Me and Jeff Bezos were due a fight with all this minimal news about Invincibles’ season 2! Just giving us posters and teaser trailers KMT! He must have got my hate letter and said hold this special prequel episode movie for now to shut me up… it worked! Also released just in time for all the pink Barbie marketing… hmmm
This movie takes us away from the gritty, sinister, complicated family drama of the Graysons and instead throws us in the mix of Samantha “Atom Eve” Wilkins’ gritty, sinister, complicated origin story around how she discovered her powers and her family drama. We meet her at early childhood as we accompany her to adolescence. Her ability to see the atomic formation of the world makes her zone out from the people around her so this creates a form of seclusion when making friends and even with her family. This ability also grants her to be a super science wiz when it comes to chemical elements. She attends a special school and makes a friend who lives across the street, someone she learnt to trust and as her powers developed and became more complex the friend starts to distance herself just like everyone else.
Story develops then dives deeper as we discover the story around her real parents and siblings, it’s an awesome tale with lots of depth and action.
The cast is majority of the same stellar cast returning. Jazlyn Ione and Aria Kane join forces to voice Eve at different stages in her life and they do an amazing job. Lance Reddick (RIP) and Stephen Root are stand out characters in this as Erickson and Brandyworth. Lance is his cold, dark and ruthless self, total brilliance. Nothing short of performances, they are all good.
The animation is still flawless and continues to confirm why these superhero outings translate a lot better in cartoon than live action. They added a bit more 3D animations to spice things up a bit more, perhaps something we can expect more in the new season. The action is brilliant as anticipated. The gore is still present coupled with the excellent audio around every punch and blast. Eve manifests some iron man type armour and captain America type shield during some battles and it’s a nice nod to the MCU. It was cool to see her show her turn super Saiyan Atom, something which I don’t think the normal runs would have room to show us.
It’s a cute little filler to keep up us engaged till the next season. I do think they missed some opportunities to open up the story a lot more around why her foster dad has such hostility against her. It’s not clear during season 1 and unsure why it’s not addressed here. Giving its sad, dark and emotional theme the abusive parents element would have made for content gold. The heavy focus on friendship, acceptance, loneliness made for very relatable concepts. The plot on a parent/guardians love plus parental loss, all subjects that slightly step away from the usual flow of the show. It’s a nice take.
It’s a nice formula that I’m hoping they blow up into more parts. Of course, a normal season mainly focuses on the Grayson family so I hope they do these special episodes to give some light to the supporting characters to show their history and development. It’s worth a watch so tune in if you’re a fan of the Invincible show.
Are you ready for season 2? Which character do you want to see done next? Did you catch Omni man’s facial expression at the end? React and comment below…
