Invincible – season 3: TV series review
The hero created by Robert Kirkman returns with the unpredictable animated series, from February 6, 2025, on Prime Video
Invincible is an animated series inspired by the comic of the same name, created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker (while Ryan Ottley was the titular artist from n.8 onwards, after Walker), and published by Image Comics in 144 monthly issues. The series is distributed by Prime Video: the three seasons produced so far have 8 episodes each, plus a special in 2023, and has been renewed for a fourth.
Invincible: let's recap what happened before season 3
Mike Grayson is a teenager like many others, except for the fact that his father Nolan is the most famous and powerful superhero on Earth, Omni-Man, leader of the Guardians of the Globe and the Vitrumite race. At seventeen, Mike begins to develop the powers he received from his father, who he is convinced travels the galaxy on peacekeeping missions.
Mark will discover, however, that Omni-Man is actually sent by his race to conquer it: the boy is then forced to face the evil Nolan in a bloody battle. In the end, the man escapes and Mark is left alone to reflect on himself, continuing to defend the Earth and at the same time making shocking discoveries about his past and, perhaps, his inescapable destiny.
He has discovered that his father had a son with an alien, Oliver; and that Nolan himself has now been captured by his old compatriots after a very hard battle, leaving his teenage son the task of taking care of his second-born, whose growth, moreover, turns out to be much faster than that of human beings.
All this while Mark doesn't know whether to stay in the shadow of Cecil, cynical and increasingly mysterious, and while the multidimensional supervillain met in the second season, Angstrom Levy, prepares to launch his attack.
Invincible: from paper to screen through adulthood
Invincible is part of those comic book series designed for an audience of all ages but with different tracks aimed at adults, such as The Boys (another quality product from Prime Video).
The animated series is substantially faithful to the narrative track of the comic - an inevitable circumstance given that Kirkman is also the author of the story and the screenplay -, with changes that superficially concern the unfolding of events: such as the bloody fight between Omni-Man and the Guardians, which in the comic book only arrives in issue #7 while in the animated series it is the shocking post-credit scene of the pilot of the first season.
The introduction of the character of Cecil Stedman (who is essentially the Nick Fury of the Invincible universe) was also anticipated in the series, but to favor a rhythm that never fails in the episodes; just as the changes made to some characters are improvements, always to give more depth to the narrative development.
Invincible 3 and the structure of the modern hero
Kirkman's creation in the animated series version is one of the most important and faithful transpositions of an American comic: because it does not have the visual limitations of live-action staging, because the serial narration is structurally closer to the ongoing American ones (in this case, Invincible is not really an ongoing but a sort of maxi-maxi-series of 144 issues, from 2003 to 2018, all written and drawn by its two authors), but above all because it is one of the most intelligent deconstructions of the modern superhero.
Invincible comes from that genre that was once new but now seems to have become part of the basic entertainment of any mass-market suggestion, from cinema to TV to video games, that is the superhuman epic. Kirkman however contaminates Nietzsche with Stan Lee, placing that modern epic that is superheroes alongside a sharp soap-operatic narration that looks closely at teenagers and their daily problems.
Although at first glance Invincible is distant from Watchmen and its various nephews, cornerstones of the deconstruction of the modern hero under the pressure of psychoanalysis, it is actually much closer to that area of study than one might think, even taking the discussion even further: not so much for a conceptual or moral reversal, but because it knows how to inextricably unite the human and the superhuman thanks to the glue of vices and virtues.
In this sense, the approach to the Multiverse (now in the public domain after the exploit of Marvel Comics at the cinema with its MCU, demonstrating how Stan Lee's intuitions are still incredibly modern and contemporary today) becomes not only functional but also perfectly in line with the theoretical expansion of the cultural universe of the series.
The third season of Invincible is pure controlled chaos, in which the many storylines accumulated in two years find their rightful place in this narrative universe.
Invincible – season 3: evaluation and conclusion
Compared to the more violent The Boys, Invincible probably has the undoubted merit of knowing how to unite with rare balance the different semantic components of a specific literary genre: because there is less deconstruction of codes, and less politics, while everything is focused on interpersonal relationships according to different declinations - affective, parental, professional, moral - and on the Marvellian question "what is a hero really?".
The episodes of the third season maintain a very high level both in terms of graphic design and of highly impactful and intelligent writing, revolving around the definitive disintegration of the Manichean distinction between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, concepts crumbled into a thousand doubts.