Invincible Season 2, Episode 7 Review – “I’m Not Going Anywhere”

After a season highlight last week, “I’m Not Going Anywhere” returns to Invincible’s status quo: strong dramatic scenes sandwiched between disconnected ones, which fail to balance the series’ sprawling ensemble. En route to a violent climax, the penultimate episode of Season 2 puts Mark/Invincible (Steven Yeun) and his girlfriend Amber (Zazie Beetz) through the wringer, and features some nice family moments too. But its hour-long runtime is filled out with too much clunky, expository dialogue and repetitive drama to be fully satisfying.

Mark and Amber finally get some downtime when the world isn’t in danger, leading to a fun – if slightly awkward, given their unresolved issues – trip to Comic Con. After checking in on Amber’s enjoyment multiple times (much to her chagrin), Mark lines up to meet the artist of his favorite comic, leading to a string of meta-jokes that don’t really work. By adapting a visual gag about recycled art from the page to the screen, Invincible has to employ animation tricks that aren’t in the show’s vocabulary outside of this one sequence. At best, it’s a comedic misfire, but at worst, it distracts from Mark’s ongoing relationship drama, and robs the leading couple of valuable friction.

Invincible Season 2 Part 2 Trailer Screenshots Before long, Mark is whisked away to yet another superhero adventure, this time beside his injured comrade Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas), who’s broken out of hospital to go on a mission. With Mark’s help, Rex thwarts a Lovecraftian, machine-gun-wielding crime boss, but he still isn’t back to his old self after his gruesome injuries. The apparent time jump between episodes means he’s largely healed, robbing us of the opportunity to see him really struggle; instead, he quickly discovers that his arm has been replaced with a nifty laser cannon that channels his natural energy. He exchanges a few words with Mark about his feelings of being unmoored, but after saving the day in such awesome fashion, Rex’s story ends up sending mixed signals – particularly in light of what Donald and Rick go through in “I’m Not Going Anywhere.”

While they reckon with the trauma of near-death encounters and new metallic bodies, Rex’s trajectory is made to seem at odds with Donald and Rick’s in terms of how seriously (or rather, how un-seriously) the episode takes it. The former is, at the very least, given a nominal arc wherein he learns from Cecil (Walton Goggins, continuing to give a completely zest-less voice performance) that he’s died many times before, and was the person who gave the order to wipe his own memories. This leads to Donald trying to talk Rick down off a ledge, but his words of comfort feel distinctly out of character. They’re too verbose and poetic for someone who’s usually so reserved; too flowery and unearned for a man still dealing with his inhumanity – and a man who seems to have come to his idealistic conclusions off-screen.

This sort of first-draft dialogue applies to a brief conversation between Black Samson (Khary Payton) and Bulletproof (Jay Pharoah) as well. Their only function in the episode appears to be catching the audience up on what we already know (and we’re already told in the episode’s “Previously On” recap). That this happens adjacent to yet another obligatory scene of Robot (Zachary Quinto) trying to “fix” Monster Girl’s (Grey Griffin) reverse aging makes it all the more grating, since this pseudo-romantic subplot is stuck in limbo, with the same exact drama explored each week, with practically the same dialogue, but only in a single scene, and with no further advancement.

On the more positive side, Mark’s handful of scenes with Debbie (Sandra Oh) prove to be a meaningful reflection point, as he seeks her advice on Amber by inquiring about her early days dating his superhero father. Debbie is in a much happier place now, despite her abandonment issues, and she seems to take real joy in both raising Mark’s half-brother Oliver and going on a date with a coworker.

Thirty-five minutes in, “I’m Not Going Anywhere” finally kicks into high gear.

Picking up the baton from Debbie, Mark takes Amber on a proper romantic rendezvous, with a spring in his step and some romantic flight antics right out of the first Superman movie. But the danger of dating a superhero – specifically, a Viltrumite – can’t be ignored when Viltrum envoy Anissa (Shantel VanSanten) goads Mark into a negotiation by threatening Amber’s life.

Finally, about 35 minutes in, the episode kicks into high gear, with the kind of Dragon Ball Z-esque standoff that’s always a treat to watch: lofty, melodramatic dialogue punctuated by violence. Cecil knows Mark can’t defeat Anissa, so in order to send her packing, he pushes Mark to lie about helping Viltrum conquer Earth, but Mark resists even feigning loyalty to his genocidal kin. It’s a moment that crystalizes his journey as a hero who began this season adrift, unable to reconcile his moral compass with his Viltrumite lineage – a dilemma further complicated by his reunion with his father. Seven episodes later, Mark has a clear-eyed view about where he stands.

As the season heads for a finale, the episode’s closing scene and its mid-credit sequence set the stage for a pair of potentially explosive outcomes, even though they aren’t really linked. This disconnect has been an ongoing issue during Season 2, but the return of genius dimension-hopper Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) – who threatens Mark’s family – and the subsequent skirmish between the Viltrumites and a nearly indestructible Allen (Seth Rogen) offer innumerable tantalizing possibilities for next week. “I’m Not Going Anywhere” may be the season’s weakest link, but it’s still strong enough to propel Mark’s journey forward while building anticipation.

VerdictWhile its seams continue to show, Invincible has grown so strong as a series that even this season’s weakest entry ends up pretty solid. The ensemble is an afterthought once more, but Mark’s domestic drama is an unimpeachable highlight, and the show’s signature violence swoops in to save the day right at the end.