Every single episode of Invincible, ranked worst to best, with explanations

Invincible just wrapped up its third season with a violent, intense superhero showdown that must be seen to be believed. After some ups and downs, the show enters the off-season on a high; season 4 can't come soon enough.

Happily, the plan is to get it out to us next year. While we wait, let's recap the greatness and the goodness with a full episode ranking, starting with a list of every episode released so far:

Season 1

1. "It's About Time"
2. "Here Goes Nothing"
3. "Who You Calling Ugly?"
4. "Neil Armstrong, Eat Your Heart Out"
5. "That Actually Hurt"
6. "You Look Kinda Dead"
7. "We Need to Talk"
8. "Where I Really Come From"

Season 2

1. "A Lesson for Your Next Life"
2. "In About Six Hours, I Lose My Virginity to a Fish"
3. "This Missive, This Machination!"
4. "It's Been a While"
5. "This Must Come as a Shock"
6. "It's Not That Simple"
7. "I'm Not Going Anywhere"
8. "I Thought You Were Stronger"

Season 3

1. "You're Not Laughing Now"
2. "A Deal with the Devil"
3. "You Want a Real Costume, Right?"
4. "You Were My Hero"
5. "This Was Supposed to Be Easy"
6. "All I Can Say Is I'm Sorry"
7. "What Have I Done?"
8. "I Thought You'd Never Shut Up"

How do these episode stack up against each other? Let's get to ranking:

Bottom of the barrel

Invincible is a solid show all around, but it tends to be at its best when the plot if barreling forward and there's a lot of action. But Robert Kirkman, who wrote the original comics, loves everything about comics, including the strange interludes and side stories. The show is richer in the long run for wandering off the beaten path from time to time, but these sorts of episodes don't have the punch of the show its best.

24. Season 2, Episode 2: "In About Six Hours, I Lose My Virginity to a Fish"

Mark Grayson must serve as a diplomat to an undersea kingdom of fish people after relations were left in tatters by his father, the treacherous superhero Omni-Man. It's funny watching Mark come to grips with the fact that he might have to marry a fish for his country, and who doesn't like watch a fight against a giant kraken? But there's a sense of 'Why are we spending time on this?' Invincible has tons of plotlines running at once, and there are other ones fans would rather see.

That said, the plot point where Mark is weak to high-pitched sonic noise does back around later, so the show got something out of this misadventure.

23. Season 3, Episode 5: "This Was Supposed to Be Easy"

Here we have another off-the-beaten-road story, as Mark and Eve try to make money by starting a private security company. Mark gets roped into helping his old frenemy Titan spring a supervillain named Multi-Paul (good name) from prison, and there's a guy who can turn into a dragon. There's some fun action, but mostly we're wondering when we get back to the meat and the heart.

22. Season 2, Episode 6: "It's Not That Simple"

Mark and the other Guardians get back from their adventure in space fighting the Sequids. The Global Defense Agency patches up Rex Splode and Shrinking Rae after their run-in with the Lizard League. Mark's little brother Oliver starts talking, and Debbies accepts help from a GDA nanny. The Immortal meets Allen the Alien. Mark and Allen catch up. Mark figures out Nolan's pulpy sci-fi books might contain clues for defeating Viltrumites. Mark, Eve and Amber consider their relationships.

This episode pushes a lot of different plotlines forward a little bit, but nothing huge happens. It's a bit sleepy.

21. Season 1, Episode 4: "Neil Armstrong, Eat Your Heart Out"

This is another one of those interstitial episodes, which you'll get sometimes on a show this serialized. Here, Mark travels to Mars, setting off the Sequid plot he and the Guardians will deal with later. Nolan tries to deflect Debbie's suspicions about what he did to the original Guardians, but Cecil is onto him. Robot hatches a plan to use Rex Spode's DNA to clone himself a new body with the help of the Mauler twins.

All of this stuff needs to happen to set up other stuff, but little of it is terribly compelling on its own.

Middle of the barrel

20. Season 1, Episode 6: "You Look Kinda Dead"

Mark, William and Amber get mixed up in a mad science plot while looking at colleges. That gives this episode more of a spine that some of the other interstitial ones, but it's pretty lightweight compared to some of Mark's other adventures. The most interesting bits have to with Debbie discovering what her husband did and falling into a drunken depression.

19. Season 2, Episode 1, "A Lesson For Your Next Life"

The season 2 premiere finds Mark trying to adjust months after his father Omni-Man beat him to a pulp and left the planet. After waiting more than two years since that crazy finale, a lot of fans were eager to see what happened next between father and son. Instead, "A Lesson For Your Next Life" is an origin story for a new villain: Angstrom Levy. He's interesting, but doesn't bring as much drama as fans would like...at least not yet.

