Note: This contains spoilers from “Invincible” Season 4, Episodes 1-3.
The Viltrumite War is finally upon us.
The first three episodes of the fourth season of “Invincible,” an animated adaptation of Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley’s long-running comic of the same name, were released on Prime Video Wednesday. While these episodes feature a few side adventures for Invincible (Steven Yeun), Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs) and their superhero allies, they also set the stage for a galactic conflict ripped from the pages of the comics.
“Knowing that the Viltrumite War was going to be the big focus of this season was a big deal for both of us,” Kirkman said. “I think that finally getting to pay off all of the stuff that we had been building with the Vilrtumites behind the scenes, and we know how much the audience wants to see more Nolan and loves the Viltrumites, to finally get to deliver on that is really exciting.”
5 New Shows to Stream This Week
There have been three seasons of build-up to the all-out conflict teased in this season’s trailers and early episodes. The stage was set early with Invincible’s bloody Season 1 confrontation with his father, Omni-Man (J. K. Simmons), and later developed through new bits of Viltrumite lore year after year.
“We’ve shown you bits of the Viltrum Empire along the way. You’ve met individual Viltrumites, but this is the season where we’re like all that stuff you’ve seen through Seasons 1, 2 and 3, now it’s here,” said co-showrunner Simon Racioppa. “It’s going to force Mark into some really difficult decisions, some really difficult places. It pushes his character forward but also pulls him in different directions. To me, that’s exciting. That’s drama, right? You take a complex character and you put them in a complex situation where there’s no easy answers and see what happens.”
Preparing for war
One of the most notable sequences in the first three episodes of “Invincible” Season 4 sees the planet Viltrum ravaged by the Scourge Virus, a deadly disease that killed all but a handful of superhuman conquerors known as Viltrumites.
Though the Scourge Virus plays a major part in the “Invincible” comics, the sequence (written by Racioppa) is a new addition to the show, one that humanizes Omni-Man and his kind.
“We have 144 issues of the comic, you know? We were able to go through and find all these elements of Viltrumite history and sort of pull them forward a little bit and put them in this episode to just get people a little more up to speed on who they are,” Racioppa said. “Mark is half-Viltrumite. This is his heritage, whether he likes it or not.”
While the Viltrumites have been shown as deadly, remorseless killers for much of “Invincible” to this point, Kirkman called this new material “essential” to show before Invincible and his allies go to war.
“We didn’t want to have a season built around our beloved, well-known cast fighting these nameless, evil space tyrants,” Kirkman said. “There is a real sympathy for what they’ve gone through that you get from that episode. Simon wrote that episode and did an absolutely amazing job. There’s just a really great level of nuance and emotion and care that you never really had with the Viltrumites before that you’re getting in that episode.”
While Kirkman and Racioppa added more humanity to the Viltrumites, they also added a bit of darkness to their central protagonist. When viewers check in with Invincible at the start of Season 4, his no-kill rule starts to go by the wayside.
“We push things quite a bit here and there, and in this season especially with Mark just accepting that he is going to have to kill people and that that is part of his job to a certain extent,” Kirkman said. “At least, he feels that way now.”
This darkness is shown on full display at the end of the season’s premiere, with Mark choosing to kill astronaut Rus Livingston to prevent a potential outbreak of mind-controlling Sequids across the globe. While the “Invincible” comic makes it seem as if Mark had no other choice, Kirkman and Racioppa amped up the moral debate in the animated series by making it clear that there was, potentially, another way.
“There are consequences that he’ll have to bear from that decision,” Racioppa said. “In this season, he’s still 21 years old. He’s a kid in a lot of ways. I mean, he’s becoming an adult, obviously, a man in this season, but he’s suddenly being forced to make these kind of global, universal decisions that will affect Earth, people he loves, other characters, other worlds — the fate of the universe, in a way.”
Superpowers, human problems
This question of utilitarianism — of taking one life to spare many more — is a conflict fans of the comic book will know well. Though, Yeun and Jacobs both try not to read ahead.
“We’re in the same position where we genuinely don’t know what’s coming next,” Jacobs said. “Then it takes so long to animate the show and complete it that by the time it airs and I’m watching it I’ve actually forgotten what happens, so then I get to experience it all over again.”
As is often the case with “Invincible,” the stories of larger-than-life superheroics are punctuated against down-to-Earth, human drama. As Mark Grayson continues helping the world as Invincible, his girlfriend Eve Wilkins finds her own powers malfunctioning.
What starts as a superhero’s problem quickly evolves into a deeply human metaphor, with Eve questioning her sense of self amid a drastic life change.
“What I also like about this show is that it always feels like it has real emotional stakes for the characters beyond the battle sequences and the literal world-ending fights that they get into,” Jacobs said. “You want to feel like they’re scenes with full emotional depth, and I feel as challenged by acting in this show as I do by any on-camera acting job, and I think that’s really special and unique.”
Mark, meanwhile, still reels from last season’s Invincible War and battle with Conquest, two events that made him confront his mortality — and made the world question how badly they want Invincible around.
“He’s leaning in a little bit, because he’s coming off of last season’s experience and the cynicism that comes from that, the anger that he’s kind of absorbed, the sadness that he’s absorbed has turned into a ragefulness,” Yeun said. “The ideals of this world aren’t as clear as he once thought, or perhaps he was attached to them a little bit too deeply. I think you’re watching his inner life kind of spill out into his choices and whatever that means for his choices.”
“He has a lot of power and a lot of responsibility at a young age, and he’s trying to hold it, but he only knows what he knows.”
With a massive war, seasons in the making, brewing in the background, Mark may have to taken on even more responsibility, whether he’s ready or not.
“To watch the show expand from season to season and get to this massively monumental story finally is really great,” Kirkman said. “It’s gonna be a real fun season, and we’re just excited for people to see it.”
“Invincible” releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.
