User Reviews

Great to have the show back and a strong come back in my opinion. We get a good reestablishment with our characters. Mark having to take care of his brother along with his mom is really amazing and the dialogue between Mark and his brothers mom before he takes him is quite deep and thoughtful. So just seeing him and his mom care for this child is quite sweet. The whole stuff with Donald is really cool for his character even if he doesn't think so. The further introduction to the lizard league made them more formidable to me and showed the power they have as before I wasn't that bothered but the fight scenes were absolutely crazy! I can't believe they took out Kate and Shrinking Ray! Really gory and brutal too I loved it! I just hope Rex doesn't die in the next episode but him having is hand bit off is still wild! The Martian attack in space is really cool as it's been anticipated for a long while and it was nice to take a look back at season 1 and go back to that storyline, it's all very intriguing especially the fact shapesmith has a key role in it and we see his POV. Ended on a massive cliffhanger but the guardians fighting them off in the space ship was awesome and can't wait to see what happens next! The post credit scene with Allen too is so hype, knowing he gets stronger when he is badly hurt and then healing and knowing that a viltrumite saved him, everything about this episode has hype connected to it and I can't wait to watch the next 3 episodes. I'm expecting more crazy things.

Invincible season 2 episode 5 is everything one would want in an invincible episode witty dialogue, action-packed battles, and a lot.. and I mean a lot of gore.. this episode focuses on getting us back to speed with the characters and their trials and tribulations at least for the first half. Mark comes back from space after two months from his previous fight against the viltrumites. The episode for the first half serves as getting back up to speed with the characters like Amber and William but after that it switches to a plot about the mind controlling aliens from season one attacking earth due to a guardians mistake. This results in most of the guardians having to go and fight the alien mother ship leaving just Rex, Kate and Ray but as they're sitting down to relax they get an alert from Cecil telling them that the lizard league are attacking a military base. This leads to the best fight scene in the show, which is only comparable to omni Man and Mark and the battle beast fight. This fight leads to the Goriest part of the show yet.. duplikates horrific death where and her clone are smashed together and they're organs combine it's a nasty scene but we didn't just lose one guardian. In a rage shrinking Ray climbs in a lizard league members eye blowing them up from inside before moving to the beast that killed Kate but as she crawls in his mouth he overpowers her and appears to digest her killing her and wounding him leaving just rex. Rex blows up the big beasts head as he bites reds hand off with a bomb in it rex laughs and screams and cries in pain and happiness before the main lizard league member appears behind him with a gun he toys with him before it appears he pulls the trigger but it cuts to the other guardians who are fighting off the infected human. Atom Eve casts a shield, but it snaps under pressure as a massive sunami of the parasites crash down it fades to black.. after the credits roll, we get a nice reintroduction to everyone's favourite alien, Allen! He's alive and stronger than ever in a twist. Thaedus turns out to be a viltrumite and wants Allen to find invincible to fight the viltrumite war. This episode was fantastically written and has some of the best action dialogue and emotion I've seen in years. Bravo invincible, you've got me hooked.

I was pretty frustrated to see that this season was split in half with a few months for this episode to drop, but the edging has finally paid off a little. There's still more to come and I can't wait for next week, this show lives in my head rent-free. The characters that die off are fairly disposable ones but I felt the impact of their deaths. Especially Kate, plus way they died was gruesome. Much better than certain character death in Dune 2. This episode starts off as a slow burner and things get moving at a breakneck speed by the last 10 minutes, and the next episode will probably be a heavy hitter as well.

One of the best episodes of the series so far, which is crazy because this show is stacked with them. Now continuing with the edging until the end of the show I suppose because it seems like these major cliffhangers aren't going away.

This episode continues to develop the characters and raise the stakes of the show without missing a beat. The first three episodes of the show featured too many storylines (of varying quality) and a fair bit of stalling, but this one, like Episode 4- "It's Been Awhile", places all of its focus in the right places.

In terms of character work we get more inner torment from Debbie, Mark grappling with the impossible juggling act of having adult and superhero responsibilities, Samantha beating herself up for not being perfect, and Rex, while still being an annoying dude, simply being there for someone else without ulterior motives (well, he does have one but it's altruistic). The character beats regarding Mark, Samantha, and Rex come together unexpectedly in the climax. Mark and Samantha's beleaguered responsibility gets them punished once again and all they get for their heroism is potentially getting killed amidst their friends. Samantha noticeably pushes herself to her absolutely limit to protect everyone (she can't bear to have people get hurt around her again) and she faints for her efforts. Rex's slight redemption, in retrospect, should have raised my hackles because at the end of the episode we see him get tortured by seeing his two allies get unexpectedly destroyed (Dupli-Kate even lampshades this by being surprised that the Lizard League is a threat when they have been treated as joke villains in the past). Of course, Rex's life is on the line now too.

