Invincible Season 2 is (finally) here! In this post, we will be breaking down the epic Invincible Season 2 premiere episode (A Lesson For Your Next Life) in FULL SPOILERS! So only read further if you’ve watched the episode or don’t care about knowing what happens!
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Invincible Season 2 Episode 1 Recap: “A Lesson For Your Next Life”
A Darker Reality
The opening sequence for Invincible Season 2 throws viewers for a loop. For a moment it looks like Mark Grayson/Invincible (Steven Yeun) is in a tiff with The immortal, the superhero his father murdered (twice), but the scene quickly takes a much darker turn. Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) arrives and quickly dispatches The Immortal, and we then learn that Mark and his father have now joined forces, and enslaved the Earth in the name of the Viltrumite Empire!
Omni-Man and Invincible act as though they are benevolent rulers, running propaganda messages on endless loops over the destroyed dystopia of America. However, one man, Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) is seen sneaking through the city and making contact with what’s left of the Guardians of the Globe and their resistance effort – including surviving leaders Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), and Rudy Connors/Robot (Zachary Quinto/Ross Marquand). Unfortunately, Angstrom leads Invincible and Omni-Man to the resistance base, where there’s a quick battle before the Guardians fall. Robot and Connors are killed in the battle, while Mark takes the “merciful” step of snapping Eve’s neck just enough to leave her paralyzed – a move he apparently practiced with great focus before perfecting. The rest of the resistance is rounded up for execution, but Levy escapes via a portal, revealing this to be an alternate timeline where Mark joined his dad instead of fighting him.
The New Status Quo
Back in the prime reality of Invincible, we get a montage that helps establish the new status quo a month after the brutal Season 1 finale and its epilogue – set to the tune of Radiohead’s “Karma Police”. Mark is seen visiting the mountainside where his father nearly beat him to death, and doing battle with a villain in an elephant costume (reminiscent of Spider-Man villain The Rhino); stopping a high-speed chase/robbery; helping an ambulance get to the ER quickly – anything to put off the obvious depression he’s going through. However, a standoff with two villains has Mark experiencing flashbacks that prove he’s nowhere near over the trauma he experienced.
A news report focuses in on Chicago and the clean-up efforts after Omni-Man’s rampage – footage his wife Debbie (Sandra Oh) and Mark cannot watch. Even though mother and son express intimacy through a hug, it’s clear that Nolan/Omni-Man’s betrayal has left them somewhat estranged.
Jailbreak: Villains Unite
Meanwhile, The Mauler Twins are trying to lobby their favorite jail guard Pete for better cuisine, when the same green portal Angstrom Levy disappeared into appears in each one of their cells. The Maulers find themselves in the ruins of the prison and standing on Pete’s burned corpse; they meet Levy, and quickly discern that his superpower is opening portals between dimensions. Levy asserts that he’s “good” and “a pacifist” and proposes an alliance with the skeptical Maulers to achieve a unique feat of science – or he can leave them stranded in a hellscape. The Maulers hate having to be underlings again but take the bait.
School Days Over?
Back at school, Mark has to play the part of a grieving son who lost his dad in the Omni-Man attack – which at least works to solve his feud with longtime bully Todd. Amber tries to talk sense into Mark about his emotional health, but Mark is clearly consumed with guilt from all sides: for not doing more to stop his dad, to getting sympathy when he (Invincible) was part of the reason for the destruction.
Mark meets with GDA director Cecil (Walton Goggins) at Burger Mart to discuss leaving the trappings of his civilian alter-ego behind and working as Invincible full-time. However, Cecil shoots it down, telling Mark he’s not as emotionally healed as he’s posturing that he is. Mark loses his cool and illustrates the very thing he wants to deny: being as dangerous as his dad.
Guardians Assemble
Cecil goes back to the GDA, which is in the midst of a Guardians of the Globe mission fighting a baby giant. Robot, Rex (Jason Mantzoukas), Dupli-Kate (Malese Jow), Shrinking Rae (Grey Griffin), Black Samson (Khary Payton) and Monster Girl (Grey Griffin/Kevin Michael Richardson) are actually working more like a unit than ever, but Rudy (now wearing “Robot” as an armor suit) has a moment that suggests his new home-grown human body has a potential flaw. Rudy nearly gets flattened by the giant but is saved by his beau Monster Girl.
