‘Invincible’ Reveals The Show’s Biggest Secret So Far

Invincible continues to put out a string of exceptional episodes here in season 3, and on the whole, yes, this seems to be going a whole lot better than season 2.

This week, we finally returned to Nolan’s story, imprisoned and willingly waiting for execution at the hands of his fellow Viltrumites for betraying his homeworld and shirking his Earth-conquering duties. Spoilers for the episode follow.

The bulk of this segment was a lengthy fight sequence with Allen and Battle Beast attempting, and more or less failing, to rescue Nolan until he freed himself and joined the fight against the pair of Viltrumites sent to kill him.

The result was Allen and Nolan executing a comic-famous double-punch to explode the head of one of the Viltrumites while Battle Beast tumbles through space fighting the other one, where it seems like he has a solid chance of winning that fight.

Allen worries about reinforcements arriving but Nolan assures him that won’t happen. He reveals what is the Viltrumites’ most closely-held secret, that it is not a full planet of Superman-like world-destroyers, but rather there are only fifty Viltrumites left, period. So, if one of them just died, they don’t want to send any more to possible lose another percentage of their dwindling total.

This news seemingly makes the Viltrumite threat way more manageable now, even if yes, we’ve seen that even one Viltrumite can destroy entire civilizations by themselves, as Nolan previously has. However, I have some questions here, namely…why?

Why are there only fifty Viltrumites left? Was there some big calamity that wiped out the rest of them, or was their civilization always that small?

Past that, why can’t the Viltrumites just reproduce and make more Viltrumites? Obviously Nolan has sired two kids of difference half-species that seem almost as strong as Viltrumites themselves, so what’s the deal? I’m sure the comic has answers, but as for the show, this is pretty confusing.

There has been a longrunning storyline about how science fiction books may hold answers to real-life tools to take on the remaining Viltrumites, but at this point, we seem to have at least five heroes strong enough to fight them, Nolan, Allen, Invincible, Battle Beast and Oliver, which isn’t a bad start. Oh, and the guy helping Allen, perhaps, if he’s still tough enough.

I am really enjoying this season and all it’s different plotlines. It was also nice this week to move away from blood and guts at least for a moment for Mark and Eve’s date. But I imagine that kind of thing will be few and far between from here.

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