Not every every episode needs to kill off characters for me to take the life or death stakes seriously, but I admire that Invincible is willing to not always pull its punches. The show is even killing off characters more frequently than the comic did. The episode is fittingly called "This Must Come as a Shock" because the unexpected high stakes come almost out of nowhere. The lack of the tragic climax being telegraphed and the presence of an unexpected cliffhanger illustrates the theme of the show- "being a superhero means you could lose everything at any time". The beginning of the season wasn't quite as potent as it could be, but it clearly was building to something potently awful (in a good way). I'm looking forward to a climax that will probably be even more gutting than season one's and am very excited for the next three batch of episodes.

*some spoilers ahead

Invincible season 2 part 2 starts with an engrossing scene where Mark is absorbing all the destruction from his and Omni man's fight with the Viltrumites (the scale of the destruction is immense but the human in me is not as traumatized as I was in the final parts of season 1 haha). He is helped up by two of the alien species and meets with Nolan's alien wife and his half-alien brother - the arc of Nolan's journey in rescuing her and becoming part of her civilization was something I thought did not work perfectly early this season, but I am getting more and more convinced as the episode develops her character through her conversation with Mark. She is noticeably older and worried about dying soon as her species' life span is significantly shorter ( < 1 yr) and leaving her son who ages considerably slower. (Somehow, this evoked the feeling of helplessness with the human condition that I sometimes feel as we have no control over our lifespan, habits, desires and passions beyond what is encoded in our genes - for her species, she is in a situation where she is facing inevitable death and decay and unable to provide for her son).

The 180 change in how Nolan saw human and alien species when he was demolishing entire cities to how he came to value the lives of a species with an even smaller lifespan than humans is further explored in this conversation with a standout line from Mark. After some prodding from the alien empress, Mark agrees to take his brother with him to earth.

After Invincible recuperates, his initial reluctance to go back to earth was unclear to me - but he does make the journey back on a repaired ship and not much has changed.

Amber seems to have made new friends and Debby is still wounded from the emotional gash after Nolan's betrayal. The way Mark introduced his brother to Debby and all the subsequent scenes after were impeccable. The writing in this show makes each scene hold so much meaning and force that it is hard to describe in a review. (There is a subtle call back to Debby smashing the bits out of a cabinet door and glasses in a fit of rage and signs of a growing alcohol dependence to process further trauma - much is left to the viewer's interpretation as it should be).

The scenes with the Guardians are the least engaging aspect of Invincible but still hold much emotional away

After Duplicate's line abt how she connects to the Immortal due to the sheer number of death and suffering that she goes through in one of the previous episodes, we have an incredibly sad payoff this episode

The fight scenes are as gory as they can be, but the danger to our heroes feels as genuine as it did on the first season

The story line with the Martian and the Sequid gets a much needed clarification in this episode and the cliffhanger at the end of the episode is just what we needed after a long hiatus haha

All in all, another solid Invincible episode where the writing drives so much creativity in the animation and voice acting

Rating this a strong 8.5 out of 10!

I can't not hear Optimus Prime.

Anyway... *sigh* this was the moment in the comics when I realized no one is truly ever safe, and the anxiety just built from there. Looks like the show is going to follow suit. I'm glad. I think they've done an excellent job covering so much ground with just these two seasons. Nothing feels rushed or too glossed over. I am a happy comic book reader.

But man the lizard people attack freakin' scarred me for life when I read it. It's one of those issues I still think about every now and then. It's horrifying. And somehow the showrunners just made it even harder to digest somehow (pun not intended).

The last act was certainly very entertaining and uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing, but there are plenty of other great moments here too. I loved all of the motherly stuff. I loved Mark's conversation with his brother's mom, and I loved Mark and Debbie's moments too.

Rex and Eve also have a surprisingly touching moment (and a callback to the Atom-Eve special so hope you watched that). I really do like what they've done with Rex in this show. He's funnier and way more likable here than he was in Kirkman's comic run.

And I'm also relieved Allen the Alien is still alive and better than ever. I'm glad they've not abandoned that arc from the comics. People are in for a real treat with him!

Anyway, loved the episode. I really hope we don't get any more mid-season breaks though. I'll stick with this series because I'm obsessed with the comics and so far the show as well, but I'd imagine the hype is starting to die down for many who waited 2-3 years for another season and couldn't even get it all up front.

This show used to be amazing. Gritty but not overly grotesque for a comics show. Twists and turns but it always felt like the writers had a solid direction. Character interactions that mattered. All of that is pretty much gone. People always say that main character deaths make the story more meaningful but, when you kill off main and side characters every episode, and then backfill them, it's hard to feel attached to any of them or get any semblance of continuity. There are so many storylines going on at once it's hard to keep up with. Had an episode about alternate realities and a new super villain and he just disappears. Alan the Alien finally gets some story only to be left to die and we hear nothing at all. New villains left and right that seemingly just jump out of nowhere. It's like the show is overcompensating because they know that two seasons over the course of 3 years is unacceptable. And it would be better if there wasn't multi-year gaps between content, but there is. This will be the last episode I watch. The fall off from this show should be studied.