‘Invincible’ Creator Robert Kirkman Unmasks the Heightened Stakes of Season 3

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Prime Video’s superhero saga, Invincible, is soaring into its third eight-episode season this month with the compelling story of teenager Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and his violent escapades as a caped crimefighter saddled with the dark legacy of Omni-Man, his extraterrestrial father (J.K. Simmons).

Created by The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman and crafted from the acclaimed 2003-2018 Image comic-book series by Kirkman and artists Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, Skybound Entertainment and Amazon MGM Studios’ Invincible series has attracted a fierce following over its last two seasons of adult-aimed animated brutality on Prime Video, and received Emmy, Annie Award, Saturn and Critics Choice nominations along the way.

This fresh season promises more emotional confrontations with a guilt-stricken Omni-Man and Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) teaming up to bust out of a Viltrumite prison, Mark amping up his training regime with Cecil (Walton Goggins) to don the notorious blue-and-black costume, the Guardians of the Globe dealing with conflicts internal and external, and Mark’s superpowered half-brother Oliver growing at an accelerated rate as Mark strives to shelter his loved ones.

Amping Up the Action

“I think the center of the show is really Mark Grayson’s evolution and Invincible growing as a superhero and learning things as a superhero and making mistakes,” Kirkman tells Animation Magazine. “So we saw a lot of that in Season 2. He’s definitely maturing. He’s doing a lot of training, he’s doing a lot of preparing. He knows from Anissa’s visit that there’s more conflict brewing and bigger threats looming on the horizon that he needs to prepare for. That propulsion is something that’s really important to us. We’re always moving forward and throwing as many problems as possible at Mark and the other characters. Season 3 is where we’re really stepping on the gas. It kicks off and hits the ground running. If you thought Season 2 was fast paced, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“We’re always moving forward and throwing as many problems as possible at Mark and the other characters. Season 3 is where we’re really stepping on the gas. It kicks off and hits the ground running. If you thought Season 2 was fast paced, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

— Creator/exec producer Robert Kirkman

 

Executive producer and showrunner Simon Racioppa believes that part of Invincible’s promise and appeal derive from the fact that the writers never forget what has happened before.

“There’s going to be repercussions of things that happened in Season 1 that are going to affect our characters in Season 3,” Racioppa adds. “Nothing ever resets. A lot of our characters are carrying emotional trauma from things that happened back in Season 1. It’s really important to be true to that all the way through the run of the show. It’s never like, ‘Oh, it’s time for another adventure on Invincible.’ You could probably just start with episode one and watch the whole series all the way through and it almost doesn’t feel like there’s any gap between the seasons. Season 3 will pick up right off the end of Season 2. And we hope that helps ground the series. Terrible things happened in Season 2 and that’s going to have an effect on Season 3.”

One of the most popular staples in the pop culture universe is the anxiety-ridden waiting period to see what uncanny powers blossom from the offspring of superheroes as in the case of Franklin Richards of Marvel’s Fantastic Four world, or even baby Jack-Jack in Pixar’s Incredibles films. Such is the case with Mark’s younger sibling Oliver, the purple-skinned product of Omni-Man and his insectoid Thraxan wife, Andressa. Season 3 will see Oliver emerge as Kid Omni-Man!

“We did figure out in the comics a cool narrative way to have Oliver age rapidly,” Kirkman explains. “So that even though the comic kind of plays with time at a deliberate pace and you don’t really have people aging in real time, you can have that character growth from a baby to wherever we get with him, which is kind of fun. Oliver represents a lot of things in the show. It’s Nolan’s influence from afar coming into Earth, affecting Mark in some huge ways, affecting Debbie in huge ways. He’s a baby at the end of Season 2, but as you watch Season 3 you’ll see he’s growing rapidly and becoming a full-fledged character that’s an integral member of our cast and shaking everything up in a lot of really cool ways.”

Kirkman feels that shifting into Season 3 the team has clearly established what this show is. “This is the Mark Grayson show,” he says. “But as we continue to adapt the comic there’s a lot more Omni-Man, which is really cool. It’s great to be working more with J.K. Simmons and having that character more present. Now we’re just getting into the details of the story and the characters and fleshing them out as much as possible and giving them interesting things to do, and getting to some really cool things from the comics that I think people are going to be excited to see.”

Fortified with 16 hours of the show now under its belt, Invincible can confidently stride into this next block of episodes knowing that the audience has a familiarity with its character roster.

“It lets us go deeper into relationships, spend more time with those characters, and makes it more fun to write for too,” says Racioppa. “It’s nice having that sort of history that lets you reference that back into the characters and show what they’ve already been through affects what they’re going to do next, and their emotional state. The whole team came together in the transition. When you hit those moments it’s a beautiful high. You’re trying to achieve something great that has an emotional resonance that hopefully will affect our audience.”

As fans of the comic-book series know, Mark Grayson gets a brand new blue costume at this point in the unfolding story and as seen in the teaser trailers it makes a bold statement.

Changing Colors

“There were a lot of variations done by the design team, Shaun O’Neil and Dou Hong and her team, trying to figure out how to interpret the blue costume from the comics,” Kirkman notes. “The costume change is a superhero trope. Spider-Man gets the black costume and everybody hates the black costume. Then two years later they get rid of the black costume and everybody doesn’t want to go back to the old costume. And that kind of thing actually happened. There were letters from people who didn’t like the blue-and-black costume. When we retired it and went back to the original costume there were lots of people complaining. Now that we’re doing it in the show, the fanbase that read the comics and knows what’s coming, they’re like, ‘Ah, the blue-and-black era! We’re so excited.’ I want to say, ‘You guys weren’t so excited when it started.’

“I wrote the comic for 16 years and I believe there was a week or two gap between writing the last issue and starting the pilot for this series,” Kirkman says. “I just love this world and these characters and feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to do it again. What’s most exciting to me is doing this as a second draft of the comic if you will, and finding those things to improve upon. It’s a fun process, I’m working with a lot of good people, and the fan response has been tremendous. And they haven’t even seen Season 3 yet. Just wait!”

 

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Invincible Season 3 will begin streaming on Prime Video on February 6.