Every episode of Invincible season 2 (so far), ranked worst to best

1. Episode 204: “It’s Been a While”

This episode seriously cranks things up a notch on all fronts. Debbie liberates herself from Cecil and the demons Omni-Man left behind, Donald realizes that he is part machine and the Mauler Twins find out what happens when one of them knows the other is a clone: mass dysfunction.

One storyline that is really bumming me out is Atom Eve, who has seldom showed up at all in this season so far, and when she does, she is getting life thrown at her hard. When she tries to build a park, it collapses and hurts a lot of people. When she tries to help her parents, her dad yells at her and calls her dangerous. When she tries to stop Kill Canon from stealing, she accidentally sends a car off a bridge. Atom Eve really needs a win soon because she is going through it.

The real meat and potatoes of this episode is Omni-Man returning to the series. We see that directly after he left Earth, Omni-Man drifts into space with no destination in mind. He flies aimlessly for months until he lets himself start drifting into a black hole. This is a pretty significant change from the comic book, as it shows how much regret and guilt he felt after the horrible things he not only did to Earth, but to countless other planets in the name of Viltrum.

Of course, he doesn’t tell Mark any of this. Their meeting quickly deteriorates as Mark realizes that his dad tricked him into coming to Thraxa and that he still hasn’t apologized for the destruction he left on Earth.

But Mark is convinced to hear his dad out. To his disgust, he discovers that Omni-Man has become the emperor of the planet, married a Thraxan named Anissa and had a son with her. Talk about family drama.

Omni-Man explains that the Viltrumites will find him eventually and that Mark needs to help him protect his new brother. Even though Omni-Man’s unnamed son will age quickly thanks to his Thraxan DNA (Thraxans only live for one year), the Viltrumites will kill him for being inferior if they find him. Just when they are figuring out a strategy, the three Viltrumites who pulverized Allen show up and chaos ensues.

An all out brawl sees Omni-Man seemingly kill all three of the Viltrumites before getting brutally kicked in the spine by Lucan. Mark also gets stabbed in the gut by Thula. Both Omni-Man and Mark survive while their opponents die, but they still lose. A one-eyed Viltrumite named General Kregg explains that Omni-Man will be executed and that Mark will assume his responsibility of getting Earth ready for the Viltrumite occupation. If he doesn’t, they will kill millions of people on Earth. Before Omni-Man is taken away, he tells Mark to read his books.

This episode takes the stakes and raises them significantly. We now have a direct threat from the Viltrumites and a clear “what the hell do we do now” moment season 2 can be proud of. The Viltrumite fight scenes in this episode are elegantly done with plenty of Mortal Kombat-like gore, which is just perfect for this show. There are also so many questions. What happened to Mark’s brother? Is Allen dead? What’s in Omni-Man’s books? We’ll have to wait until more episodes start dropping next year — hopefully early in the year — to find out.

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