquest nearly kills Mark’s half brother, Oliver, as well as Atom Eve, the latter of whom survives only because of her ability to rearrange matter.
Like the rest of the series, these episodes of Invincible recycle many of the best lines of dialogue and moments from the comics, almost word for word and beat for beat, while strategically adding new material. One such example of the latter comes during a lull in Mark and Conquest’s marathon of a battle, after they’ve bludgeoned each other into the outer layers of Earth’s atmosphere. As Conquest snatches a drop of his own blood, drifting through space, he shapes it into a heart as it crystallizes in midair:
It might be a minor addition, but it’s absurd, funny, and incredibly unsettling all at once, providing insight into the diabolical love this alien has for violence and conflict.
A big part of why Invincible works so well, especially in these climactic Season 3 episodes, is the exceptional voice work from the cast, led by Yeun. His performance as the Invincible variants—plus the original Mark Grayson—showcases his phenomenal range as an actor, giving each version of the character a unique spin. And in the finale, Yeun gets to spar with Morgan in a meta rematch of the last time these actors met on The Walking Dead.
Morgan, known for his role as Negan on The Walking Dead, also delivers a remarkable performance voicing Conquest, combining with the show’s impressive animation to create Mark’s most terrifying foe to date. Conquest alternates between disturbing calm and maniacal joy as he battles Mark and dismembers anyone who crosses his path—behavior that is reminiscent of the character Morgan portrayed on Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse series. In The Walking Dead, Negan kills Yeun’s character Glenn Rhee in gory, heartbreaking fashion, bashing his head in with a barbed-wire baseball bat in front of his friends and loved ones. Almost a decade after that fateful scene aired on AMC for the first time, Mark finally gets the chance to avenge his multiversal counterpart.
“We have to embrace the fact that there are some things there, in the meta of it all, that people are going to enjoy,” Morgan recently told Entertainment Weekly. “We have to enjoy it. And we did.”
At the end of their epic showdown, it’s Mark who gets to do the head bashing this time around, smashing his own noggin into Conquest’s face until there isn’t much left to smash anymore. Invincible, as usual, goes over the top with its violence at the height of its drama, yet it crucially reserves quiet moments—both during and after the fact—to show the lethal costs that these titanic brawls have for the world around them. When all the action finally runs its course, the series lingers on the emotional toll left in its wake, with each character forced to reckon with their (latest) trauma.
Invincible may have the luxury of following the road map of a finished comic book series, but it’s always finding thrilling new ways to transform its source material. At the end of the finale, the series teases where it’s going in Season 4, featuring an unused story line from the comics. And that doesn’t even include any updates on the central plotline involving Allen the Alien, Omni-Man, and the Coalition of Planets’ ongoing preparations to take down the Viltrum Empire.
As Kirkman, Racioppa, and Co. continue to build their story at a steady pace and aim for another quick turnaround with Season 4, Invincible has hit its stride at just the right time.
