Invincible 301 Podcast

[00:00:00] This is the Invincible Podcast on TV Podcast Industries. We're back with Season 3 of Invincible, Episode 1, Who's Laughing Now? Patience is a virtue. It took months for me and my friends to learn all of your particular vibrations. How you move. How you breathe. The bitter patter of your black little hearts.

[00:00:30] I think you'll agree it was worth every minute of my incarceration. I tried to change your corrupt system, tear down your false idols, take back what you stole from the earth. But every time I was stopped by you super-powered fascists, fighting to keep your capitalistic slave machine running. Until now.

[00:01:20] Welcome back fellow guardians to the Invincible Podcast on TV Podcast Industries. We're back with Season 3 and the 3 episode premiere. This time we're going to be talking about the first episode, Who's Laughing Now? I'm one of your hosts, Derek. And rounding out the dynamic duo, I am Chris. Do you round out when there's just two of us, Chris? I can't remember. Yeah. Hey, I could be missing a leg and that is ableist. Okay.

[00:01:49] Because you would round up to two, but technically I'm like, what are the seven fits? Okay. That might work. Yeah, exactly. I feel it's not been as long as you think it is since we did Invincible. Invincible was on this time last year. We had the second half of Season 2 and now we're back again a year later. I think it's just because that massive gap between Season 1 and Season 2 and then that couple of months gap between the first half of Season 2 and the second half of Season 2 and then suddenly it's back again.

[00:02:16] I think that's why. And I think then obviously we get, they've been better at the marketing, i.e. just going, hey, we know we messed up. We know you want more Invincible. We're going to give you more Invincible and here it is. And then guess what? It's not going to even be that long. You're going to get it all in one. There's no gap. We listen to you.

[00:02:38] Yeah, I'm putting three episodes out in day one. I always forget, I think we mention this every time we come back to Invincible, I always forget how long these episodes are. On a regular cable network it'll be a full hour long show so I always forget that sitting down in front of these episodes. Gets me every time. I was watching Episode 2 and I was like, wait, okay, hold on, no, I can't go, I'm going to have to pause this, I cannot go to the bathroom, Jared, like it's almost over.

[00:03:05] I was like, it was about 23, 24 and I was like, it's fine, it's going to be over in a second. And I was like, nope, I'm only half-like three. And when you're watching three episodes in a row, that's almost a full-length movie, you know, it's getting up to that stage. But it is great to be back in the world of Invincible from the wonderful comic books by Robert Kirkman.

[00:03:28] Always enjoyed this world. And I think last season had a kind of a big capper on it where Mark murdered a supervillain, Angstrom Levy, last year. So the implications of what that means for Mark, I guess, are going to come out over the course of this season.

[00:03:45] Yeah, this is actually one of my favourite arcs, if you will, from the comic books. And it is, there were so many jokes, because you may have seen it in the trailers. There is a costume change. There is. And they call it out in the title cards, which I was so happy about.

[00:04:08] And this was like the dark, the dark edge, the dark, when all comics went gritty and raw. And this was their kind of prod at it. But being Invincible, being the comic book that somewhat makes fun of other kind of comic books and the characters and the arcs they go through.

[00:04:32] But at the same point, then actually giving you what you would classify as good narrative, good writing, good storyline and good emotional kind of character depth. This one is the one where you actually, you start to empathise even more so with Invincible, with Mark, with going, oh yeah, he has a set of principles, but now he's starting to break those principles. What does that do to a superhero psyche? Exactly.

[00:05:01] And some of the fun parts of this, I say fun, that's quite twisted. Some of the interesting moments from this season, from this arc, really come from that, which is, what does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be a good guy? And I mean guy as in a good superhero versus a good villain. Yeah. Is there a gray area? Yeah. And I think that's where they really get into. Absolutely. It's interesting.

[00:05:29] Like I would say, you know, when Robert Kirkman came up with the concept of Invincible, it felt like it was kind of, as they used to say, back of a cigarette packet, it was kind of like, yeah, let's do a play on what it would really be like to be a superhero on Earth. Ha ha, that'd be really funny. And he came up with the concept of some of the character names at that time. And then it grew into what actually landed on the page, which is actually quite a complex story about the relationships between all of these characters. It's not what it looks like.

