Invincible Season 3: Prime Video’s Unbeatable Superhero Series [Review]

Warning: The following review contains minor spoilers for Invincible Season 3.

Invincible is easily one of the best cape-and-tights shows streaming today. But like its scrappy protagonist Mark Grayson, the Prime Video series also isn’t as unassailable as its name suggests.

Don’t get me wrong: co-showrunners Robert Kirkman and Simon Racioppa have too strong a template – Kirkman’s Invincible comics, created with artists Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley – to ever truly falter. Yet as Invincible Season 2 proved, sometimes staying true to the show’s source material can cause problems. Indeed, Kirkman, Racioppa, and their team almost came unstuck by carrying over too many narrative threads (and big bads) from the comics. Toss in a momentum-killing yet necessary mid-season break (animators, unlike cartoon crime-fighters, need to eat and sleep) and the second season didn’t quite live up to the first. It was still a strong season of TV, however, it occasionally felt disjointed, if not outright aimless.

Fortunately, Invincible‘s other big similarity with its namesake is that it learns from past mistakes, and Season 3 doesn’t repeat the shortcomings of its immediate predecessor. On the contrary, this is a tight, interruption-free batch of episodes that rivals – if not outright beats – the highs of Season 1.

Invincible Season 3 kicks off with Mark (Steven Yeun) at his most powerful yet. That’s good news for everyone on Earth; Mark needs to be fighting fit for the impending Viltrumite invasion teased midway through Season 2. But as is always the way, Mark’s got more on his plate than prepping for an alien attack. He’s got his mom, Debbie (Sandra Oh), and half-brother, Oliver (Christian Convery), to worry about, not to mention his long-standing romantic feelings for fellow costumed adventurer Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs) to address. Add new baddies Powerplex (Aaron Paul), Mister Liu (Xi Ma), and Multi-Paul (Simu Liu) into the mix – as well as a rift between Mark and his GDA boss Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins) – and our hero has his limits, both human and superhuman, tested worse than ever before.

This barely scratches the surface of Invincible Season 3’s plot; there are at least as many subplots and characters here as in Season 2. But (based on the six episodes shared with press), everything in Season 3 – even ostensibly tangential time travel-related hijinks and internecine supervillain dust-ups – is clearly in service of the same thematic throughline. And at its core, Invincible is still a meditation on the true nature and ethics of heroism. What’s the cost of doing the right thing, and what responsibility comes with wielding power (great or otherwise)? Where does that responsibility end? And how do traditional superhero principles – the no-killing codes and black-and-white moral outlook – jibe with the pragmatism reality so often demands? As Cecil puts it early in Season 3, it’s deciding whether to be the good guys or the guys who save the world.

This is an endlessly compelling dilemma – and Invincible‘s third season spices things up even more by piling the thorny subject of redemption on top. Season 2 previously seeded the concept of second chances with J.K. Simmons’ Omni-Man taking his first baby steps towards repentance late in the game. In Season 3, Kirkman, Racioppa, and the writers’ room milk this set-up for everything it’s worth. Can a mass-murderer like Mark’s dad ever atone for what he’s done? Does he deserve to – and if not, who does? The same applies to several other characters on both sides of the hero/villain divide throughout Season 3. We’re constantly forced to confront the grey morality of Invincible‘s primary colored universe (a dialogue-free sequence that’s equal parts Up prologue and The Last of Us Season 1’s Frank and Bill tearjerker is particularly effective in this regard).

Admittedly, the full ramifications of a downright chilling murder effectively get handwaved at one point. But in rare instances such as this where the storytelling stumbles, the cast is there to save the day. Together with Invincible‘s many animators, series veterans Yeun, Oh, Jacobs, Simmons, Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas (Rex Splode) and Seth Rogen (Allen the Alien) continue to make the show’s larger-than-life characters impressively relatable (yes, that even applies to Goggins’ Cecil this season). The raft of incoming voice actors acquit themselves well, too. That said, Paul and Convery probably leave the biggest impression. But again, there’s no weak link among them.

It’s a good thing too, because Invincible Season 3 demands a lot of range from its acting stable. For all its high-minded discourse on power and consequences, this remains a very funny show. I laughed out loud at several points during the third season’s first six episodes, which provided a welcome relief from the intensity elsewhere. Equally, Kirkman and Racioppa once again manage to have their cake and eat it too, set piece-wise. Season 3’s many action scenes are as inventively choreographed and staged (and as gleefully gory) as anything in Seasons 1 and 2, without ever undermining the not-so-punch-happy themes the third Invincible outing is otherwise concerned with. That’s nothing to sneeze at – and it, as much as anything, is what makes Invincible Season 3 such unbeatable TV.

Invincible Season 3 premieres on Prime Video on Feb. 6, 2025.