Prime Video’s Invincible wrapped up its second season a few days ago in bloody and emotionally devastating fashion for Mark and everyone in his orbit. Now that the season’s fully done, creator Robert Kirkman took the time to speak with Variety about the season’s highs and lows, and the finale episode “I Thought You Were Stronger” in particular.
In non-spoiler talk, he said that season two’s growing pains won’t be fully ironed out in season three, since the seasons were made back-to-back. But while they’re “too far along” for a complete overhaul, he said they’ve learned lessons they hope to carry over into (hopefully) future seasons. One thing that may not change is the release structure: Kirkman noted there were those who didn’t care for this season getting split into two parts, but he argued it was a “necessity” for this season. The release model could eventually change, but since the show became Amazon’s number one series when it returned, there was no “real, lasting detriment.”
As for the big spoiler…
While fighting Angstrom Levy, Mark ends up colliding with a legally distinct version of Spider-Man named Agent Spider from another dimension! Kirkman previously said a Spider-Man cameo wasn’t happening, and this is…technically not that, mainly due to Amazon’s legal team getting involved. According to him, they “painstakingly” looked over the scene, frequently telling the crew “the costume can’t be that color. We gotta get away from this and that.”
They wanted that scene from the Marvel Team-Up comic intact, he continued, which meant bringing on a former Spider-Man actor to voice the non-webhead. Josh Keaton, who famously played Spidey in Spectacular Spider-Man, was suggested by supervising director Dan Duncan. “[Keaton was] animation to animation,” Kirkman explained. “It seemed like something that would be a fun and surprising way to do it.”
However, Kirkman was fairly insistent that Agent Spider was not Spider-Man, and that Keaton’s Agent performance was “completely different” than his regular Spider-voice. In fact, the Invincible team kind of did all this without any input from Marvel or Sony (who owns Spider-Man’s rights) period. He freely admitted there’s a good chance Marvel learned about the cameo the day the finale aired, saying Amazon’s legal department “made sure that Marvel didn’t need to know.” He was similarly insistent that the scene of Mark talking to a guy with a cape at night on a rooftop was definitely not Batman in Gotham. And should anyone argue that it was, he says they can “take from it what they will, but it was never our intention to imply anything remotely close to the Batman character.”
Talking about the season overall, Kirkman noted season two’s growing pains won’t be fully ironed out in season three, since they were made back-to-back. But while they’re “too far along” for a complete overhaul, he said they’ve learned lessons they hope to carry over into future seasons, if they’re greenlit. (At time of writing, Amazon hasn’t given a greenlight for a fourth season.)
One thing that may also change is the release structure: unlike the first, season two was split into two parts, with the first half airing last November. Kirkman noted how audiences were divided over this, but argued it was a “necessity” for the season’s production. Whether season three is also a two-parter is currently undecided, and said things could always change. But there was apparently “no real, lasting detriment” to the show’s performance—according to him, the show became Amazon’s number one series when it returned.
Looking ahead to season three, Kirkman teased “great stuff” to come from Mark’s half-brother Oliver and GDA director Cecil. But in their deep dive into the season finale, he and co-showrunner Simon Racioppa teased the third season will “[go] so many different ways that we’re going to expand the show and push the show even further. We want every [season three] episode to feel like it’s a finale. [This] is an absolutely huge season with so many crazy things that you won’t expect.”
“You’ve got some new cast members, new stories. We go [to] some crazy places,” continued Racioppa. “But we pick up everything that we left hanging in season two. All the emotional stories that you liked in season one and season two are continuing.”
Invincible’s two seasons are available over on Prime Video. You can read the rest of Kirkman’s interview with Variety here.
[via GamesRadar]
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