[00:05:56] And, you know, you'd almost see the character designs and think it's going to be a very funny comedy show. It's not really that at all. It gets very serious. And the relationship dynamics between the characters get very, very serious throughout the seasons, as we've seen so far. And before we get into this episode discussing about season three of Invincible, just to say three episodes came out on Prime Video. We have watched all three. This podcast here will be covering all three episodes, but we're going to try and do them in order. We're going to try and keep them separated. So we'll talk about episode one first, then episode two, then episode three.

[00:06:26] But I would say we may say something that happens in the other two episodes when we're talking about the first episode. Hopefully not. We're going to try not to spoil anything. But just a reminder that all three episodes are available right now on Prime Video. So go watch those as well. I presume you are watching them before you listen to the podcast. But we do want to hear your thoughts, of course, about Invincible as we go through the season. You can email us to feedback at tvpodcastindustries.com. We'll have our feedback section coming up from next week onwards.

[00:06:53] And we'd love to hear your thoughts about the third season as we go through each of the episodes. And do make sure you subscribe to the podcast. We have got our Boys and Invincible feed available on our website tvpodcastindustries.com, which has every episode of Invincible so far, plus every episode of The Boys and the spinoff shows of The Boys. You can get that there. Or you can subscribe to the main podcast, TV Podcast Industries, which has 10 years of podcasting, about 900 episodes of podcasts of loads of different shows that we've covered as well. So subscribe to us over there on tvpodcastindustries.com.

[00:07:24] Yes, sir. But Derek, we were to give them episode details. What might some of those episode details be? Well, the show, of course, is based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Corey Walker and Ryan Otley. The show was developed by Robert Kirkman and produced by Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Catherine Winder, Simon Rescioppa, Margaret M. Dean, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg. This episode was written by Simon Rescioppa, one of the producers of the show. He's the co-showrunner of Invincible and previously was a showrunner on The Boys Presents Diabolical as well.

[00:07:53] So he's been involved in lots of other shows that we've covered here as well. Yes, he has. And the episode was directed by Jason Zurich, who directed episode four of Invincible season two as well. Lots of the directors on the show come back and do multiple episodes of the show. We see that over and over again throughout Invincible. They stay in that kind of pool of directors that they pull in for the episode. So Jason Zurich returning after season two. Yeah, and I'm assuming it's already in for season four. I hope so. I hope so. Yeah, season four is being made at the moment, isn't it? It is.

[00:08:23] It was renewed for season three and four at the same time. Yeah. So we are, and I think that was also one of the reasons we got. Don't worry, even between season three and season four won't be that long of a wait because they turned around and went, you know what? Just give the people what they want. Yeah, hopefully we'll see it around the same time next year for season four of Invincible. It'd be kind of cool. And there's, of course, loads of material in the comic books as well to cover. So we could have, I think Robert Kirkman talks about, you know, six or seven seasons of this show or even more than that that they can get out of the comic books.

[00:08:51] So it could be around for a very long time. But for this episode, Chris, do you want to tell us what they gave us with the synopsis for season three, episode one of Invincible? Who's laughing now? In my best John voice. Sure. Following his return from another dimension after murdering Anselm Levy, Mark trains with the GDA, Global Defense Agency, getting stronger and stronger every day. His new half-brother Oliver wants to train too and reveals he already has his powers.

[00:09:19] But Mark and his mother are reluctant to bring Oliver into the family business. Multi-Paul, the angry brother of Duplicate, attacks Rexplode because he blames him for Kate's death. But Duplicate and the immortal arrive, revealing Kate wasn't killed by the Lizard League after all. They also reveal they are engaged and rejoin the Guardians of the Globe. With Shrinking Ray, who has also recovered, the team are now back to full strength.

[00:09:46] Meanwhile, Doc Seismic, who has been communicating with creatures from deep under the earth from his prison cell, breaks out and guides the creatures to capture all of the Guardians at once. Mark and Eve team up to save the Guardians, but when they are also captured, Cecil sends in a swarm of Cyborg, Rhianna men and Darkwing.

