Invincible Season 2 Has Some Fans Furious – Here's Why They're Wrong
It's been more than two years, but "Invincible" is finally back for season two, and anticipation could not be higher. An adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name, the show follows Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun), a teenager who discovers he has superpowers and tries to prove himself while also navigating the horrors of high school. Oh, and his dad, the world's biggest hero, turns out to be a murderous psychopath.
As a superhero story, "Invincible" feels like Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's classic "Spider-Man" but serialized, and with a ton of blood in it. If Mark tries to fight a bad guy without much training, he ends up killing a bunch of civilians by accident. If he punches a criminal too hard, he can paralyze them forever without meaning to.
The first season was praised for its story, and for avoiding hyperviolence for the sake of shock value. And now, season 2 improves on every aspect of the first season, with a leaner, meaner superhero story. "Invincible" season 2 picks up where the first season left off, with the aftermath of Mark's fight against his father, Nolan Grayson/Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), which destroyed most of Chicago. In season two, the show vastly expands the scope of the story. It heads into outer space and introduces a big alien threat, while also going deeper into Mark's personal coming-of-age story and his struggles with his father's betrayal.
But some fans online are disappointed with the new season. Not at the content of the season itself, but the fact that we're only getting four episodes to the season, with the rest premiering next year. Is their complaint justified?
A season worth the wait
It is understandable to be sad about having to wait longer to get the full picture of season 2 of "Invincible." But once you see all four episodes of this first part of the season, it becomes clear that it is worth the wait.
For one, the new episodes look stunning. The studio Wind Sun Sky Entertainment, as well as animators Maven Image Platform, have vastly improved the animation from the first season, which looked stiff and had limited animation, often over-relying on CGI. By comparison, the new season has more fluid action scenes, with proper choreography and a sharper art style to match other action-heavy animated shows.
As the story heads into outer space and involves dozens more characters, as well as the threat of an invasion by a huge alien empire, the production is bound to get bigger. This means more work for the animators, and more time to produce the show. At a time when poor working conditions in the animation industry are becoming widely known, that "Invincible" is seemingly taking longer while avoiding crunch time is not a bad thing.
While we'll only get half of the season this year, remember that we did get an extra episode in the summer about Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs voices the teen/adult Atom Eve; Jazlyn Ione the pre-teen version). That episode was the same length and quality as the rest of the season, which also takes time.
And that episode length also affected things. Remember that each episode of "Invincible," unlike most animated shows, is an hour long, as opposed to the standard 22 minutes. That means more work for the animation team, and it also means that we essentially get twice as many episodes, from a certain point of view. Sustaining that level of quality for that runtime is not easy for a production.
Not the only case of a long wait
Splitting a season and delaying its second half is nothing new, particularly in animation. Look at "Spy x Family," which split its first season into two halves that aired four months apart, or how "Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War" split its season into three parts, starting in 2022 and ending next year.
Of course, the most notorious example of this is "Attack on Titan." The hugely popular anime entered what was supposed to be its final season in December 2020, and is only ending now. This is in no small part due to the pandemic, and also because the latter parts of the manga are quite complex and require a lot of time and work to translate into animation. Rather than making fans wait four years in between the third and fourth seasons, like what happened after season 1, the production decided to split the final season into four chunks.
When it comes to "Invincible," the question likely came down to either splitting the season and giving fans half a story now, or making them wait even longer before releasing the whole thing. Having watched the whole season 2 part one, this functions as a fantastic continuation of the story, with an ending that closes this chapter of the story while raising the stakes for what comes next.