Invincible Season 2 had some fans rolling their eyes when it was revealed in the premiere episode that new villain Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) would be bringing the power of the multiverse to the series. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse Saga storyline and continuity confusion all over DC projects have all caused fatigue with the multiverse – especially when other series like Rick and Morty are making it so much more fun.
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WARNING: INVINCIBLE SEASON 2 FINALE SPOILERS FOLLOW!
By the time Invincible Season 2 ends, Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) brutally kills Angstrom Levy, but there are hints that all the alternate-timeline shenanigans are not yet over. Mark is saved from being stranded in an alt-dimension wasteland by aged versions of his friends in the Guardians of the Globe, who are trying to avoid some dark fate caused by Mark’s prolonged absence. The episode, “I Thought You Were Stronger” also showed us a nightmarish montage of different evil versions of Invincible slaughtering Angstrom Levys colleagues friends, wife – even his young son, in one grim reality. There’s a definite sense that Invincible’s story won’t be confined to one universe or timeline going forward – but is that something fans want?
“If I were to kill Mark Grayson and then have another Mark Grayson show up like ‘it’s okay, the show’s about him now,’ everyone would be like, ‘well, nothing matters,’” Invincible show creator Robert Kirkman explained to EW. “So we limit our multiverse access to Angstrom Levy as a character. It’s not like there’s any infinite number of stories that could crop up. The multiverse is not coming from all these different directions.”
Why Angstrom Levy’s Multiverse Power Was Key to Invincible Season 2’s Story
As we break down in our ComicBook Nation recap of the Invincible Season 2 finale, Angstrom Levy wasn’t a villain in the sense of being a fully-developed character we spent a lot of time with: his storyline and powers were a crucial device for forcing Mark to reconcile with the fact that he’s not so different from his father Omni-Man and the Viltrumite people as he’s been professing all season long:
“The Angstrom Levy storyline comes at a time when Mark is terrified that he could be becoming his father, that he could have those inherent Viltrumite traits baked into him, and there’s nothing he can do about it,” Kirkman explained. “So then he just happens to be fighting this villain who shows him, ‘yeah, you’re not a great person in other dimensions, you follow in your father’s footsteps,’ and his worst fears are actualized. It’s a cool villain hitting at the right time to key into our main theme of the season.”
“Identity” is THE theme of Invincible Season 2, and Angstrom Levy is the means by which Mark finally settles into his true identity, after so much angst (S1) and existential dread (S2). After Mark brutally slaughters Angstrom, he’s left alone for a moment with his thoughts (read: talking to himself) and even has to acknowledge that in unlocking his deep-seated rage, Angstrom ‘won’ even in death.
The future Guardians subplot isn’t so much a multiverse story as it is standard time travel so Invincible may have already successfully pivoted away from the multiverse. The Season 3 storyline would presumably be more focused on preventing whatever disaster the Future Guardians survived, which is the kind of impending doom that made fans fall in love with Invincible in the first place.
Invincible Season 2 is streaming on Prime Video
