Invincible – Season 2 Episode 8 “I Thought You Were Stronger” Recap & Review

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE STRONGER”

What becomes of Angstrom’s plan?

The season two finale of Invincible kicks off with Nolan demolishing a few aliens. Kregg deems him healthy enough for execution.

Mark races home to find the Mutated Angstrom holding his mother by the throat. He threatens to snap her neck. Angstrom blames Mark for his disfigurement, and he’s enraged that Mark doesn’t remember him. Mark attacks, but Angstrom throws him into alternate dimensions as a fighting tactic. Angstrom cannot escape flashbacks of all the horrible things Mark has done in alternate realities and it fuels his rage.

Debbie attempts to resist Angstrom and escape, so he snaps open her arm, exposing bone and spewing blood. Mark and Angstrom go another round. In a previously unseen display of pure fury, Mark annihilates Angstrom with a flurry of punches. The result is somehow too gruesome to show. Mark stands over Angstrom’s corpse, crazed, full of regret, and lost in some unknown dimension. He wanders the desert, making sense of everything that happened. Cecil comes and rescues Debbie, and she is barely conscious and losing blood.

Mark wanders aimlessly but before long, an older version of the Guardians comes through a portal. They explain that where they come from, Mark has been missing for 20 years. A middle-aged Eve confesses his love for him before sending him back through a portal- to just hours after he disappeared. Robot/Rex warns Eve that this may have “damaged the time stream.”

Do Mark and Amber stay together?

Mark rushes to the hospital to check on his mother. He breaks down and cries in her arms. Cecil tries to convince Mark that he didn’t lose control, but Mark is truly traumatized by what he did to Angstrom- by how he killed him.

Mark returns to college for a brief moment and sees Amber walking with her friends. He nearly approaches her but flies away. She turns around and looks at the sky longingly a mere second after he darts away. It seems their break-up talk from the last episode truly ended their relationship.

Mark tells his mom that he’s quitting college to focus on controlling his power and emotions, and she understands. Then, he visits Eve and she comforts him. It seems he may confess his love to her, but stays silent. For now, just sitting together is enough.

What becomes of Robot, Monster Girl, and the Guardians?

Rudy (Robot) makes a clear and concise apology to Amanda (Monster Girl). She doesn’t want to be seen as broken, and he understands that. She just wants to talk about other things besides her problem of getting younger when she transforms. It’s a tough conversation, but they understand and grow closer by the end of it.

Kate isn’t dead! She reveals herself to Immortal in a secluded cabin. She had been living through a copy of herself, “just in case.” He’s just happy to see her again. Two women enter an ancient Egyptian tomb and summon an ancient spirit, but he requires a male body to inhabit.

What happens to Nolan?

Nolan takes a beating from Kregg before heading back to his cell. Allen arrives in Nolan’s cell block. They pass each other in the hall just long enough for Allen to telecommunicate to Nolan.

In the epilogue, Allen and Nolan speak telepathically again. Nolan feels deep regret for what he did on Earth and wants Mark to be free of paying for his own mistakes. He feels he deserves death. Allen tries to recruit him to the cause of defeating the Viltrumite empire. Nolan thinks hard and says that he misses his wife.

The Episode Review

“I Thought You Were Stronger” ends season 2 with a new level of stakes, devastating conflict, and more than enough intrigue to keep fans excited for whatever comes next. The plot moved forward with self-awareness and humor in places where it could’ve felt overdone. The emotional stakes matched the most intense moments of last season. The shock and trauma delivered is impossible to undersell.

This will be a finale superhero fans will likely be talking about for years. After two seasons, Invincible feels like the present and future of the genre.

It came as a great relief that Angstrom’s plot line didn’t become some overcomplicated adventure to save (or change) the multiverse. For someone with that much experience across that many lives, madness feels appropriate. The fact that his final act before his mutation was merciful? It just lends to the beautiful tragedy of his character and his fight with Mark. The vocal performance by Sterling K. Brown was nothing short of spectacular.

Steven Yuen and Sandra Oh have delivered the goods since the series premiere, and they managed to up the ante again. The entire scene in the house is one of the most traumatizing sequences to come from a superhero story.

It’s worth mentioning that essentially the entire plot of The Avengers: Endgame, happened off-screen in this finale. All the insane complications of multiverse travel and time travel to get Mark from the future in another dimension, and return him to the past of his original timeline? Again, it shows the maturity and awareness of the writers to keep the scale smaller. The entire idea of maintaining time continuity fell into the context of future Eve confessing her love for Mark.

We’re excited for Season 3

The way everything shakes out has all of the frustration, realism, and strange sorrow of a great drama series. That being said, there’s still plenty of room for hope and optimism, which speaks to Invincible’s prowess as a superhero show.

What did you think? Are you happy with the way Season 2 turned out? Are you excited for Season 3? Let us know in the comments below!