As filler episodes go, this one’s a doozy.
The brand new episode of Invincible just dropped, Season 2 Episode 7, titled “I’m Not Going Anywhere.” Far be it from me to get ahead of myself, but man, they put so much into this episode, and at the same time it’s all going somewhere. Every now and again you get episodes like this. I tend to call them filler episodes, for those of you playing at home, and what they’re doing is laying the groundwork for things. A lot of things. The problem is that sometimes it can feel a little messy.
Comic-Con, and a Train Wreck You Can See Coming
The episode starts with Mark and Amber at Comic-Con, or at least the equivalent of Comic-Con. They’re walking around, they’re trying to spend time together, and there are several times where he’s asking, are you sure it’s okay, and she’s telling him yeah, no, I’m good. They’re really setting up this idea that the two of them are trying, especially after last week’s revelations, when they probably should be talking to one another. It’s a hopeful start, but I think we all kind of see where this train wreck is going.
Meanwhile our good old buddy Rex Splode, Mr. Bullet in the Noggin (I also affectionately called him Mr. Boom Boom last week), tries to get back up on the horse. There’s a mission, real simple-ish, and they send Mark to help him sort it out. He’s telling Mark, dude, I really need this, and Mark’s like, all right, fine, whatever. So Mark takes care of the little fish while Rex takes care of the big squid. Octopus. I don’t know.
Back at the Guardians’ headquarters, Robot’s doing his best to try to help Monster Girl, and it’s just not really working out that well.
At the same time, the Immortal is really struggling with Dupli-Kate’s death. It’s hit him harder than any other wife he’s had in the past, because clearly, as the Immortal, people are going to come in and out of your life. But this is the first time one of his relationships was a comrade. She was someone who fought with him, someone he loved in the heat of what was going on, who could easily stand shoulder to shoulder with him. So it’s a much bigger deal. At the end of the day he needs a break and he wants to quit, but Cecil’s not going to let him quit.
Donald Died 39 Times
William’s boyfriend Rick is having a lot of issues with his torture past, that whole Sinclair situation where he was literally tortured, turned into a robot and disassembled. Now the government has put him back together, so he’s in a weird existential place. What am I, who am I, what do I do, how do I continue on.
On the flip side, Donald is dealing with the same kind of thing, and he gets to the point where he wants to quit too. He tells Cecil, you erased my memory, and that crossed a line. And Cecil’s looking at him like, you’re the one who asked for this. Finally he says it to him: you’ve always had the choice. The choice has always been yours.
Come to find out Donald’s died like 39 times, and he chose to have his memories removed, because he thought to himself, who could live with that level of trauma? Especially when you start going again, and again, and again.
It’s not long before Donald catches a call from William that there’s an issue with Rick, so he goes. Rick wants to unalive himself, and Donald has to talk him through it. Rick’s telling him, you don’t understand what I’m going through, and Donald’s like, oh, don’t I? And he opens up his shirt, and it’s a robot under there. Bro. I’ve died 39 times.
And Donald comes to the conclusion that he’s had his memories erased, but maybe that wasn’t the right choice, specifically because it takes away his agency.
The Through Line Is Agency
That begins to become a thread and a through line in the entire episode. Character agency. What does agency mean in your life? You have the ability to control your thoughts. You have the perception of free will. I can choose to drink this, I can choose to eat that, I can choose to go meet this person, I can choose to break up with them or love that person. Everybody in this episode is dealing with the conundrum that is their free will, or what we call their agency.
Robot is trying to enable Monster Girl to have some level of agency. He wants her to be able to continue to be a member of the team without getting younger and younger and younger. There’s a conversation with Black Samson where all the defects of everyone get pointed out, and that’s literally part of it. Again, that through line.
So now you have Donald, who’s come to the conclusion that he has to retake his agency. See, that was the problem. At first he thought the GDA had taken away his decision making, only to find out it was him who’d made the ultimate decisions to begin with. That changes the narrative. It flips it on its head. When you stop and think about it, if there’s a situation you think you don’t control, and it turns out you chose it, then by its very nature you have the power to change whatever that thing is. That’s what Donald comes to. He realizes, well shoot, I chose this. The mission is important. I’m going to go ahead and make a different choice now.
I love that idea, that it’s never too late to make another choice. I think it’s good storytelling.
So while they’re laying the groundwork, while they’re putting all these threads together and essentially giving us a filler episode, the show still has something to say, and I feel like Invincible is at its best when it says those things. Are we headed to the Mount Everest of things it has to say? Not in this episode. But we’re laying the groundwork for a major thing this show has to say, and I’m really going to be here for it. I know you are too.
Anissa Shows Up, and It All Goes to Hell
Mark makes the conscious decision to take as much time with Amber as he can. He asks Cecil for days off. He tells her, I’m committing to this, I want you to know that. They go for a trip and they have a wonderful time. He shows her things, they fly here and there, they talk about where they’re going to spend their spring break.
And that’s when it all goes to hell. Anissa, a Viltrumite, shows up. Mark Grayson, Invincible, come with me now or this woman dies. Then she threatens Amber. She puts her hand on Amber’s neck, and Amber loses it. Amber is frozen, and you can tell she’s stunned. Her free will in that moment is gone. Her battle and struggle when it comes to Mark and his life, the will we and won’t we, all of it becomes irrelevant very fast.