18. Season 3, Episode 6: "All I Can Say Is I'm Sorry"

"All I Can Say Is I'm Sorry" introduces a new villain named Powerplex, who's been mad at Mark ever since he lost family during Mark and Nolan's apocalyptic brawl in the season 1 finale. Powerplex is determined to get his revenge on Invincible by whatever means necessary.

It seems backwards to blame Mark for what happened that day, given that he was trying to stop his father from killing even more people. But I don't expect every character to think rationally. What bugged me about this episode was how Mark seems to accept that Powerplex has a point. It's sad to see Mark look back on an event where he was 100% a victim and feel like he was responsible for it.

17. Season 2, Episode 3: "Who You Calling Ugly?"

"Who You Calling Ugly?" is another interstitial episode, but it comes early enough in the show's run that a lot is still new to us. Mark's relationship with Amber gets off the ground, we find out more about the Mauler Twins' weird dynamic, more suspicion falls on Nolan, and we meet Doc Seismic, a goofy throwaway villain who proves that it never pays to underestimate people.

The lid of the barrel is in sight

16. Season 3, Episode 1: "You're Not Laughing Now"

It took a while, but Doc Seismic finally surprises is in "You're Not Laughing Now," where he forms an alliance with subterranean bug monsters and manages to overcome most of Earth's mightiest heroes. The only thing that saves him is Cecil using some shady technology, which tees up a conflict between him and Mark that lasts the rest of the season.

15. Season 1, Episode 2: "Here Goes Nothing"

The second-ever episode of the show sees Mark getting his feet wet in the superhero business, meeting other heroes his age and teaming up to fight an inter-dimensional race of trouble-makers called the Flaxans. It's pretty straightforward superhero stuff, counter-balanced by a scary, badass scene at the end where Nolan wipes out the entire Flaxan civilization for honing in on his territory. In these early episodes, no matter how bright and innocent the stories seem, Nolan's presence flows under everything like a chill current.

14. Season 3, Episode 3: "You Want a Real Costume, Right?"

The Grayson family dynamic takes center stage here. Debbie dabbles in dating while she and Mark try to get their heads around raising young Oliver, who's growing at a rapid rate. The action kicks in when the Mauler twins hijack a missile silo. Mark and a newly powered Oliver are on the case. Things are going sideways when Olvier straight-up murders the Mauler twins, and he doesn't seem to feel bad about it.

Is Oliver a psycho? Or did the Mauler twins deserve to die and Mark's outrage is misplaced? It's a thoughtful, gruesome ending to a bit of a sleepy episode.

13, Season 3, Episode 2: "This Missive, This Machination!"

Allen the Alien is one of the most charming, likable characters on Invincible, so I'm not going to say no to an episode all about him. I'm less enthusiastic about an episode where he gets thrashed near the death by Viltrumites at the end, but it's still worth to get to hang out with him while he attempts spycraft for a while, and we know he eventually comes back better than ever.

Invaluable

12. Season 3, Episode 2: "A Deal With The Devil"

There's always been tension between Mark and Cecil, but this is the first episode where they really face off against each other. Mark ends up winning the fight and the Guardians of the Globe break up after learning of Cecil's betrayal. It's a loss for him. But we walk away having a better understanding of a man unfailingly dedicated to protecting Earth from any all threats, even they're the hero of the show, so it's a win for us.

11. Season 2, Episode 7: "I'm Not Going Anywhere"

Poor Amber; just when she's getting used to being a superhero's girlfriend, a vicious Viltrumite named Anissa shows up and ruins her date with Mark by threatening to twist her head off her neck. The rest of the episode plays out like it often does whenever Mark comes into contact with a Viltrumite: he gets his ass handed to him. But it never stops being compelling to watch.

10. Season 2, Episode 5: "This Must Come As a Shock"

For a while, "This Must Come As a Shock" feels like an interstitial episode. Mark talks his baby brother Oliver back to Earth and talks with his mom about raising him. Allen awakens from his coma ready to fight. A bunch of Sequids are attacking Earth. Sounds bad.

What kicks this episode up a notch is the end, when the Lizard League — who are assumed to be joke villains — take over a nuclear weapons facility. Rex Splode, Shrinking Rae and Dupli-Kate try and stop them, expecting an easy fight. Then Dupli-Kate is torn apart, Shrinking Rae is crushed in the gullet of a lizard man, and Rex Splode is shot in the head.

