I’ve read the comic books, and I don’t know that I was ready for this one either.
The newest episode of Invincible dropped, and for those of you playing at home, don’t check your dials and don’t adjust your sets. I need to apologize humbly to Know-It-All Nation. I lost track of the schedule. I don’t know what happened. Somewhere in the middle of several different things I lost track completely and ended up not recording an episode last week, the second one. I watched it, but I think I was doing another review at the time, and everything just got jumbled up. So I apologize. Please forgive me.
It was a bridge episode, and a bridge episode leads us here. This one’s not bad at all. It’s actually kind of an interesting setup for the whole thing, and of course it ends on a cliffhanger, so you don’t want to miss a word of it.
Mark’s a College Man
Literally. His mom drops him off, Debbie voiced by Sandra Oh and Mark, of course, by Steven Yeun, and they have this really interesting little moment where they talk. You can tell she doesn’t want to see him go so fast, and him going in the middle of all this is really not good. But he promises to come visit and have dinner on Sunday and whatnot.
Then, as he goes, you get this exchange.
“And don’t do drugs.”
“Would they even work on me?”
“You do not need to find out.”
I don’t know about you, but I think he might be susceptible. I’m just saying. I’m not sure if he has a superhuman metabolism or not, because it seems like he can definitely eat and he can definitely drink. So we’ll see what happens.
He heads into college, and Debbie gets on the phone and calls that card. Remember the card from the red speedster’s wife?
“Hi, sorry. Hi. I got your card from my friend Olga. My name is Debbie.”
“No last names, Debbie. But Olga told me about you. I’ve been expecting your call.”
They set up an appointment, and she’s going to go visit someone and see something. We don’t know what that’s about yet.
Séance Dog and the Sock on the Door
Meanwhile Mark and William are bunking together for college, and William’s giving him the lay of the land. Mark puts up a poster of his favorite superhero, which is Séance Dog. It’s literally Doctor Strange if he was a dog, which is really funny, because Robert Kirkman originally pitched a kind of supernatural detective dog. I don’t think he was Séance Dog. I think it was something else. They probably couldn’t get the rights to use Science Dog, the original from the comic, so they had to replace him with that. It was interesting, to say the least.
So he’s putting this poster up, and William’s like, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, the whole college life thing. And Mark is like, well, by comparison you’ll look like a champ. Sure enough, William’s side of the room is beautiful and gleaming and gorgeous, and Mark’s side looks like a horrific mess.
Then William explains how college life is going to work. If you see a sock on the door, don’t come knocking. Sorry, children.
Mark looks around, takes in that he’s in college now, and he’s like, oh well, college life, whatever. He goes to throw away his box of toys, only to realize Séance Dog is the toy he wants to keep. He comes back inside and there’s a sock on the door. Who has sex on the first day of college?
So he goes to stay with his girlfriend, and the two of them realize that, hey man, they’re in college, they can do what they want. College kids going to college kid.
What ends up happening is a narrator shows up. We have no clue where this narrator came from. None. They haven’t had a narrator at any point yet, and somehow, magically, we have one now. He tells us we’re not going to stay and watch what’s going down there, which I’m glad for, because it got really awkward, and this is, after all, a family channel.
Allen the Alien Is Back
So we go into space and follow the adventures of Allen the Alien. Allen’s back. Yo, bro, he’s back.
What we get is a brief origin story for him, his entire journey up to this point in the series. This is already animation, so I didn’t understand why they had to do it in this weird staccato, stuttery style, almost like a slideshow. A parallax slideshow. I’m watching this going, I don’t know what this is.
Well, I do know what it is. I’ve read the comic books, which by the way you should totally pick up. There’s a link in the description of the video above to where you can grab the Omnibus. You may be like me. When I got done with season one I was like, well, I need to know the rest of this entire story, and that’s exactly what the Omnibus does.
Allen the Alien was genetically engineered to eventually face the Viltrumites. He comes from a planet called Unopa or something like that, and it’s all one-eyed people. He was the only survivor of this particular group of experiments, but even then he went off to fight and ended up losing. He couldn’t even face one Viltrumite.
Luckily the leader, Thaedus, voiced by Transformers’ Peter Cullen, got to love that, accepts him into this galactic coalition. Now he’s the one who goes from planet to planet making sure they can defend themselves, seeing if anyone is strong enough. He’s the guy who found Mark, remember, with the one eye. So he reports back about Mark specifically: he found him, and this guy is a Viltrumite who wants to stand against the Viltrumites. He explains the whole situation Mark explained to him two episodes ago, at the end of the first episode.