[00:10:08] They beat back Seismic and free Mark and the rest of the Guardians, but Invincible is disillusioned with Cecil for using the criminals and wants out of the Guardians of the Globe. Meanwhile, out in space, at a Vultrumite prison, Alan the Alien is still trying to convince Omni-Man to support his cause. I guess he didn't miss his wife that much. Old Omni-Man out in space, that was the cliffhanger at the end of Season 2, seemed to suggest that they were going to break out

[00:10:37] and fly back to Earth, didn't they? Yeah. Who's joined the cause? It just takes time, just takes time, you know? Yeah, we should have just put a reminder straight up front that there's always a post-credit scene that's really integral to the plot of Invincible. The post-credit scenes are not just throwaway things, they're quite specific things that are necessary for the story of what's happening. But this one did feel a bit odd. It just felt like, well, maybe they're just reminding us, as they would do in the first episode of a new season,

[00:11:05] reminding us that Omni-Man is still out there, Alan the Alien's still out there. But I just kind of felt that because last season ended with I miss my wife, I thought that we were going to see them fight their way out of the Vultrumite prison at some point. I think saying something once is just saying it. Saying it multiple times is commitment. Well, talking about multiples, that takes us straight into our main point. We talk about our main points for the episodes as we discuss on the podcast.

[00:11:35] Our first point is about multiplicity. We are going to talk about our multiple characters because we see two major characters here, Multipole and Duplicate, duplicating and multiplying themselves in this episode. We've seen Multipole before. He's been in the background in prison back in the GDA, but we haven't really seen him take shape in the series. Here he's being voiced by Simu Liu, who played the wonderful Shang-Chi in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[00:12:00] And he arrives because he blames Rex for his sister's death last season, setting up one of the big reveals from the end of last season that actually Duplicate is not dead. She saved a copy of herself so that she wouldn't die. I'm just going to pause and say, as soon as you said multiplicity,

[00:12:20] I think half of our listeners suddenly flash back to the 1996 Michael Keaton comedy classic gem. Oh my goodness, the 96? Yes, it was. Wow. It was Adam McDowell and Michael Keaton where he clones himself. Do you know, we are really going off on a tangent about multiplicity, but the reason why, you know, I should have guessed that that was 1996

[00:12:46] because I lived very close to a 99 cent cinema in the US at the time. And I saw that movie three times in a week and hated it every single time. I thought it was terrible, but so many people wanted to go and see it. And it was only a dollar to go to the cinema. I just went along with them for the popcorn and the drinks. Well, see, this is what happens when you do something terrible, like going to multiplicity multiple times for a dollar or try to steal the declarations of independence

[00:13:16] while also getting your ass whooped by Rexplode and or Mark. Those are just terrible things to do. And you should give up straight away. But you didn't. You didn't learn the first time. You went multiple times. Yeah, well, let's talk about that. So I couldn't work out a way to put this into the synopsis at all. There are two new characters introduced in this scene. Very difficult to catch their names as well, but they are Fightmaster and Dropkick, who are the first mission, I guess, for the season,

[00:13:46] where Mark's been training, working with the GDA again. Rexplode is back. He's got his new hand. He's back with the GDA and wants to be on a mission. There's a great funny moment when Cecil's kind of going, Mark, do you fancy going to do this? And Rex going, I'm right here. Like, you know, you can use me. I am also a hero. I am also a member of the team. But he's just kind of sent us as sidekick with Mark to stop these two guys, Fightmaster and Dropkick, from stealing the declaration of independence. I think there's a movie that has that as the premise in there.

[00:14:16] Yeah, I can. A fabulous, award-winning film. I am always surprised how many times we've talked about this movie on the podcast and how many times I've said I hated it. And yourself and John, our other hosts, both love it. I love it. Did you watch the TV show that was the spinoff from it, Chris? No. I watched half of it. Nobody watched it. It got cancelled. I watched half of it. I watched half of it. And then went, oh, this is bad. Even by my standards, this is bad.

[00:14:43] But we have got Fightmaster and Dropkick played by Jola Moradueno from Cobra Kai and from Blue Beetle. Really interested to have such a high-profile actor playing the role of these two characters, which, again, we don't get any backstory of them at all. We know that they're time travelers because of the conversation that they have. And we know they feel they're trying to save the universe. That's kind of about all we know. But they don't have any conversation with Mark and Rex to tell them this. They just get into a fight with them, try and get out of there.

[00:15:12] They actually do get out of there with the Declaration of Independence, which is why I want to hit it and make sure that we talk about it. Because well-known within Invincible is a scene like this with a character that's hardly named. And then by the end of the season, they are the central big bad, or they are the central character or central storyline for the season. So what did you think of Fightmaster and Dropkick, Chris? I love this. Again, you hit the nail on the head, right?

