By: Jordan Sarver-Bontrager

Media Writer

Let’s set the stage. It’s early 2023. I’m hanging out in the housing community building. My roommate, Zack, is working the desk and talking about how much he likes the show “Invincible,” and he tells me to go back to our dorm and turn it on.

I’m usually pretty reluctant when it comes to watching new shows, and I need some sort of vested interest in watching. I had never heard of “Invincible”, and I don’t care for superhero shows that much (except for “The Boys”, which Zack also showed me), so I didn’t watch it. I was in the living room watching “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” when Zack came home and demanded I turn on “Invincible”. I reluctantly agreed. 

We watched the first episode together, and for those that have seen the show, you know what happens at the very end of the first episode. I was shocked – dumbfounded even – and hooked immediately. The animation was flashy and looked like it was right out of a comic book, and the characters were enthralling, especially the father-son duo of Mark (Invincible) and Nolan Grayson (Omni Man).

Season 1 was great, a fantastic introduction to this world with some great character writing and action. Season 2 was a bit of a step down in quality, but it maintained a lot of its strength.

Season 3 started airing in February, and I waited until the season finished in March so I could watch all the episodes at once. As the title of the article says, this season is a triumph. 

I’ve always loved stories where the main characters have to balance a crazy lifestyle with their normal life. Think Tony Soprano balancing his family life with his mafia lifestyle and Walter White trying to prevent his worlds of drug manufacturing and suburban parenting from colliding.

This season shows Mark trying to balance being Invincible with his regular life. He has this great responsibility, but he’s just barely an adult. He struggles with what he wants to be in his life, and it is genuinely beautiful to watch these intimate scenes of Mark confessing his feelings to Eve or talking to his mom about what’s going on in his life. This extends to the other characters like Eve and Rex.

The latter of those two has one of the best character arcs of the season. Rex was always this abrasive, asshole character who was self-absorbed and didn’t really care for anyone around him. This season, he goes on a redemption arc, and it has a genuinely heartfelt and moving end.

This season, Mark is also shown in a more complicated light. He isn’t a perfect hero, and his “heroic” actions have ended with innocent people dying as collateral. I haven’t read the comics and I don’t plan to, but I wonder if Mark goes down a dark path like his father did. Speaking of his father, Omni Man isn’t seen much this season, and while that’s a bit of a bummer, I do have optimism that he will be seen more in future seasons.

The season ends with our main crew of heroes battling clones of Mark from alternate universes. It’s a whole thing, but Mark and Eve’s stories climax with the both of them fighting a new villain named Conquest. The finale is one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen. Mark and Eve’s fight with Conquest was masterful.

This is the best season of “Invincible” yet. I hope this isn’t the peak of the story’s quality, but I have no reason to believe the show will take a nosedive moving forward. This season was a masterpiece for the books.