Invincible

Amazon

While Invincible has its ups and downs, in the season 3 finale, it has what is unequivocally its peak episode out of all three seasons. That would be “I Thought You’d Never Shut Up” which features the arrival of Conquest, and far and away the most epic, brutal and brilliant fight the series has ever seen, which takes up almost the entire runtime of the entire finale. The result? A perfectly scored episode of Invincible with a 10/10 on IMDB, even with thousands of reviews in. Spoilers follow.

For literally years now, comic-readers have been hyping up the arrival of Conquest in the show, and here he was, voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, giving Steven Yeun a Negan/Glenn Walking Dead rematch, which was pretty funny (Invincible’s Robert Kirkman, of course, created The Walking Dead).

Things were less funny after that.

The last best fight before this was probably Mark versus Nolan in season 1 (this year’s Allen, Nolan and Battle Beast versus double Viltrumites was pretty good), but the conquest fight is in another league.

There was a storyline this year about Mark creating a supervillain because in one of his fights, he collapsed a building that killed a man’s sister and niece. Here, at one point, Conquest craters Mark into the earth with a blow so strong it levels an entire city.

Invincible

Amazon

Mark seems to get a few shots in at the start, but Conquest reveals he’s just toying with him, and 90% of the rest of the fight is Mark getting destroyed, along with brief cameos from Oliver and Eve, also getting destroyed.

The climax of the fight has Eve getting gutted by Conquest and Mark, of course, losing his mind as a result, thinking she’s dead. But Eve’s true matter-rearranging power unleashes, and we later learn she was able to rebuild her body and then unleash energy so strong it took most of Conquest’s skin off. Mark, despite both arms broken, beats Conquest to death with his head, though the best part of this whole fight was an earlier intermission where Conquest admits to Mark that he’s lonely, and all the other Viltrumites are scared of him. “Take it your grave.”

Conquest, though apparently dead, is not dead, and actually is being held by Cecil so he can get information about the Viltrumites, which does not seem like it’s going to end well.

There have been some complaints about Invincible’s animation quality as of late, as no, it doesn’t compare to other projects, especially lots of popular animes. But this week, there was no mistaking just how much everyone on the team cooked here, animators, writers, actors, everyone. It’s easily the best, most memorable Invincible episode, and genuinely one of the best episodes of TV within the past year (going to put Paradise episode 7 on that list, which I also watched this past week).

It’s a monumental achievement for the show, and an incredible finale that will be hard to top. But I can’t wait to see them try.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.