The third season of Invincible has officially kicked off on Prime Video, and the so far the reviews are extremely positive. We found out what Mark Grayson has been doing to prepare for a Viltrumite invasion, watched the Guardians of the Globe split up, and got a gruesome death at the end of Episode 3, when Mark's little brother Oliver — the son of his father Omni-Man and Andressa, a bug woman from the planet Thraxa — brutally killed the Mauler Twins, villains who have been terrorizing our characters since the first-ever episode of the show. The world is better off without the Mauler Twins in it, but Oliver killed them with an alarming lack of remorse; whether we can chock that up to his youth or whether he's a budding sociopath remains to be seen.
We didn't get to catch up with Omni-Man himself, which is disappointing considering that he's the breakout character of the show so far. But Omni-Man actor J.K. Simmons has watched the first three episodes, and he was just as thrown by Oliver's behavior as a lot of fans. “We get shocked and surprised by some of these plot developments as we read them before we put them down,” Simmons told Kotaku. “Oliver is a really cool new character that hopefully keeps people guessing.”
Oliver justified his murders of the Mauler twins very simply: they were "bad guys." It's a black-and-white kind of reasoning that recalls how Omni-Man thought back in the first season of the show. Has Oliver inherited his outlook from his father? “Nothing’s ever Omni-Man’s fault," Simmons said sarcastically. "Omni-Man is always innocent of any wrongdoings.” Go ahead and take that however you like.
Can Omni-Man be redeemed?
Although we didn't see Omni-Man in these first three episodes of season 3, he will feature in future ones. Last we saw him, he was awaiting execution as punishment for betraying the Viltrumite empire. At this point, it feels like Omni-Man wants to die, but Allen the Alien (Seth Rogan) is trying to convince him to help fight against his own people. “We see a relationship between Omni-Man and Allen the Alien that kind of goes to some surprising places,” J.K. Simmons told The Direct.
Let's go ahead and assume that Omni-Man will eventually flip and help fight the Viltrumite empire. Does that mean he will be "redeemed" in the eyes of audiences? “I love that that’s a question," Simmons said. "[I]t would have been pretty tedious to play through seasons of him just being the biggest, baddest guy on the block. And I think being able to explore some vulnerability and some self-doubt even is really an interesting journey.”
"You definitely can’t please all the people all the time, right? So I think, yeah, there will be some, I think, who will hail Omni-Man and/or Nolan as a hero. But, yeah, it’s never going to be, you know—I mean, that’s the way the world is."
I think what Simmons is trying to avoid saying is, "Omni-Man slaughtered a whole lot of innocent Earthlings in the first season of the show, so maybe not everyone will be ready to forgive him even if he starts using his powers to help people."
But that's one of the many bridges the show can cross when it gets there. New episodes of Invincible drop Thursdays on Prime Video.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.