Invincible Season 3 soars beyond expectations

SPOILER WARNING - INVINCIBLE SEASON 3

★★★★★

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash

By Ryan Mullen

Season 3 of Invincible is arguably the show's best yet. 

The show’s continued escalation of the stakes is executed masterfully- opening with Invincible (Steven Yeun) being trained by Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins), head of the fictional “Global Defence Agency”. 

The prior season ended on a grave warning from the Viltrumite warrior Anissa (Shantel VanSanten), and the show makes a point to remind the viewer, with Cecil’s assistant, Donald Ferguson (Chris Diamantopolous) stating that “Someone much worse was coming.”

The show builds up to the final conflict excellently, showing Invincible’s struggle with his nature and holding back his world-breaking strength. From his struggle with authority, departing from his unsteady alliance with Cecil after a disagreement over rehabilitation of former villains to his newly-forming relationship with his former teammate Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), Invincible is tested morally as well as physically- paramount of his issues is understanding where to draw the line when killing is necessary and when it is not. 

What holds the season back is lacking animation in the middle episodes of the series. The show started out hot, the first three episodes aired at once, the animation was serviceable, and complaints only came from a loud minority. 

Though, more and more voices joined the conversation about the show having bad animation as the show continued. Important fight scenes looked like jpegs being moved across the screen. Episode Five- “This Was Supposed To Be Easy” -being the second-lowest rated episode in the entire show, scoring a 7.5 on IMDb. It was clear filler, and opinions on the episode were mostly negative.

Though those conversations stopped when the final two episodes aired. Season Three Episode Seven “What Have I Done” and Episode Eight “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” are respectively the second highest and highest rated episodes in the show. With Episode Eight scoring a perfect 10 on IMDb at the time of this article’s publication.

Fans are still reeling from the release of the final two episodes. The “Invincible War” in episode seven saw the show's massive supporting cast fighting alternate, evil versions of the titular hero. The episode ends on Invincible meeting Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and the next starts where it left off.

What follows is quite possibly one of the greatest animated fight sequences of all time. Non-stop action for a total of 26 minutes and 15 seconds. More than half of the episodes total runtime. The two powerhouses battle across cities and countries- the show escalating its trademark over-the-top violence to new heights with how brutal the fight is.

All in all, despite suffering some low points in the middle, the season started and finished strong. The voicework was outstanding, the animation was great when it really mattered, and the narrative was engaging and well-paced.