‘Invincible’ Creator Says ‘Every Single Thing About This Show Is Changing’ After Season 4 Finale Cliffhanger

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Invincible” Season 4, Episode 8.

After the explosive seventh episode of “Invincible” Season 4, it feels like the superhero action can’t get any bigger. So it doesn’t try to.

“I’m always wary of a formula. We changed things up in Season 3 by doing two gigantic episodes at the end with two big fights, two finales. So we changed it up in Season 4 by having no finale,” said Robert Kirkman, co-showrunner of Prime Video’s “Invincible” and writer of the comic it’s based on. “It’s a very quiet epilogue episode, but I think it’s one of our strongest episodes to date.”

The penultimate episode of “Invincible” Season 4 sees the show’s titular hero and his allies finally face Thragg (Lee Pace) and his Viltrumite allies head-on, destroying the planet Viltrum in the process. The season ends with Mark Grayson (a.k.a. Invincible, played by Steven Yeun) discovering that Thragg hasn’t quite returned the favor, though he offers Mark a deal: Allow Viltrumites to blend in on Earth and rebuild their population, and he won’t destroy the planet.

While other seasons of “Invincible” end with montages teasing what’s to come, Season 4 simply ends as Mark begrudgingly accepts these terms.

“I find it so interesting, that deal, because why would he even tell him he’s doing it? Why wouldn’t he just do it and let Mark kind of realize people with powers are popping up all around, making him discover it himself?” Pace wondered. “It’s an intriguing choice to make, that he would actually be like, ‘This is why I’m doing this. This is what I’m doing. You can like it, you can not like it, but you’re gonna have to deal with it. You’re gonna have to deal with me. I’m here now.'”

Kirkman said that he and co-showrunner Simon Racioppa knew they wanted to end the season on such a dour cliffhanger, setting it apart from past finales for “Invincible” — and teasing how drastically things have changed from here on.

“I feel like this is one of the biggest cliffhangers and the biggest endings for the show,” Kirkman said. “To have the end of the Viltrumite War be a complete stalemate … is a really good down note to end on.”

“‘Every single thing about this show is changing.”

Stand ready for Thragg’s arrival, worm

Season 4 of “Invincible” finally introduced Grand Regent Thragg, the big bad of “Invincible” comics. This meant finding an actor who could play this character’s power and menace, ideally for years to come.

If you asked Kirkman, he’d say he’s known who he wanted as Thragg for years.

“I had Lee Pace planned as Thragg long before the show existed,” he said. “I was always like, ‘That guy. That guy would make a good Thragg.'”

The two met in the 2010s as both “The Walking Dead” (another Kirkman comic adaptation) and “Halt and Catch Fire” (one of Pace’s most notable vehicles) aired concurrently on AMC. When Pace got the call that would make Kirkman’s dream a reality, he jumped at the chance.

“I’m looking at this huge character that’s gonna be a lot of fun to play, and I’m looking at this incredible tone that they’ve created on the show,” Pace said. “It’s not just the story. It’s not just the incredible cast that they’ve put together. It’s not just the needle drops, the insane way they animate the fights. It’s the whole package. I know that I’m playing a very small role in that, but it’s a role that I want to bring the most that I can to.”

Pace brings a lot — most notably, reservation. Thragg is the ultimate villain of “Invincible,” one with raw, immense power on a scale that simply hasn’t been seen in the show to this point. He can knock opponents into and out of orbit with a single hit, punch them with such force that the drawing of his fist creates a whirlpool. It’s an unimaginable level of strength.

Yet Pace plays him quietly, speaking with a level, measured voice, one that always demonstrates control above all else.

“He’s strong and in control,” he said. “When the switch is flipped, he turns into a monster, a real beast, but the more I worked on the character and I learned where the character is going … his ambition is nothing short of dominating the entire universe, and he thinks he can do it. He’s got a plan.”

“This character is so powerful that what I wanted from him for most of the performance was a sense of calm,” Kirkman said. “When you have that power, it’s gonna take a lot to get a rise out of you. You’re always gonna be operating from a place of comfort and ease because you know you’re able to handle anything. I think Lee’s performance is absolutely masterful.”

This isn’t the first time Pace has played a comic book villain. The actor previously played Marvel’s Kree antagonist Ronan the Accuser in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Captain Marvel.” While that villain’s appearances are comparatively brief, Pace noted that Kirkman, Racioppa and the “Invincible” crew have taken a “detailed approach” to this Viltrumite’s fall.

“He does what he believes is right. He’s a Viltrumite who conducts himself through principles and ultimately fails. Karma gives him what he’s got coming to him in a lot of different ways, and he’s not done fighting.”

Pace wouldn’t say what moments he’s most looking forward to in Thragg’s future, though he did note particular excitement for a fight fans of the comic surely have on their minds.

“There are certain moments that have pulled my attention in the story,” he said. “Certain really fun fights that, we haven’t finished the story yet, but that I’m excited to see.”

The future of “Invincible”

Like the rest of the show so far, “Invincible” Season 4 walks the line between being entirely faithful to the comic and making bold choices in the adaptations. One of the most notable diversions this season was the gender-swapping of Tech Jacket, a hero created by Kirkman and E. J. Su who has their own spin-off comics in the “Invincible” universe.

The animated series changes the comics’ Zack Thompson to Zoe Thompson, casting Zoey Deutch as a gender-swapped version of the character (with LeVar Burton voicing Tech Jacket’s native AI).

“Tech Jacket has his own series and his own stories and is definitely a fully well-rounded character, but I think in the context of ‘Invincible’ and the way we adapted the Viltrumite War storyline, if Zack were to show up, there’s not a lot that you’re gonna get from that character that you’re not getting from Oliver or Mark,” Kirkman said. “There’s just a lot of similarities there.”

Instead, Zoe brings a new perspective to the otherwise male-dominated team fighting against the Viltrumite Empire. Kirkman said that some of Zoe’s personality reminds him of his own daughter: her humor, her energy. “I tell my daughter not to curse, and it doesn’t work,” he laughed, mirroring a moment in the show between Zoe and her own father.

“One of the downsides of ‘Invincible’ is Cory Walker and I were like 23 and 21 when we started that book, and your default when you’re not really paying attention is yourself,” Kirkman admitted. “Every time we introduce another character, ‘Oh look! It’s another white male! Who knew?’ It’s just a shortcoming that we hadn’t quite noticed and done our due diligence to correct.”

Going off of the comic, this season marks roughly the halfway point of the “Invincible” story, with Kirkman still planning to wrap up this epic in “seven, eight, nine” seasons depending on how things shake out (and how far Prime Video will renew them past Season 5). “Invincible” Season 4 starts to pull in more stories from the expanded universe, pulling in concepts like the villainous group The Order and the lore of Tech Jacket that were resolved in spin-off comics rather than the flagship series. Though Kirkman said he would love to a show revolving around the Astounding Wolfman or the Guardians of the Globe, he noted that audiences don’t need to worry about dangling threads.

“We’re not gonna start stories in this show with the plan of not continuing them and concluding them within the confines of this show,” he said. “We’ll be touching on The Order plenty in future seasons, so there should be no fear.”

“Invincible” Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Prime Video.

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