The Angstrom Agenda
The Maulers are working with Angstrom Levy on his invention, as he lays out how he’s journeyed the multiverse and found answers to all the troubled Earths out there through resources on alternate Earths. Levy reveals that he has an entire army of his own variants, spread across his home dimension and alternate “safe house” dimensions, all feeding him intel from the multiverse. The machine he wants the Mauler Twins to build will copy the mental data of Levy’s variants and combine them into one grand design in his own brain, making him the benevolent nexus of all realities. In exchange, the Mauler Twins will get to occupy an Earth with no superheroes, where they are worshipped.
Ex-Wives Club
Back at the Grayson house, Debbie gets a visit from Olga, the widow of speedster hero Red Rush. Debbie and Olga talk through the complicated emotions they both feel, as well as their mutual rage at Nolan for betraying them and ruining both their marriages. When Mark gets home and gives them an icy reception, Olga advises Debbie to help her son by helping herself – advice Debbie clearly isn’t ready to hear.
Teen Hero Angst
The new Guardians of the Globe are seen in their headquarters getting chewed out by Cecil over their sloppy handling of the baby giant attack. Cecil decides to add two new members to the team to balance things out: The Immortal, an experienced team leader, and Bulletproof (Jay Pharoah), a hero whose name clearly implies his invulnerability powers. Rudy accepts his demotion, in acknowledgement that his new clone body may need improvement.
Mark gets to reconnect with Atom Eve at school, and they talk through his daddy issues. Eve tries to encourage Mark that people can see the difference in him – but he counters that Cecil can’t. When Eve challenges Mark to prove his mettle to Cecil, Mark steps up and volunteers to work for the GDA. His recruitment comes just in time, as a global emergency is identified.
Variants Unite!
The Mauler Twins and Angstrom Levy finish building the machine to help Levy process the combined knowledge of all his variants. Levy is warned of the danger of aborting the process before completion, and then the switch gets thrown. At first, Levy is evolving as planned – that is until Invincible shows up. Cecil commands Mark to shut the operation down, and he starts to fight the Mauler Twins. Levy is stuck in the chair undergoing the process, and tries to reason with Invincible that he is fighting for the “greater good.” When Invincible doesn’t accept that, Levy unleashes an entire goon squad of variant Maulers (much to the Twins’ surprise) and they gang up to take on Invincible.
The Mauler variants get Invincible on the ropes and are beating the life out of them – violence that Levy cannot abide. He stops and removes his thought-processing helmet in the middle of the transfer, and the entire lab explodes. Mark survives, but is left traumatized yet again at how much death and destruction he seems to be at the center of; the Guardians of the Globe arrive and Rex assures Mark (with reluctant agreeance from Cecil) that Mark fought the “good” fight and shouldn’t feel guilty.
Normal Kid Problems
In a moment of rare teenage normalcy, Mark goes home and tries to care for his distressed mom, before having to face another big life challenge: college acceptance letters. Amber tricks Mark into opening her acceptance letter to Upstate University, before questioning what he hopes his note will say, as she doesn’t believe he wants to maintain a normal civilian life with her. A kiss later, Mark finds out he’s also accepted, and the couple has a happy moment.
…That happiness lasts until Mark goes for a late-night walk, and finds The Immortal stalking him. The Immortal says in no uncertain terms that he’s not sure of Mark’s loyalties and will be watching him.
End Credits Scene: Experiment Results
In the credits scene, we find one of the Mauler Twins survived Angstrom Levy’s machine exploding – though half his body is scarred like Batman’s Two-Face. Levy is also revealed to have survived the experiment – though not without cost. Levy’s brain is a lumpy, elongated mess (like Hulk villain The Leader, only grosser). More distressing is the fact that Levy has become a tangled amalgamation of all his variant selves – many of whom come from realities like the dystopia seen at the start of the episode. This new Levy makes the pledge to kill Invincible – and we finally get the blood-spattered title logo after several fakeouts. This season, the title logo has the ominous animation of a wall that’s starting to show cracks, instead of blood spatter. Seems like a clear and ominous indicator that Levy’s multiversal machinations could lead to a much larger calamity…
Invincible Season 2 streams new episodes on Amazon Prime Video every Friday.
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