[00:15:37] So Invincible never did, have yet to do in the show, and never did, in my opinion, in the comic books, like you say, just introduce a character willing. Villains from season one will always come back unless they are killed. And even when they're killed, they must all might come back. Absolutely. Like, that is the comic book way. Yeah.

[00:16:03] And I think the fun part is they're using a well-known actor, and someone who, as you said, he was in Blue Beetle, and probably now more well-known for Cobra Kai. Absolutely, yeah. And Blue Beetle will probably never be a thing again because of the DC. But it was fun to have him. He was so good in that, and it was such a good film. But anyway. It was. But going into, it sets up the next more important part,

[00:16:31] which it does open for C-Mu Lee to come in back as multiple. Mm-hmm. And that really then is a pivotal bit that I found interesting, because if you watch, right, we've seen Doob Mark do his montage, because every good show needs a montage. Absolutely. And we start to see that strength increase. His strength increased 75%, and all of these kind of increasing, interesting numbers.

[00:16:58] When Mulkie Paul really gets in his way, and he's like, I just don't have time for this, we really start to see again, like, that Voltramite strength, and why this is not your average kid's cartoon. He literally rips one of them in twain. Mm-hmm. And I don't mean in two. In twain. Like, it is old school, just like, ripping his shirt. He Hulk Hogan'd Multipal, one of the copies. Yeah.

[00:17:27] And that is really important, a really important point you make, because the battle that they had with Fightmaster and Dropkick, it's Rex that takes out his target of the two of them, and then you see Mark is kind of punching the other guy in the face and going, I'm just trying to hold back, because just in case I take this guy's head off, basically. So he is holding back and making sure that he doesn't, but when he's fighting against Multipal, knowing that there is multiples of them, he's able to take off a couple of heads and arms and fight back against the tens and twenties and thirties

[00:17:57] of the versions of Multipal that's jumping on Mark to block him from getting to Rex, because the point here is that Multipal is blaming Rex for killing his sister or being responsible for his sister's death, which is really bad, given what happened to poor old Rex. Like, he tried his best to save every single member of the globe that was involved in that attack in season two, lost his hand because of it, almost died himself, but he's not really responsible for anybody's death there, is he? No, he's not.

[00:18:27] And again, grief is a killer. It's an evil thing. And again, Multipal was in prison. He was in prison for the longest time. He escaped, but he was in prison, so he won't have had all the information. Yeah, absolutely. Like, he'll just see that he went on a piece. And it's also, it's a good, I want to say crux, but more story foil to bring back Kate and the Immortal,

[00:18:56] because last season, Immortal basically retires, Kate's dead, can't do it anymore. Yeah. Then we get the revelation, the reveal in the snowy cabin that Kate has always kept one copy of herself free, away from harm. And she does say this to Multipal as well, which is like, you should have known that. We always do that. So it's a thing.

[00:19:27] But again, it allows them to get engaged and move forward with that kind of, to bring them back into the storyline. Because again, they had just retired. They're done. Out to pasture. But you can't bring the Immortal out. And I understand why the writers of the episode wrote this scene to get Kate back into the city. I don't understand why the both of them,

[00:19:56] I know why they reveal they're engaged. That's fine. But I don't understand why the two of them just instantly go back and join the Guardians of the Globe. Like, I thought that Immortal had retired, and that Duplicate and himself were going to go and live a happy life. But they instantly go, no, we're back. Now we're going to join that group where we kind of die every week. And Duplicate's actual version, the actual Duplicate, is there. So I hope she's left another double back.

[00:20:24] But that's, so they don't actually say that. And that's the one where I'm like, hmm. Wait, are you Prime? Are you Kate Prime? Yeah. Because, like, all it takes is another Rogue Lizard League, and you're... I feel like, yeah, there's a weird thing about them, isn't there? Because there isn't a Kate Prime. Kate Prime is probably dead long ago. But she does leave a duplicate of herself, and that duplicate has all the memory and all the information

[00:20:51] and knows about all the deaths of all the duplicates that have died before. So I presume she has left one behind, because that's the thing that she does to ground, that there will always be, that she will live on, I suppose. So, but I just thought it was interesting, and they have come back and they have joined the Guardians of the Globe. I just didn't really understand why Immortal would, but I guess he's that kind of guy. He always believes he needs to be at the centre of this team of superheroes, even though they're not that successful very often.

