All 4 Seasons of Invincible, Ranked

Guess who finally got a ranking.

I know, I know. I'm late to the party. The season finale of Invincible hit Amazon Prime a few days back, and I've just had a lot going on with the end of school and The Boys and a few other things I have been trying to cover. I was not able to get a review of the finale of season four out, but you will see my thoughts in this ranking. All four seasons of Invincible definitely have something to offer. Even the worst of this show is still pretty good. But there is a pretty clear ranking in my mind, so here it is.

4. Season 3

An unfocused season that has high highs but struggles with repetition

Some people list season three as their favorite, and I just don't really understand that. This season undeniably has some absolutely incredible moments. I love the beginning plot thread where we see Mark turn against Cecil and the conflict that causes within the Guardians of the Globe. Obviously, the final battle with Conquest is incredible. But as a season of TV, I find this to be the most unfocused and repetitive. Even the great elements still feel reminiscent of what came before. As awesome as the battle with Conquest is, it feels somewhat similar to the season one finale.

This season is also the one where I found the characters the most frustrating. Mark is angry and angsty throughout, and he often becomes tough to root for. Eve, who was one of my favorite characters in the first two seasons, gets her role basically reduced to being Mark's super-powered girlfriend. Oliver, while sometimes endearing and fun, is incredibly annoying with his constant conviction that he's able to handle the things Mark is handling. It's tough to have the characters in their most frustrating part of their arcs while also having barely any Omni-Man, who, in my opinion, is the best character in the show. This is still a good season of TV, but it did feel like Invincible was losing a bit of the magic here.

3. Season 2

A quieter, more melancholy season that really focuses in on the show's title character

Season two of Invincible feels like exactly what it should've been: a much more somber and reflective run that deals with the fallout of Omni-Man's rampage. Mark's anger feels much more earned and compelling in this season than it does in season three, because he's very worried that he's going to turn into his father. Debbie is one of this season's standouts, as we see her try to move on with her life but struggle with loneliness and depression as Mark dives further into his superheroics.

To me, seasons two and three blend together because they don't exactly feel like individual stories. I can give you a quick, one-sentence plot synopsis of seasons one and four, but I'd have trouble doing that with two and three. To me, season two feels like a collection of episode that take place sequentially but don't really have a clear beginning, middle, and end. I find the Angstrom Levy stuff to be underdeveloped and rushed in both season two and three, and I think part of that is the awkward structure of this post-season one story arc. Invincible is adapting a long-running comic that is designed as one story, not a bunch of stories split up into seasons. Angstrom Levy is a casualty of the adaptation, becuase we want to focus on the grief and trauma of what Omni-Man did...but we need a villain for Mark to fight in the finale, so he needs to appear once every few episodes to remind us that he's still here. In the comics, that can be spread out through multiple issues, but the pacing of a TV show is different and needs to be a bit more brisk. Again, I still think season two is very good, maybe even great, but it's definitely not the peak of this show.

2. Season 4

An epic continuation of Invincible that sets the stage for the coming conflict

After the slight downturn that was those middle two seasons of Invincible, season four starts off with arguably the worst run of the show...and then quickly gets to arguably the best run of the show. This season starts off incredibly slow. The first four episodes (with the exception of episode two) feel like repetitive, uninteresting filler. Mark kills someone and struggles with his fear that he's turning into Nolan. They fight Mr. Liu. The Flaxans return. It all culminates with the critically panned Damien Darkblood episode that is the epitome of how frustrating Invincible can be with its insistence to avoid the Viltrumite storyline.

But once we get back to the Viltrumites...oh, man, does this season get awesome. Invincible season four feels like a transition from an Earthbound superhero story about betrayal and identity to a cosmic space war with the highest stakes imaginable. How do you make the Viltrumites more intimidating than Omni-Man and Conquest? You introduce Grand Regent Thragg, the ultimate villain of the story who is miles scarier than any character we've seen in the show thus far. What makes him so scary and thus raises the stakes of the show so much is not his tremendous, seemingly unbeatable strength - it's his genius-level intellect. The finale of season four, while slower and not the epic fight we expected, was a haunting hour that really lets the dread of Thragg's plan sink in. The back half of season four feels like a different show than the first half. The action is visceral and exciting. Mark actually feels like a character again as he has to make important decisions that move him along his arc. Nolan finally gets some spotlight again and really starts to get his full redemption. And the stakes and conflicts are set for the future seasons of the show.

1. Season 1

The perfect subversive superhero story with an absolutely explosive finale

For the first half of this season, I didn't really get the hype. I thought Invincible was a fun, albeit relatively normal superhero show. But as the season progressed and we saw more of the dark side of superheroes, it began to sink in. Invincible slowly began to turn into this brutal, often horrifying subversion of what you believe superheroes to be. I read about Invinicible after watching season one and an article I read described it as "What if Superman's idea of good was not what he thought it was?", and I think that fits perfectly. I love the slow-building dread and mystery behind Omni-Man's motivations. Seeing Damien Darkblood and then Cecil and then Debbie slowly begin to piece everything together just creates this looming sense of doom that sends you into the final episode with so much tension hanging in the air.

What makes season one of Invincible so great, though, is the final episode. Where I Really Come From is, in my opinion, up there with The Rains of Castamere and Ozymandias as one of the great, shocking episodes of TV ever made. For seven episodes, we've been building to the ultimate confrontation between Mark and Nolan...and it does not disappoint. Nolan's true nature as a cruel, unforgiving conqueror is revealed in an explosive, horrifying action sequence as he beats Mark to a pulp and shows him how insignificant human life is. J.K. Simmons and Steven Yeun deliver two of the best vocal performances I've ever seen in animation. Omni-Man solidifies himself as one of the scariest and most powerful villains in fiction through his sheer beatdown of Mark and easy destruction of Chicago. It just culminates the carefully built tension and unease of the season beautifully, with a tragic, horrific ending that sets up the story of betrayal, identity, and redemption that Invincible is.