This review contains spoilers for season 3, episode 8 of Invincible, “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up.”
After “What Have I Done” ended on a high – promising action hand-in-hand with vital advancement for the characters – the season 3 finale “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” drops the ball. Narratively scattered and thematically incoherent, it’s the first bad episode Invincible has ever had, one that draws on familiar sights and stories from the show and other superhero media, but presents them with little to nothing beneath the surface.
The arrival of the elderly, one-armed Viltrumite warrior Conquest, at a time when Mark is caught once again between killing or not, sets the stage for a moral dilemma that never arrives, but whose conclusion is presented as though it were agonized over for 40 minutes. Instead, we’re treated to a finale centered entirely around Conquest, who’s better suited to playing a transitional bad guy, rather than the final boss of such an emotionally loaded season. Not only have we never seen Conquest prior to last week’s closing moments, he’s also devoid of any real ideology. Claiming to love only death and destruction makes him a useful foil to Mark, but as an exclamation point on season 3, he’s a giant shoulder shrug with little connection to anything meaningful within Invincible.
Rank these past and current members of the Guardians of the Globe
Rank these past and current members of the Guardians of the Globe
Conquest’s antics force Mark to put civilians in danger once again, a development our hero doesn’t even acknowledge, despite it being such a potent part of his recent arc. “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” ignores any left over angst from the Powerplex saga despite reenacting the supervillain’s origin story: A Viltrumite big bad using Mark as a battering ram to slaughter innocent bystanders. But Conquest ending season 3 the way Nolan ended season 1 lacks weight. Rather than Mark feeling each death, the people are merely collateral damage, and the guy forcing Mark to kill them isn’t someone he knows. It’s Invincible doing an encore of one of its greatest hits, but in completely uninteresting fashion, making it damn near impossible to invest in the climax of this uneven season.
Oliver veers in and out of the final battle, and Eve arrives as well the moment she wakes up from her coma. That they’re both at risk of being killed at least lends some stakes to the fight, but when Eve is gravely injured (she has her jaw broken and her insides strewn about), it’s hard to get on board with the idea that she might actually die – the GDA possesses near-magical technology capable of healing any injury, after all. But even before we’re faced with this reality, the air is let out of “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” when Eve heals herself thanks to a power-up rooted in actual magic, pretty much out of the blue.
Mark wailing away on Conquest is, therefore, a purely physical act with no emotion behind it. The Viltrumite is a complete stranger, and giving him lengthy monologues this late into the season (and so soon after his arrival) feels entirely pointless, as though Invincible were straining to grant him some semblance of heft or relevance. The results are dull, and they ensure that the edges of the episode’s violence are all sanded down. While the question of Sinclair’s work for the GDA (which now extends to Invincible cyborgs) looms, it exists only as a hint for later seasons, rather than something that matters in the moment.
Similarly, when the finale wraps up, it points towards vague, oncoming developments for numerous side characters like Battlebeast and the demon detective Damien Darkblood, though there’s still no sign of the all-important, absent-for-several-weeks Nolan. When “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” is near its end, we finally learn that Rex actually did, in fact, die – it’s hard to tell who’s dead for real, given the sudden resurrections of late. But before anyone (let alone his girlfriend, Rae) really has time to grieve, the focus shifts back to Mark and Eve’s relationship. Mark claims to have been deeply affected when he believed Eve was dead, but since this lasted for only a handful of minutes, and because this is the last we’ll see of Invincible until season 4, we’re left to wonder what impact it’ll actually have on him, and on their dynamic. Things wrap up neatly for Debbie, who’s happy to have her kids back, and the finale features a few ominous hints of how far Cecil is willing to go. But for the most part, “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” leaves Invincible in stasis, with little resolution, and only nominal, minor developments toward what comes next.