[00:21:20] Look, Immortal is... He's your carbon copy kind of Superman character. Yeah. He's the bad side of Superman. He's the truth, justice, and the American way at all costs, and everything is black and white. There is no... There is never any grey. And again, we already know from Mark having killed Angstrom,

[00:21:49] and it's setting up that grey storyline. You need Immortal back to be that kind of... He's the... It's your Captain America versus your Iron Man. It's your 1940 sensibilities versus 2000 sensibilities. It's that. Old world, new world. And again, I can see why the writers want the character back. I just don't see why the characters come back. They didn't give any justification for that for me.

[00:22:17] I felt like if there was a big threat that was happening in the city, other than Kate's brother, who she was easily able to just defuse by going, well, I'm alive, right? There you go. That's it. I felt that there was just a little bit of a push from Immortals back to lead the team because the team can't get on without him. I think that's what he feels in his mind, that if he's not there, the team will fail because he's that arrogant. But I don't think it was just there on the screen. I just thought it was a bit odd. And then also reintroduced to Shrinking Ray.

[00:22:45] Last season, we saw her recovering after the attack of the Serpent Society. We expected that she was dead from the actual episode, but nobody dies in this show. So we saw her in recovery and we saw Rex was with her most of the time. And he seems very happy to have Shrinking Ray back. No, 100%. It's good to have her back. And again, like you said, you basically reset the status quo of the Guardians of the Globe. Bish, bash, bash, episode one. First third, we're kind of set. Exactly.

[00:23:15] There is a second storyline. There certainly is. Which, one, it's the storyline that is Oliver. And I want to kind of move on to the next kind of main point of the storyline. Because for me, Oliver has always been this interesting thing. Because again, he is the purple stepson, half-brother. Like all these interesting bits. Because he is, he's not even human. Yeah.

[00:23:44] So you have a boy that is aging rapidly. He's half bug, half vulture mite. He is in all ways an alien, but is set up and growing faster and smarter as a 12-year-old. 13-year-old almost. Yeah. Although he's a couple, at this point, probably about a year, two, three years old. Yeah. Yeah. He's only a baby.

[00:24:13] But he's been growing faster and faster because of his origin, of course. I can't believe he didn't read my title for this point, Chris. Puppy power. Oh, God. Sorry. He's the scrappy-doo of the show, it seems. But I have to say, I did go back and watch the first episode of Invincible again. Because I needed it for one of the later episodes of these three episodes. I'll tell you about that when we get there. But it was really interesting re-watching that first episode.

[00:24:39] Because for the first 15 minutes of the first episode, it is about Mark not having powers and wanting to have powers. And the second he has powers, he wants to be out there. And Omni-Man is pushing him back in his box and telling him, no, hang on a second. You need to learn how to use these powers, basically. But it's exactly what happens with Oliver in this episode. The second Oliver has powers, he wants to be out training. He wants to be out there with Mark. He instantly wants to do it. He tricks Mark. He tells Mark he wants to be trained by him.

[00:25:09] And Mark says, wait until you get your powers. I didn't get mine until I was 17 years old. And then he just rises from the ground, showing that actually he's had powers this whole time. So a little bit of a trick from Oliver. I think that's what he was expecting, that Mark would tell him to wait until he got powers. But I thought that was a nice little gag that he did. But I guess his nanny is the one that's telling everybody that he is actually growing faster than expected and getting much smarter than she would expect him to be at this age. Yeah.

[00:25:37] And it's going to be interesting because, again, when you're introducing a host of power to something that doesn't have much responsibility... Well, absolutely. Yeah. It gets interesting. Yeah. Absolutely. It was where I always thought an interesting kind of dark Superboy storyline could go. Yeah. It's like if you give this power to a kid. There is that...

[00:26:06] I'm going off tangent here, of course. There is that James Gunn film where it is an evil Superman story. Brightburn. That's right. And that was always the interesting one, which is you basically give a child Superman's powers. What if that child wasn't a comic book kind of storyline and real life happened? What would happen?

[00:26:34] You end up with a psychopath who can rip arms off. Yeah. This is always the interesting thing with Oliver. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I suppose what adds to it is that we have seen Mark wanting to be powered for those 17 years leading up to when he eventually does get his powers. So this also tells the story of what would happen if Mark had gotten the powers when he wanted to get them at five or six years old. We saw him running around the house dressing up as tape man, I think.

