Continuing the evolution of Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) as the budding superhero named Invincible, a teen trying to strike out and create his own identity while steering away from the violent legacy of his father, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), Prime Video’s adult-aimed animated series “Invincible” Season 3 launched on Feb. 6 in a three-episode debut with enough fisticuffs to rattle the roof tiles.
With 16 episodes of dynamic storytelling already providing a solid foundation to build upon, this new eight-chapter run from Amazon MGM Studios and Skybound Entertainment starts out seeing Mark engaged in a rigorous Rocky-like training program with Cecil (Walton Goggins) to increase his strength for battling invading Viltrumites as a key member of the Guardians of the Globe.
Caution: Mild Spoilers For “Invincible” Season 3 Ahead!
Elsewhere, Mark’s purple-skinned half-brother, Oliver, is growing fast and displaying some nascent superpowers while the dastardly Doc Seismic hatches a subterranean hostage crisis. This season also promises to reveal Omni-Man and Allen the Alien’s (Seth Rogen) Viltrumite jailbreak, Mark’s blue-and-black costume from the comics, his romantic entanglement with Atom Eve, Powerplex’s vengeful wrath, and a mound of monumental threats looming just over the horizon.
“Every episode this season feels like it could be a season finale.”
Robert Kirkman
“I think season two was about kind of setting the stage for what this show could be,” Creator and Showrunner Robert Kirkman tells Space.com.
“I had a concern that coming out of season one that a lot of people thought this was going to be the Omni-Man show. So it was important to me with season two to give people a better sense of what the show was. Now that we’ve accomplished that we’re going to hit the ground running with season three and play with all the things we’ve set up and all the balls in the air we’ve been juggling. There’s a lot of payoff and big advancement to the stories we’ve been building over multiple seasons. It’s made for a big exciting season. I like to say every episode this season feels like it could be a season finale.”
“Invincible” has proven that its emotional, character-based take on the well-trodden superhero genre still has a few surprises up its sleeves as viewership has steadily increased since its premiere in 2021. Writer and Executive Producer Simon Racioppa warns fans to hold on tight.
“I’m also excited to take Mark and a bunch of our other characters to emotional places they haven’t been yet,” Racioppa shares. “Mark goes to some pretty dark places. Some of our other characters are in conflicted positions and having to make really difficult choices. To me, that’s the stuff that makes really great drama. That’s all in the books so we’re just pulling it out. Mark is a superhero, yes, but what does being a superhero mean? What are the kinds of decisions a superhero has to make? And that’s the meaty stuff we get into this season.”
Graphic violence and psychological themes have always been infused into the source material comics written by “The Walking Dead’s” Kirkman and illustrated by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. Prime Video’s hit series embraces that content by examining all manner of moral complexities in its existential dissection.
“Cecil very much has an ‘all parts of the buffalo’ kind of approach when it comes to villains,” Kirkman notes regarding this season’s ambiguous alliances. “In a certain sense you can say that Mark’s stance is somewhat naive. Or maybe he’s the only one who’s speaking the truth. Whether he’s right or wrong is something you’ll just have to learn as we go through the season. Having Cecil and Mark, two characters that have been working very closely throughout the show, suddenly at odds and having their conflict come to blows is a huge transition point in the show that will have ramification that will be felt many many seasons from now.”
Clear delineations of good and bad in “Invincible” will become blurred to the point of non-existence when established alliances and allegiances slowly shift.
“It’s a conversation that’s happening in society today,” says Racioppa. “What is rehabilitation? What is restitution? What is sufficient? If someone does something bad are they gone forever? Should we allow them to come back? Should they work to come back? These are all questions our characters are struggling with throughout the season, much in the way we all do in real life.”
“Invincible” Season 3’s first episode, “You’re Not Laughing Now,” sets a high bar that we’re confident in saying will satiate fans both new and returning, especially Doc Seismic’s (Chris Diamantopoulos) underground showdown complete with giant mutant centipedes, Magmanites, and a Reanimen rescue team that evokes the very best of boisterous comic book-style battle royales.
“I think the idea there is to take a character like Doc Seismic who’s not been an A-level threat and prove to the audience to not underestimate any character that shows up in ‘Invincible,'” Kirkman adds. “Every character has the potential to be dangerous and have their own marquee moment. And this was really Doc Seismic’s moment to shine, which was really exciting. It was also a huge culmination of all the training that happened in that episode. Putting Mark through his paces and having him in our very first episode have a huge monumental battle, the kind of thing some shows would spend an entire season building up to. But we do it in one episode!”
“Invincible” Season 3 launches with a triple episode premiere on Prime Video Feb. 6, 2025. The remaining episodes will air Thursday until the final chapter lands on March 13.
