Invincible will use less CG, more traditional animation in season 2

Invincible, Amazon Prime Video’s superhero show adapted from the comics of the same name by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, is coming back this year, and I am excited. With so many superheroes flying around onscreen these days, it’s hard to find a new series that actually justifies its existence, but Invincible pulled it off. It’s straightforward, it’s subversive, it’s dramatic, it’s funny, it’s gentle, it’s horrific…it’s got it all.

New episodes will start airing in November, over two years after the first season wrapped up. Why did it take so long? Kirkman sounded off with Polygon. “With COVID, there was a longer break in production than we wanted there to be. It took some time to rebuild the team. And frankly, I like a lot of the CG elements in Season 1, but I feel like at certain points, they stand out.”

"So doing less CG in Seasons 2 and 3 is a creative decision. The delays were really just COVID. Making a cartoon is like assembling a factory and letting it run. And because of COVID, we had to shut the factory down. So to get into Seasons 2 and 3, we had to rebuild the factory and get it up and running again, and that took a lot of time."

So unsurprisingly, things took a while because of COVID. Although it’s interesting to hear that Invincible season 2 will have less CGI than season 1; usually you hear about things going in the opposite direction.

Invincible season 2 will “feel much bigger than season 1”

At the end of Invincible season 1, teenaged superhero Mark Grayson, aka Invincible, had a brutal fight with his father, the superhero Omni-Man…or, well, everyone thought Omni-Man was a superhero. It turns out he was an agent of an imperialist alien empire sent from the planet Viltrum to prepare Earth to be conquered. He beat his son within an inch of his life before deciding he couldn’t go through with killing his own son it and leaving the planet.

Expect more of that kind of thing in season 2, except bigger. “I think Invincible season 1 is a clear representation of what you’re going to get from this show, but overall season 2 is going to feel much bigger than season 1,” Kirkman told Entertainment Weekly. “The overarching story of Invincible that’ll continue from season to season is about the growth and change that Mark goes through as he moves from a teenager into adulthood… and possibly even into old age. So in season 2, we’ll see him maturing and growing up a little bit.”

"But also, Omni-Man is gone and he could not be more essential to the survival of Earth. I think that, if anything, people should be aware of the fact that not only did Omni-Man become a threat at the end of the first season, but he also revealed a larger threat in the Viltrumites themselves. That threat is going to come into play in season 2, and Omni-Man is not there to defend the Earth, especially from his own people. That ends up being a terrifying prospect that hangs over the series for a good long time."

One thing that could possibly stand in the way of Omni-Man and the Viltrumites taking over Earth is the Coalition of Planets, who stand in solidarity against the expansionist Viltrumite empire. “The Coalition of Planets was mentioned in season 1. The Coalition of Planets is something that we’re actually going to see in season 2,” Kirkman said. “And there’s larger things on Earth. There are different factions, different villains, different things happening.”

"One of the cool things about Invincible is that it is the same kind of all-encompassing superhero universe that you’d see with DC or the MCU, but it all happens in one story,” Kirkman says. “So there are things that are going to be happening at the bottom of the ocean, there are things that are going to be happening on the moon and in deep space, but it all involves Invincible and it all fits into one story. There’s also going to be the same mundane, day-to-day human stuff that Mark has to deal with. So a random episode of Invincible could deal with five different bizarre aspects of a superhero universe that you get all at once. But it all makes sense, and it all works in the context of the story because you’re seeing it through Mark’s perspective."

How the ending of Invincible subverts superhero tropes

If the show continues at the pace it set for itself in season 1, it could last for many seasons; there are nearly 150 issues of the comic running from 2003 through 2018.

That means there’s an ending, too, which is something of a rarity in the world of superheroes. “The ultimate way to play against type with a superhero story was to give it a finality, to give it a proper ending, [because] most superhero stories go on forever and ever and ever,” Kirkman said at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, according to ScreenRant.

New episodes of Invincible will start airing on November 3. We’ll get four in a row. Then we wait until 2024 to see another four. After that, if the actors and writers strikes are over, it will hopefully be smooth sailing into season 3.

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