[00:27:04] So he's always known that he would eventually become a superhero. Eventually got it at 17 and is now navigating through that now. He's starting to know his powers really well. But now we have a young kid, Oliver, his little brother, getting the powers much earlier than he should be getting them. So at the moment, he's only been on Earth a couple of months. I think they say it's about 90 days since the end of the last season. So Oliver's only been on Earth about a year, I'd say, at this stage. So he's still probably getting used to some nuances about Earth.

[00:27:34] And now he's got superpowers to deal with as well. That's going to be interesting. Yeah. No, 100%. We should also welcome the new voice actor who's playing Oliver, Christopher Convery, who you may recognize from Sweet Tooth and Cocaine Bear. A great little actor. He's a really good actor. If you haven't seen either of those two, watch them. He's really, really cool. So it's great to have Oliver voiced by him. Yeah. I strongly suggest Cocaine Bear. It's such a good show. Did you know that was made in Ireland as well, Chris? No. That was made in Wicklow. Really?

[00:28:08] I think it's hilarious. It makes it look absolutely gorgeous and makes it look like North America, but it's all filmed in one little patch of trees in Wicklow. Did they actually get a real bear and loads of cocaine? That would explain so much. Well, the filming rights in Ireland are very different than any other country. I think just all of our bears that we have here are on cocaine. Are just on cocaine. Yeah. We don't have any bears in Ireland, just a reminder. Okay. But there you go. Go see that.

[00:28:36] Sweet Tooth, another comic book-based live-action TV show, is really good, though. Go watch that. That's all three seasons of that are on Netflix at the moment. So go check that out. Right. Let's get on to our final and major big point for the episode. Call this one Seismic Shift because it is a big shocker. Lots of tectonic events going on all over North America. We see Donald investigating it and trying to give reports to Cecil throughout the episode. But it's kind of going, well, the only theory that I have is Doc Seismic that's doing it.

[00:29:05] But he's in prison right there. Going, oh, that's not good. Is it, Donald? You know, if there's a simple answer, it's probably going to be the simple answer. Occam's razor. There you go. Occam's razor. So, yeah, Donald probably should have noticed that Doc Seismic has been sitting in the same position for a few months communicating. So what we do learn, yeah, Doc Seismic has been communicating with massive underground kaiju from his prison cell, having these conversations with them.

[00:29:34] What a great twist of this character. You know, each time he's come back, he's been more difficult to beat. The first time he was a joke of a character. The second time he came back, Mark was a little bit overrun by the magma men that Doc Seismic was controlling. He was overrun by that. And Doc Seismic was destroying a lot of the monuments in North America.

[00:30:02] And now this time he's basically able to take out all of the Guardians of the Globe. Yeah. And again, it's the fun thing is like Mark later during the fight, Mark goes, you're not supposed to be this strong. Yeah. You're not supposed to watch like, and he says it because again, it is that he's Doc Seismic. He's a bit of a joke.

[00:30:25] Like he is the, he's the Mole Man analogy or Mole Man analog from Fantastic Four. Yeah. He's a man that just kind of chats with some dirt men, magma men, and they'll hide you. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's one of the cool things that you see if you're a reader of comic books.

[00:30:43] When you have an interesting writer comes on board and takes a character that is not respected or a small character, a minor villain, and they put a spin on them that suddenly can break them out from being that minor villain into being a well-beloved villain. I'm thinking of a writer like Jonathan Hickman, who can take a very minor character, put a twist on it and make it absolutely huge in the Marvel universe.

[00:31:08] It's interesting that Robert Kirkman has put this in his wheelhouse from the beginning. He's the one that wrote the entire series. And two or three years into the story, to the storyline, he's taken a character like Doc Seismic, who was a joke to begin with and made him this quite powerful villain. It is almost a commentary on the idea of Batman, Superman, and the Marvel characters leaving their villains alive.

[00:31:33] If you leave them alive to gestate and create bigger plans, they actually do become a very serious threat. And Doc Seismic is an example of that. He's someone that if you are putting in prison and he's able to use his powers, he will get bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more of a threat. So that's what we're seeing here with the character. I think it's cool. And he's still kept alive. At the end of this, he is still alive.

[00:31:58] So it's interesting to see in season five how he comes back. Yeah, but there's an interesting other option here, though, which is the real crux of the episode, really. All of the Guardians of the Globe are taken. I almost called them Guardians of the Galaxy. I promise I will definitely do that another 40 or 50 times throughout the season, as I always do. But he takes out all the Guardians of the Globe before we even see what he's done.