Optimus Prime Is Going to Optimus Prime
Then we find out an interesting bit of information. They were in negotiations with this one planet, only to find out the planet was attacked by the Viltrumites, and everyone else in the system has decided they don’t want to participate. They’re pulling out.
It begs the question. Thaedus calls on Allen afterwards and says clearly we have a mole in the system and we need to find them, because Optimus Prime is going to Optimus Prime. And Allen agrees to help. Yeah, of course, in all his Seth Rogen, Seth Rogen-y way. So he’s going to help track down who the mole is.
We get to meet his girlfriend, and it gets a little awkward, because Allen is apparently knocking boots with his alien hottie. Sorry, children. The announcer is awfully awkward about it too. Oh, well, they’re going to do this, okay, we left Mark and now this. So we get to watch the cat with two buttholes. Yes, those are words I never imagined were going to come out of my mouth.
A little bit later Allen and his girlfriend are having a meal at this, I don’t know, diner at the end of the universe, who knows, and he gets yanked out of his booth by a Viltrumite. The Viltrumites are there. Tell us more about Mark, this and that. He’s like, how in the world do you know? And he decides he’s going to take it on the chin.
Later you see him in a medical bay of some sort, and Thaedus comes in, apologizes, and unplugs him.
I know, right? I know what’s going to happen, but I’m not going to spoil it for you. If you want to know more, buy the comic.
Can Debbie Find No Peace Anywhere
We come back to Earth, and what you find out is Debbie is going to grief counseling. That’s what the phone number was. It’s a super secret counseling group for spouses of superheroes.
She meets a bunch of nice people there. She doesn’t say much, she’s kind of quiet, but at the very end she gets invited out for a drink. The guy who invites her is the husband of Green Ghost, the one superhero who looked like she was wearing a green suit, who Omni-Man killed.
So Debbie’s got to come to terms with that and what it means, and she’s really having a problem with it. I understand why, and I see where she’s coming from. She tries to sneak out of the bar, he interrupts her, and she’s like, I’m sorry, and she divulges that Omni-Man’s her husband. She’s looking for someone who understands.
But this guy’s pretty peeved. He’s upset. He’s like, well, you should have known. And he tells her she shouldn’t come back, because it’s not a safe space for them anymore with her there. Her husband isn’t gone. He’s not dead. He’s left, which means he could come back, which puts all of them in danger.
I see where he’s coming from. I just have a hard time with how they got there. God, dude, can she find no peace anywhere? Her entire situation is rough, and I feel for her.
Why, It Is I, Séance Dog
Then, with Mark, there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Séance Dog.
“Mark Grayson, I need your help.”
“Who are you?”
“Why, it is I, Séance Dog.”
Yeah, the superhero on the poster. The little toy. Mark’s like, yeah, no, this isn’t happening. He drags the guy out and almost kills him, and the guy transforms into this blue bug guy and tells Mark this big sob story about needing help, his people, billions of people going to die.
So Mark makes the call. Okay, fine, I’m going to come help. He talks to Cecil, and Cecil doesn’t want him to go, but Mark’s like, no, I’ve got to, I have to do this myself. He disobeys Cecil’s order and Cecil’s not happy. He tells his girlfriend he’s leaving, the whole nine yards, and he gets on the thing.
Six days later they arrive on their world, and there’s nothing seemingly wrong. When Mark calls him out on it, the bug’s like, oh, sorry, it must be a bit of dementia, we age faster than you do. But our king, our emperor, will explain everything.
All hail the emperor. That’s right. Emperor Omni-Man.
The Verdict
Invincible Season 2 Episode 3 lands at a 7 and a half out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
This was a really decent continuation of last week’s bridge episode. They’re still setting us up. And for those of you who are familiar with the storyline, they’ve clearly fast forwarded a little bit. Not by a whole lot, but it’s definitely a little tighter. They got here quicker than I thought they would, to be honest. I thought we’d get to this moment a little bit later, because the Angstrom Levy storyline is much bigger at this stage in the books. Either way, it’s working out really great.
It’s not bad, and it isn’t that it failed to perform in any way. It’s just another part of the setup to get to the next thing. I loved the episode.
Tell me your thoughts on the episode. Were you shocked with how they got here? I know I was. And tell me if you think Invincible is susceptible to drugs and alcohol. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