Well, technically Rex gets shot in the next episode, but this is still very surprising. If it weren't for the fact that literally all of these characters survive this ordeal, this episode would be even higher on this list.

9. Season 1, Episode 5: "That Actually Hurt"

I don't know if this makes me a sicko, but I'm not alone in thinking that the best episodes of Invincible tend to be the ones with blistering violence, am I? And it often comes out of nowhere. "That Actually Hurt" starts out feeling like a throwaway story about Mark taking on a mob boss. But then a fearsome creature named Battle Beast enters the arena and turns the whole thing into a blood bath. That mob story has a few fun twists in it, but no one comes away from this episode remembering anythin other than that fight, the most brutal Mark has endured...at this point.

Unimpeachable

8. Season 2, Episode 8: "I Thought You Were Stronger"

Angstrom Levy may have seemed like a distraction when he was introduced in the season 2 premiere, but he proves worth here in the finale as he takes Debbie and Oliver hostage and fights Mark across the multiverse. The fight is nasty, visually inventive and so intense that it forces Mark to cross a line he's unsure if he can come back from.

7. Season 3, Episode 4: "You Were My Hero"

"You Were My Hero" is divided into two halves: for the first chunk, Mark takes a trip into a post-apocalyptic future where he battles the Immortal, who's gone mad with power and despair. That's diverting enough, but the real fireworks come in the back half when we check in on Nolan and Allen, who are in prison awaiting execution. Nolan's story of transformation is incredibly compelling, but we get very little of it, so it's always a treat when he shows up. Also, Battle Beast returns and Nolan reveals the Viltrum Empire's biggest weakness, signaling that he truly has turned a new leaf.

6. Season 2, Episode 4: "It's Been A While"

This episode is great for the same reason the last one is: because after season 1 we don't see much of Nolan, and whenever he shows up it's a delightful surprise. And this episode doesn't have to share space with a subplot about time travel. It's all about Mark and Nolan reuniting after the latter beat the former to a bloody plup and fled the Earth. Nolan feels conflicted about that. The two have a lot of things to hash out, but they don't have a chance to do that before other Viltrumites arrive. Father and son fight them back and just barely make it through with their lives.

5. Season 1, Episode 7: "We Need To Talk"

The first season of Invincible had the strongest narrative throughline: we see Nolan kill the Guardians of the Globe right in the first episode, but we don't know why. People start to cotton on to his game, and by the time of "We Need To Talk," the truth is finally out. Cecil starts actively attacking Nolan, and the episode ends with Nolan about to tell all to Mark. You can't watch the next episode fast enough.

100% Invincible

4. Season 3, Episode 7: "What Have I Done?"

Angstrom Levy returns again in his best showing yet, raising a whole army of evil Invincible clones from throughout the multiverse in his crazed quest for revenge. The drama is crackling, the animation is fluid and the fights are spectacular. Invincible occasionally gets dinged for cutting corners in the animation department, but if they ever do cut corners, it's with a purpose: the final two episodes of season 3 look wonderful; you feel every blow just when you need to.

3. Season 1, Episode 1: "It's About Time"

The series premiere of Invincible makes it seem like it's going to be such a wholesome show: young Mark Grayson finally gets superpowers just like his dad. Father and son train, and Mark learns about responsibility...and then, in the final scene, his dad ambushes this world's version of the Justice League and beats them all to death. We don't know why. Few series premieres that have a hook as good as that.

2. Season 1, Episode 8: "Where I Really Come From"

From the season 1 premiere to the season 1 finale, here's when we learn the truth: Nolan is part of the expansionist Viltrumite Empire and came to Earth to prepare it for conquest. He wants Mark to join him in this mission, but his son is more Earthling than Viltrumite. Because weakness is despised among the Viltrumites, Nolan sees only one option: he has to kill his son.

The fight is among the most brutal on the show, both emotionally and physically. Not only is Mark beaten to a pulp, but it's his own dad doing it. But as indoctrinated into the Viltrum way of life as he is, Nolan can't bring himself to deliver the final blow. Instead he leaves the planet, leaving viewers hooked.

1. Season 3, Episode 8: "I Thought You'd Never Shut Up"

There may be a bit of recency bias at play here, but the season 3 finale has everything that makes Invincible great. Mark fights yet another Viltrumite; this one is named Conquest and he somehow ups the ante when it comes to cruelty from these people. The fight is magnificently animated, and in a twist on his fight against Nolan two seasons back, Mark actually wins this time, though by the barest of margins. We feel throughout that it could go either way.

It felt like the show took an important step forward here, and I can't wait to see what happens next. Invincible is off the air for now, but season 4 is in the works. Expect it sometime in 2026.

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