Robert Kirkman knows the wait for Invincible Season 2 has been a long one. The first season of the Prime Video series based on Kirkman’s beloved comic book series premiered in March 2021 to rave reviews, and fans have been waiting with bated breath for the second season since.
But apart from a brief teaser announcing a late 2023 release window, there’s been no word about the further adventures of Mark Grayson. And Kirkman, in promotion for the release of Renfield, can’t offer many more words. But he can confirm that a famous Invincible archenemy from the comics will play a key role in Season 2.
“Some large or small aspect of Season 2 focuses on the Angstrom Levy character, Kirkman tells Inverse in an interview ahead of the release of Renfield. “He'll be a new villain that comes into the series. And if you've read the comics, you're aware of who he is and what his deal is. He's a villain that has access to multiple dimensions, and so it's another one of those dang multiverse things.”
Angstrom Levy is a supervillain who gained the ability to travel to alternate realities after a horrific accident. Naturally, he blames Invincible for this, and becomes one of Invincible’s greatest enemies. But like the rest of the animated series, Angstrom Levy’s arc won’t play out exactly as it does in the comics. “We do things in a different way [than the comics], so there's a little bit of a unique flavor to what we're doing,” Kirkman says.
The creative license that the Prime Video series has taken with Invincible has been a large part of its success, updating Kirkman’s coming-of-age superhero satire with more fleshed out characters and a more cohesive narrative.
The animation style in particular borrows from the Saturday morning cartoon look of the mid-2000s, which lends it a cozy feeling — making its shocks of violence even more, well, shocking. It’s that attention to detail in the animation that is part of the reason why Invincible Season 2 is taking its sweet time, Kirkman says. “Animation takes a long time in general, so that's a large portion of it,” he says. But it also has to do with timing: “The pandemic and the quarantine and everything hit at the worst possible time, as far as ramping down after Season 1 and ramping up into Season 2. it made it a very complicated process that delayed things a little bit.”
So what can fans do during the wait for Invincible Season 2? They can look to updates for the Invincible live-action movie ... which Kirkman can’t give much information on either. “We're very excited about what's going on,” he says. “I wish I could say more specifically about it, but that time will come, and I'm very excited to get to that time because I hate answering questions in a very frustrating and vague way.”
Whatever the case, Kirkman assures that the wait for the “jam-packed, absolutely crazy dense” second season of Invincible will be worth it.