So in that moment Mark has to make a choice, and he chooses to go. Then she says, be fast, or I’ll come back and everyone here dies, starting with her. He hugs Amber, he says I’m sorry, and he heads up.
Where Invincible Takes the Superhero Apart
They have a very interesting conversation up there, and this is where Invincible becomes a deconstruction of the superhero genre. Up until this point it’s been similar to The Boys a little, in that it’s a look at superheroes from a different perspective. Now we really start to take it all apart.
She explains to him that through his inaction, billions of people are dying. Humanity has a 0% chance of survival if it continues on its present course. They’re either going to destroy themselves, destroy the planet, whatever else. And Viltrumite rule, she says, will put a stop to all of that. People will live in peace and harmony, we’ll bring you advanced tech. That’s her estimation, the way she’s describing it. She says at one point that Viltrumites do not kill for pleasure, even if they sometimes take pleasure in killing.
I found that to be such an interesting, on-its-flip outlook. You have to remember, I’ve been saying this since the very beginning of the series, since Season 1. Viltrumites at their core are an allegory, and they’re less the Kryptonian Superman ideal, came from another planet, the whole bit, and more like Saiyans from Dragon Ball. The fight invigorates them, excites them, makes them stronger. But at the same time, according to what she’s saying, they don’t want to go the negative route. They want people to embrace them as saviors and lords and whatever else. We don’t enslave, we free people to the Viltrumite Empire.
Slavery by any other name, right?
At one point Cecil’s in his ear, telling him to test out this theory, see how she’s supposed to help. There’s a big giant kaiju that just attacked a cruise liner, so they go. Mark putts around with this thing while she’s sort of standing there looking, and next thing you know, boom, she jumps in, literally flies to the thing’s head, kills it, saves the day. They both pick up the ship, which has been damaged enough, and they take it to an island.
That’s where they have the conversation. Mark stands on his principles and refuses unequivocally to change, with Cecil in his ear the whole time. “Mark, listen to me. Say you’ll do it. Say fine, I’ll take over the planet. You can’t beat her, kid. Say it.”
“No.”
She tells him he’s a fool, and what does she do? She rushes him and beats the hell out of him. Then she tells him he needs to get things right as quick as possible, because the guy who’s coming after her is not going to be kind. The guy who comes after me is going to check and see if you’re doing your job, and if you’re not doing your job, you’re done. Period.
“But My Life Matters Too”
The aftermath is rough, but remember, the entire theme of the episode is agency. As a writer who’s been in writers’ rooms, you always look for that one line, that one piece of dialogue that’s going to tell you what everything is about. That’s this scene.
Mark is talking to Amber, and Amber has clearly made up her mind. He knows it, she knows it. And one of the lines she says is, “But my life matters too. Maybe it’s small, maybe it’s not earth shattering, but it matters.”
I have no agency when I’m with you. I feel small and insignificant. I could do nothing. I was powerless.
We as people do not like that feeling at all. We enjoy living in the perception of free will, and we want to exist there because that’s a safe place. It tells us we’re securely in control, our hands are on the steering wheel, and that’s all we need. But the truth is, and no, there aren’t superheroes and Viltrumites and things like that, there are often circumstances that are absolutely outside of our control. We call them acts of God, you call them whatever. And we feel powerless in that moment.
That’s where Amber’s at. Amber feels utterly powerless. So she tells him, I can’t. I thought I could live in your world, but I can’t. And clearly they break up.
Then Mark gets a phone call from home. It says it’s his mom. It’s Angstrom Levy. “Hello, Mark. When are you coming home?”
And that’s where they leave off.
The Button, and Why He’s Getting Stronger
There is a button, and the button is our Cyclops guy from outer space. He ends up getting himself captured, clearly on purpose. Anissa goes back to the ship, the general’s telling her, oh, you failed to persuade him, and then they happen upon dude in space and take him hostage. And he realizes, I want to be captured, because she’s not hurting him.
Him getting bigger and stronger has made him, well, bigger and stronger. He’s been genetically altered. I have a feeling we’re going to find out that when they nursed him back, or when he was originally created, he was somehow spliced with Viltrumite DNA. Every time he comes near death he’s getting stronger, and I mean by orders of magnitude, the way Saiyans do in Dragon Ball. A Viltrumite still has to work out and get there, though the harder you get defeated, the stronger you do heal. This guy does it 10 times better.
The Verdict
Invincible Season 2 Episode 7 lands at an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, at least for me, this week.
Honestly, as I’ve talked through it, there was a lot more here than I thought. It felt chaotic. But when you understand things like the theme of it, and why they’re going in the direction they’re going in, it’s actually not that chaotic.
I will say this. The introduction of Anissa is about to bring us to the doorway of some very problematic situations. Not problematic in that they’re bad. Problematic in story, for Mark. It’s going to be interesting to see how the series navigates some of this, and I can’t wait. If you know what I’m talking about, don’t spoil it. I really am excited to see what they do in the series.
I know some people got disheartened by them splitting the season in two. Why would you do it, what was the point. But at the end of the day I’m enjoying the journey we’re on, mainly because I have read the comics. So I’d recommend picking those up. There are various omnibuses that put together the volumes, and I think you’ll enjoy the story. At least I am. I can’t wait to see where they go with all of it.
Let me know what you thought of this episode. Did you enjoy the concepts they put forward, and are you seeing the thematic elements too? And if you’ve read ahead in the comics, don’t spoil it for everybody else. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
