The first season of Invincible revealed the villainy of Omni-Man (also known as Nolan Grayson) and why he very randomly decided to obliterate the superhero team called the Guardians of the Globe. It seemed like it was an imposter or someone who was controlling Omni-Man. But the truth was that Omni-Man came from a race of brutal and superpowered dictators called the Viltrumites, who went around the galaxy committing genocide and establishing the prominence of their race just because they could. He came to Earth, married Debbie Grayson, and nurtured Mark Grayson in the hopes that he’d join his cause. However, Mark did a complete 180 and decided to stand up against his father and become a protector of the Earth. Although it seemed like nothing would change Omni-Man’s mind regarding erasing mankind, Mark’s unwavering resolve made him leave the planet and gave us a hint that maybe something was shifting inside him after hundreds of years.
Spoiler Alert
The Mauler twins are hired by Angstrom Levy
Episode 1 of Invincible Season 2 opens with Mark and Omni-Man killing The Immortal all over again. It seems the world has been completely taken over by the father-son duo, and there are only a handful of people who are pushing back against the agenda of turning Earth into a part of the Viltrum Empire. Among the rebels, there’s an individual called Angstrom Levy, who seems to be working with Atom Eve from an underground facility. Rex Splode is dead. Rudy is still alive, and he is operating his deformed body through a mech suit, as well as his robot self, which seems to have some form of sentience. Eve, Levy, and Rudy talk about something called null energy that can apparently give Omni-Man “a bad day,” which means that they still don’t have a way to kill the Viltrumites. But their conversation is interrupted by the dynamic duo, and they obliterate everyone in that underground facility.
While almost everyone dies, Levy passes through some kind of portal. As the narrative shifts to Mark visiting the spot where Omni-Man pummeled the life out of him and going about doing superhero stuff, it becomes clear that everything that happened in the opening moments of the episode took place in an alternate universe where Omni-Man convinced Invincible to join him. The universe that we watched in Season 1 is still reeling from the mayhem caused by Omni-Man. Mark is trying to look past the trauma by saving as many lives as he can, but that’s something that one cannot simply move on from. The same can be said about Debbie Grayson, who is on the brink of buckling under the weight of her sadness that has been caused by Nolan’s betrayal. Elsewhere, the Mauler twins are sprung out of the prison by Angstrom Levy with the help of his portal, and he more or less forces them to work for him.
The Immortal Leads the Guardians of the Globe
Todd, the guy who used to bully Mark a lot, has seemingly become less aggressive. He tries to ease Mark back into the high school environment but ends up triggering him as he goes on and on about everything that Omni-Man did. Amber saves Mark from that sticky situation and tries to do the same thing that Todd did, but in a gentler way, so that Mark begins to digest the fact that he shouldn’t let Omni-Man’s actions define his life. But Mark thinks that he should do more superheroic stuff to counteract the guilt of not being able to save the planet from Omni-Man’s wrath. So, he goes to Cecil and orders him to let him work with the Guardians of the Globe. However, Cecil says that he isn’t ready, and he tells Mark to focus on his grades so that he can go to college with Amber. Mark says that he actually doesn’t need Cecil’s permission to be a superhero, and Cecil points out that Mark is starting to talk like Nolan, thereby irritating Mark because he is hellbent on proving to everyone and himself that he’s nothing like his villainous father. That said, while facing off against a cyclops, a resurrected version of Donald says that Invincible can help them in this situation. Cecil refuses his suggestion and lets the Guardians of the Globe do their job. Their work is messy, but they do manage to incapacitate the cyclops. Elsewhere, Levy brings the Mauler twins to his lab and shows off his giant machine. The twins understand that they have to make it functional, but what they don’t understand is the purpose of the machine.
Levy does an exposition dump as he explains how he wants to pool the knowledge of the multiverse and solve the issues of the entire multiverse, starting with Earth. For that, he needs to shove all the alternate versions of himself (who do not have multiverse traveling powers) into the machine, extract their knowledge, and put it inside his head. The Mauler twins ask why Levy doesn’t just ask them to share their knowledge, and Levy exposes his fatal fallacy: he thinks he is intelligent enough to see the bigger picture after getting the puzzle pieces from his alternate versions. Debbie comes home to find out that Olga, the wife of the deceased Red Rush, is waiting for her in her kitchen. They have a long conversation about the fact that Nolan turned out to be a villain and how it has completely destroyed their understanding of reality. Olga gives Debbie a card for a survivor’s circle because it has helped her cope with the death of Red Rush. At the Guardians of the Globe headquarters, Cecil reprimands the superheroes for doing a shoddy job of saving the city. He demotes Rudy and appoints The Immortal as the new leader of the Guardians. Yes, he is back because the Global Defense Agency (GED) has got his heart and brain to work, which is all he needs to resurrect himself. Also, a new member is introduced in the form of Bulletproof.
What Did Mark Do to Angstrom Levy?
Atom Eve meets Mark, and they have a little chat about trauma and whatnot. The GED finds out about the Mauler twins and the suspicious activities they are partaking in at Levy’s lab. Coincidentally, Mark shows up there, and Cecil is left with no other option but to send him to fight the Mauler twins. By the way, the Mauler twins get Levy’s machine to start working. They hook up Levy to the machine, along with the alternate versions of him that he needs for the time being. The machine starts doing its job, too. But Invincible breaks into the lab and threatens to shut down the process. So, Levy summons an army of Maulers, and they try to take down Invincible. Given how punchable Invincible is, they beat him to a pulp. At the end of Invincible Season 2, episode 1, Levy decides to stop his consciousness transfer process after witnessing all the brutality that’s happening around his creation, which is meant to be nonviolent in nature. When he tries to pull off the helmet that’s helping him get the data from the alternate versions of himself, the whole machine explodes. It apparently kills everyone in the lab. Invincible survives.
The Guardians arrive at the spot and congratulate Mark for single-handedly dealing with such a huge threat, even though Mark feels that he has just committed murder and saved nobody. Mark returns home and finds out that he’s going to college with Amber. The Immortal throws a wet blanket over that revelation by telling him that he doesn’t trust him because, at the end of the day, Mark is the son of a genocidal maniac. During the mid-credits scene, one of the Mauler twins emerges from the rubble with half of his body burned off. He searches for his brother, but all he finds is Levy. The explosion has caused Levy’s brain to grow so large that it has somehow become a part of his back. And, of course, he isn’t thinking straight. The memories and experiences of all his alternate versions are coursing through his brain, and he mixes up the version of Invincible that we know with the version of Invincible that has committed genocide along with Omni-Man in an alternate universe. Based on that, he vows to take revenge against Mark. It’s not clear if he has his multiverse traveling powers anymore because if he does, he will probably try to kill every version of Mark, thereby making him the villain of this season of Invincible. If Omni-Man comes back, though, then he’s going to take the limelight for sure.
