Invincible

Credit: Prime Video

The fourth season of Amazon Prime Video’s animated superhero series, Invincible, is nearly at an end, and what a season it’s been. We’ve already gotten two of the show’s highest-rated episodes to-date, with this week’s “Don’t Do Anything Rash” tying the Season 3 finale with a 9.9/10 IMDB score, and beating out Season 4, Episode 5’s 9.8/10 score. While I agree with the glowing reviews, I have two problems with the episode. I’m curious to hear your thoughts and whether I’m just overthinking things.

Spoilers through Invincible Season 4, Episode 7 ahead.

Invincible & The Gang Go To Viltrum

The episode heats up the war between the Coalition of Planets and the Viltrumites. Mark (Steven Yeun), Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), Oliver (Christian Convery), Tech Jacket (Zoey Deutch), Battle Beast (Michael Dorn) and Viltrumite dissident and Coalition leader, Thaedus (Peter Cullen), all head to Viltrum to take on Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace) and the remaining Viltrumites before they can rally their forces.

Up to this point, Thragg has come across as a pretty calm guy, an adminstrator for the most part, ruthless but not particularly frightening. In this episode, we learn more about his rise to leadership and his shocking powers.

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The episode opens with a flashback to the Viltrum Empire when Emperor Argall (Frank Welker) was still in charge. When a planet’s local populace engages in seditioius activities, Kregg (Clancy Brown) wants to crack down in order and make an example of them, putting Viltrumite strength on display for the rest of the galaxy. A younger Thaedus disagrees, arguing that mercy and compassion is a wiser course of action for the long-term viability of Viltrum’s galactic ambitions. The Emperor and Regent Thragg take Kregg’s side, so Thaedus takes matters into his own hands. After he assassinates the emperor, becoming The Betrayer, he flees and Thragg takes control.

The Great Purge

Thragg’s first order of business is to root out the weak among the Viltrumites, and a culling begins that will eventually be referred to as the Great Purge. Thragg kills one of the high councilors and this causes a chain reaction, as Viltrumites turn on one another to prove their strength. The bodies pile up and the Viltrumite population is thinned, leaving just the strongest to carry on and expand out into the galaxy. A second culling takes place much later, when Thaedus unleashes the virus on Viltrum, killing all but a few dozen remaining Viltrumites in the process. Buy one purge, get one free! (The parallels to the supe-killing virus in The Boys are hard to miss, not to mention the similarities to Season 2 of Gen-V and Thomas Godolkin’s supe-supremacist ambitions).

This purge is my first complaint about Episode 7, not because I dislike the concept – it really illustrates just how insanely obsessed the Viltrumites are with supremacy – but because I dislike the execution (no pun intended).

It struck me as just a little goofy that they’d all just randomly turn on one another and start blindly killing. I suppose I would imagine that in an ordered society, the culling itself would have more shape. Factions would form, or some kind of battle royale would be established, a tournament of some kind. There are any number of ways this could have played out that would have been more interesting than a free-for-all bloodbath.

My second problem with this episode – and I want to point out that neither of these are huge issues, just observations – is the power balancing in the big fight in Viltrum’s orbit.

Our heroes face off against the enemy, and the fight seems pretty dire until Space Racer (Winston Duke) shows up with The Gun, aka the Infinity Ray. This is a supreme weapon, capable of wiping out entire armies and destroying planets and even stars. An energy beam from this weapon is unstoppable. It cuts through anything and never stops, making short work of Viltrumites that Space Racer manages to hit. This is, it turns out, Space Racer’s biggest flaw: He’s just not a very good shot, though to his credit, Viltrumites are very fast.

Still, it’s an OP weapon (as in “over-powered”) and ultimately they use it to destroy Viltrum entirely, with Mark, Thaedus and Omni-Man following the beam into the center of the planet to explode said planet and then passing out the other side, where Thragg summarily rips Thaedus’s head from his body.

Thragg is the other OP element in this episode, capable of defeating each of the Coalition members with ease. If not for the plot armor of the Grayson family, Nolan, Mark and Oliver would all be dead at the end of this episode, the destruction of Viltrum a pyrrhic victory at best. At the very least, Oliver – whose face was ripped in half and arm torn off by Thragg – should probably be a goner, though I’m glad he’s still alive and recovering in his very own Bacta tank.

In any case, I did find the entire space battle a little odd, since really they could have come with the express intention of blasting Thragg with the Infnity Ray. They could also give the Infinity Ray to someone who isn’t going to die if his helmet is broken open and who can fly as fast or faster than Viltrumites. Space Racer is a cool character, but he’s really only cool because he has a crazy powerful gun. Pretty much any of the other Coalition heroes would be better suited to wield it – especially Tech Jacket, who could likely incorporate it into her suit (though her aim is also questionable).

I suppose my issue with this kind of weapon is that it’s just so overwhelmingly powerful, it ends up making me question why they didn’t stop a little further away from Viltrum and have Space Racer shoot it a dozen or so times from range. It would take Thragg and his minions by surprise. A dozen blasts from that gun would destroy the planet without putting any of our heroes at risk. No real need to get up close and into a fight with someone as powerful as Thragg unless you have a plan to actually stop him, which clearly neither Nolan nor Thaedus had going into this life-or-death fight.

Thragg is so much more powerful than anyone else, it creates a pretty cool imbalance in a lot of ways, giving our heroes a genuinely tough boss fight, even more daunting than Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) or Mister Liu (Tzi Ma) or Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown). Escalating from local super-villain to intergalactic mega-boss makes sense at this point. It’s more about the weird lack of any kind of plan our heroes go in with, let alone any kind of backup, essentially the equivalent of a mad charge with Thaedus hollering “Leeeeeroy Jenkins!” when surely these ancient alien super-people would realize how badly they could lose facing off against just Thragg all by himself.

In any case, a great episode but some of this felt a little messy and a little too convenient, and when stories start veering into everything being OP and our main characters always roll natural 20’s on their saving throws thanks to very thick plot armor, I just can’t help but get a little concerned. Overall, this has still been a tremdendous season. Let me know what you thought of Episode 7 on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

You can read my interview with Invincible creator, Robert Kirkman, here.

P.S. How did Space Racer survive all those years after Nolan gave him a beat down if he can’t breathe in outer space?