[00:32:23] He's taken control of these underground beasts, are working with them to rid the world of humans. That's his new plan, which is massive. That's quite a big plan. Whatever about tearing down some stone monuments and bringing them back to the Earth. Here he's actually looking to wipe out the entirety of Earth. Mark and Eve come along, join up to stop Seismic and free the Guardians of the Galaxy. But they fail. They're not able to beat the creatures either. He's able to take them both out.

[00:32:49] So Cecil has to use his last resort, which is actually bringing in Rhianna Men and Darkwing 2. Two people that he's supposed to have put under arrest and put in prison. The Rhianna Men created by D.A. Sinclair back in Season 1. He's supposed to be in prison for killing multiple people, for taking out William's boyfriend Rick and almost killing him. And Darkwing is supposed to be in prison because of the people that he killed after the first Darkwing died.

[00:33:19] So Cecil is using the two of them, two previous villains, as heroes, as ways of taking out this new villain. And so potentially what Cecil will do is take in Doc Seismic and turn him around on this power. Turn him around into someone like D.A. Sinclair or Darkwing to work alongside the Guardians of the Globe and pay off his debt to society. It's an interesting story. Yes, it is.

[00:33:46] It's one way, again, I'm like, you can kind of understand where Cecil comes from in this. And I think that's the interesting, which is he starts to go, but they're reformed. Mm-hmm. They, they, we don't have time for this, Mark. They saved your ass. Let's go. Yeah. And that just enrages Mark more and more. Yeah.

[00:34:10] And you can see it as the one, the one piece that I found really interesting is I don't like, you know, often you can see it in animation. But there's a point just as Cecil decides to start walking towards the white room, like just before Mark starts screaming at him. And he's, you can just see Cecil, the face, the way they drew it. You can see he's slightly taken aback, almost scared. Yeah. And then just starts walking to the white room.

[00:34:40] Mm-hmm. And just, that's where it has, it's the interesting thing because you can just go, oh, yeah, you, we always forget Mark is a Viltrumite. Mm-hmm. Mark is the Omni-Man 2.0. Yeah. And that's the interest where they, they sometimes see it. And it leaves, it's such an interesting, it leaves it in such an interesting state towards the end of the episode. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:35:06] And we will talk about episode two and episode three and how that, how that plays out as we go further into the, into the podcast. Don't want to spoil it right now though. But I love it. This is exactly what the show is about fundamentally. This idea that Invincible, Mark Grayson is being undermined by the people around him.

[00:35:26] The lists, the checklists that he had, all of the things that make someone a hero that he's had since he was a child are now being taken off every single year, every season, every time that he walks out the door almost as Invincible. Somebody does something that undermines a fundamental thing that he thought meant you are a superhero. Two people that he had effectively arrested or captured as a superhero and put in prison with the leader of a government organization who says, don't worry about it.

[00:35:56] They're in prison for life now. One of them tried to kill one of your friends. One of them tried to kill you and they're in prison. Don't worry. And then suddenly now they're on the same side as him and have been rehabilitated. Apparently that's something that Mark was going. Nope. That's not what I believe in at all. These people are murderers. They should be in prison for life. So another thing taken off Mark's list. What is it that defines a superhero if all of these things are being undermined by all the people around them? Yeah. Love it.

[00:36:26] It's going to be good. But we do get a post credit as well to wrap up the episode. Yes. We have already talked about it a little bit. I just want to make sure that we do mention them as we go through our notes. But we did mention it already. It's just Alan sitting with Omni-Man, still having the conversation in their minds with each other, and still trying to convince Omni-Man that maybe he would want to go out and save the rest of the galaxy and join Alan the Alien's cause.

[00:36:52] And I like this because I actually forgot about the post credits. I don't know if it's you. I was just watching it and I was like, do to do, about trying to finish taking some notes.

[00:37:31] Uh-huh. He pretty much made himself. He was like, I'm going to play Alan the Alien. He wanted to do it. Fine. He actually, I recently re-read the comics. That is the voice now that's in my head. Absolutely. He nails it. He's perfect. He nails just the inclination of what you expect Alan the Alien to sound like, and now he does. Yeah. So well done, Seth. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Really good. Speaking of notes, Chris, any final notes on the episode before we move on to episode two?

