I’m getting an acute sense of déjà vu writing this opening line, as I’m pretty sure that at some point this year my commencing quip referenced the seeming ubiquitousness of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. I am a longtime fan of their work, going back as far as their very first major co-writing credit, Superbad, which to this day is one of my all-time favourite comedies. And comedy appeared to be their sole domain for a time, before they moved into adapting comics and graphic novels, starting with their gritty take on Garth Ennis’ Preacher in 2016. Since then, they have been involved in adapting another Ennis work, The Boys, its excellent spinoffs The Boys Presents: Diabolical and the recently debuted Gen V, and even wrote and produced the acclaimed animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
That’s all to say, they have a lot on their plates, and the duo have yet to slow down as they are currently developing a reboot of the beloved animated series Darkwing Duck. However, one show that fan have been clamouring for is season two of the wildly popular animated adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, on which they serve as producers.
Having debuted in July 2021, Invincible earned the love of critics and audiences alike with an adaptation that is largely faithful to its source material but made changes where necessary to deliver arguably the best version of this story on any medium. Given that anybody reading up to this point has likely seen the first season already, I’ll spare the recap and go right ahead and say that based off the latest (and most revealing) trailer released two days ago, Invincible looks to not only pick up where the climactic season one finale left off, but to also double down on Mark’s own Viltrumite heritage and what it might mean for his character moving forward.
This is not to say that I have any inside scoop of any kind, so I can only ever speculate until its November 3rd release, but the latest trailer certainly makes clear the new internal struggles Mark will have to confront, as well as the new challenges he must undertake as a superhero.
The world is clearly reeling from the discovery that its greatest hero, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), is in fact one of its most dangerous foes, and no one has been rocked more than Mark (Steven Yeun), whose father and role model abruptly revealed his sadistic web of lies while also beating him within an inch of his life in a prolonged battle. Once aspiring to be just like his father, it has now become Mark’s greatest fear, musing in the trailer “What if I become him, and I don’t even know it?”. Of course, Mark’s inextricable family background makes others wary of him, seemingly those both earthbound and throughout the galaxy based on the brief audio we get of Cecil (Walton Goggins) and Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen).
The trailer even attempts to outright suggest that Mark will eventually succumb to the colonizing inclinations of a Viltrumite, but I can guarantee this is nothing more than a red herring. At one point in the trailer a new character, Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown), has the ability to shift from one dimension to the another, and very likely comes from a dimension where Invincible is a world-dominating tyrant much like his father, and as such Levy has an understandable grudge against the heroic Invincible we all know and love. Those of you who have read the comics undoubtedly know more on the matter.
Of course, the rest of the trailer promises more epic battles and the blood, guts, and viscera we have come to expect from the show, as well as the more emotionally complex aspects it so gracefully handled in the first season. If all that wasn’t enough, the range of newcoming talent this season is staggering, with the likes of Peter Cullen, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Ben Schwartz, Lea Thompson, Daveed Diggs, Tim Robinson, Rhea Seahorn, Jay Pharaoh, Chloe Bennett, Rob Delaney, and Calista Flockhart.
It might still be early, but Invincible season two is already looking like it will worth the more than two-year wait.