Invincible review: Episode 201, “A Lesson For Your Next Life”

Mark Grayson is back! After literally years of waiting, Prime Video has finally premiered season 2 of its beloved animated superhero show Invincible. Created by The Walking Dead writer Robert Kirkman, Invincible is not your typical superhero story. The first season shocked viewers with its gore, and the new episodes continue the trend while expanding the story!

Warning: this is a SPOILER-filled review.

Season 2, episode 1, “A Lesson For Your Next Life,” sees Mark Grayson struggle with the responsibility of being left alone to defend Earth in the aftermath of his father, Omni-Man, abandoning the planet. While we see him using his abilities to become the ultimate Superman-esque hero, saving innocent people and protecting cities from all sorts of threats, in private, he’s much more melancholy. Despite saving the world from his father’s impending Viltrumite takeover, Mark feels like he’s let the world down after thousands of innocent people died during his fight with his father. The cost of saving the world is weighing on him.

This sense of grief, shared between Mark and his mother Debbie, is the main emotional beat of the episode. There are few people with whom Mark finds comfort. Besides his mother, who’s still reeling from the revelation that Nolan never truly loved her (remember he likens her to a pet), it’s only really his girlfriend Amber and accomplice Atom Eve who Mark can confide in. He now works alone, away from the Guardians of the Globe, under the direct supervision of Cecil Steadman.

Into the multiverse…

Yes folks, this season contains another multiverse storyline, as if we don’t have enough of these already. But we’ll let Invincible off the hook since the comics were written long before the MCU started to explore the multiverse. Literally in its opening scene, the episode shows us an alternate universe where Mark has accepted Nolan’s terms and the two work together to prepare Earth for Viltrumite takeover.

It’s interesting to see Invincible and Nolan working together, hunting down those in the Resistance — which includes the Immortal, Atom Eve, and others — and killing them without a second thought. I particularly loved this whole “What if?” segment at the start, and how relevant is to Invincible’s new enemy.

A new, multiversal enemy

With Omni-Man out of the picture (at least for now), the show introduces us to a new enemy in the form of Angstrom Levy; a universe-hopping genius who hopes to unite different versions of himself so they can work towards the betterment of the multiverse. Levy has used his ability to gather thousands of his own variants from across the multiverse in one place, where he will use a machine to fuse all of his minds into one body.

His motives are not malevolent. The show does a really good job at getting viewers to not only understand his purpose, but in many ways to actually want him to succeed. Angstrom gets a gentle, more well thought-out introduction than he has in the comics. With all of his minds from various universes fused, he can access memories and figure out how to build the perfect world without disease, war, and more. He likens himself to Prometheus.

In order to get his ambitious project started, Levy enlists the help of the Mauler twins, two of the greatest scientific minds on the planet Earth. However, Levy has to break them out of prison first, which isn’t hard when you’ve got inter-dimensional portals.

I’ve always liked the Mauler twins. They’re powerful and dangerous, but they’ve also got an excellent sense of humor. Their snark helps to balance out all the grief and angst in this episode.

Levy gives them no choice but to work for him; his strict and ‘do it or die’ attitude definitely feels like the first glimpse of his villain arc. The twins do as he asks and build Levy’s huge brain-merging machine. The process appears to move along seamlessly… until Invincible appears, under orders from Cecil to put a stop to it.

Ignorant of Levy’s humanitarian intentions, Invincible takes matters into his own hands and fights the Mauler twins, a fight where he definitely seems to have the upper hand. However, Levy then summons many more Maulers from across the multiverse, and they overpower Invincible. The good news? The Guardians of the Globe enter to join the fight. The bad news? The machine is destroyed, and Angstrom Levy’s long-held goals with it.

Given Invincible’s interference, Levy no doubt blames him for the disaster, which leaves him terribly disfigured. His brain is oversized and a complete eyesore. He’s gonna want some sweet, sweet revenge on Invincible for this.

The New Guardians of the Globe

Without Invincible by their side, the all-new Guardians of the Globe are significantly weakened. Despite having heroes like Rex, Monster Girl and Ruddy, they simply don’t have enough firepower to efficiently take down enemies. There’s one battle in this episode where they fight an enormous beast named The Giant… and even though they manage to win, there’s too many public casualties for it to be deemed a success. During this battle, there appears to be a budding relationship between Amanda and Ruddy, something comic readers will instantly recognize.

Cecil is not ignorant of their near misses and decides to add some new firepower to the team in the form of Bulletproof and the Immortal. Things have got to go better now, right?

Verdict

It’s like Invincible has never been gone! This episode was an epic, gruesome, heartfelt, and surprisingly witty hour of television. It had everything fans could want, setting up what promises to be a fantastic season!

Episode Grade: A

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