[00:38:01] Nothing from my side. What about you? Omni-Call-Out that I have for the episode. They always have a great musical track to kick off the first episode of a season. This time, Chemical Brothers with Go, one of my absolute favorite Chemical Brothers songs. So really cool one to have in the first episode here. But a great one overall. What did you think of the episode overall, Chris? What would you rate it if you had to rate the episode? I'd go back in with a strong 4.5 out of 5. Where? It straight away sets up this season.

[00:38:30] While without feeling slow, it methodically tells you where each of your characters are. It has set up the main theme premise of good guy versus bad guy versus the gray area between. Mm-hmm. It sets up that now Mark is faster, stronger. It's harder. What does that mean? And it also then sets up, well, in the last season, Cecil was good again.

[00:38:58] We knew he was a bit, he was government, but he was theoretically good. And now we're starting to go, oh, no. We know who this character is. Yeah. So for me, it just did everything it needed to do as that opening. Mm-hmm. But I love the fact that I could just roll into episode two because it does leave it on that cliffhanger. Yes. Yes, it does. So very happy.

[00:39:22] Just the fact that we're in the white room and Cecil's telling Mark, you're in here because I need to be in a place where I'm protected. And that's what this room is for, is for me to be protected from you because I'm terrified of you. That's a great little way to deal with Cecil. What about yourself, Derek? Did you enjoy this? Would you rate it? Yeah, I really enjoyed this episode. It was a good starter to set up the season.

[00:39:45] I'm glad we have three episodes as usual for Invincible because it does deal a lot with the relationships between people and spends a lot less time on some of the characters. I still always feel like I'm going in completely cold to these episodes and sometimes have to warm myself up a bit to the episodes, find out who these characters are in the background. They have always been really bad about giving character names on screen, and we don't get subtitles with our screeners for the episodes.

[00:40:13] So sometimes I'm just sitting there for five minutes going, rewinding back and forth, trying to find the moment that a character's name has been said so I can catch up with who they are. But at least it's only been a year since last season, and I've been playing the Guardians of the Globe game, so I've gotten to know a few more of the character names than I did the last couple of seasons, which is good. But really good overall, a good start to the season.

[00:40:35] I will say, though, I did wonder had they changed Animation House at certain points in the episode because there were some of the character designs that seemed different from last season even. Duplicate looks quite different than she did last season. And Alan the Alien, there's points when he looks quite flat in the drawing. So I think they might have expanded the Animation Studios and added an extra Animation Studio, and now they're doing the show so quickly in comparison to the way they used to do the show.

[00:41:03] It seemed to just stand out to me, but I couldn't find anything really about that when I Googled it. So, yeah, I wasn't going to mention it, and I think it's more because it's more in episode two that I felt it during a certain particular fight scene, which we'll get to. There's definitely, I don't want to say downgrade, because that's unfair, but there's just a change.

[00:41:28] And I was like, maybe, for me, it was maybe they were maturing the animation process versus, yeah, the other option could be that they're speeding the animation process up so there's less polish time. But there was a change, and there's a fight scene in episode two that really made me go, oh, that looked interesting. Right. And I was like, hmm.

[00:41:58] And again, what it could be is also the screamers we got, but that's not usually the case with the prime screamers we get. Yeah. They usually find the edits, and they're perfect. Yeah, we're only a week out from the episodes, and I think those are the final versions, the final locked versions that they've given to us. I know they do have the catch-all, which was the joke from last season where Martin meets the artist of his favorite comic book who tells him that sometimes they save some of their artistry for the big moments later on in the comic books.

[00:42:27] And that was supposed to be a joke about Invincible as well, that sometimes you'll get some downgraded artwork while they're saving it for a massive big fight sequence later on in the season. So maybe it was just that, and I just wasn't used to it because I watched the finale of season two and the first episode of season one in the last couple of days, and they looked just a different quality, but those were very big episodes of the show, of course. So maybe that was it. Just want the next one, though. But let's get on and finish up our discussion on episode one, Chris. Sounds good to me.

[00:42:56] Let's move on to Invincible, season three, episode two, A Deal With The Devil. We did record all three episodes back-to-back in one sitting, but we are splitting them into three podcasts for release, because then that gives you the ability to listen along in whatever way you want to, whether you want to listen to all the episodes, just the final episode or just episode two, you can do that. They're all available on our website on tvpodcastindustries.com or wherever you're listening to this podcast. You should be able to see episode two and episode three there in your feed right now. So we'll speak to you there.