Invincible Season 2 Episode 7 recap: Anissa arrives

With Invincible Season 2 reaching its finale, here’s a recap of Episode 7 — Mark faces off against a new Viltrumite, and his relationship with Amber nears its end.

Considering how Invincible Season 2’s first half ended — with Nolan taken away for execution and Mark ordered to ready Earth for the Viltrumites — Part 2 has remained surprisingly unconcerned about the looming threat of the empire.

In the first two episodes of the new batch, Mark has been focused on other things; fighting off Sequids from Mars, trying to make his relationship with Amber work, helping at home with Oliver, and figuring out the clues hidden within his dad’s pulpy sci-fi novels.

In Episode 7, a notorious Viltrumite from the source material emerges, and one brief, brutal encounter changes everything.

Invincible goes to Comic-Con

We open at Comic-Con, where Amber and Mark are trying to take their mind off their relationship falling apart with light chit-chat (there’s also people dressed as Invincible running around and taking photos, which Mark finds really “weird”).

“Why can’t we just live here?” Mark jokes. “Because you’d die from a comic book overdose in like three hours,” Amber replies. But there’s a slight frost to all of their interactions; not anger, but uncertainty and discomfort — not with each other, but just out of concern that their days are numbered. Amber insists she doesn’t care what they’re doing together, as long as they’re just that: together.

Mark gets to meet Filip Schaff, the creator of Séance Dog (voiced by Tim Robinson). Alas, his time off is cut short: Eve calls him to say Rex has snuck out of the GDA hospital to go on a mission alone. Mark is forced to abandon Amber at Comic-Con to help him fight Octoboss, a “goddamn nightmare tentacle monster.”

Rex struggles at first; after all, this is his first mission after he was shot in the head. But he leaps into action, chucking countless explosives (none of which seem to hurt him). Octoboss eventually gets the better of him, pressing his foot on Rex’s chest — until Invincible swoops in with a mighty right hook. Rex asks him to handle his goons while he deals with Octoboss, and at this moment, he realizes his new hand has an explosive gun in it, which proves to be incredibly effective.

“I just thought I needed to get back on the horse. It was either that or retire and open a bar in some place hot,” Rex explains to Mark, who says he felt the same way after his brawl with Omni-Man. “I’m not sure anyone else could have come back from what you went through,” Rex says, before asking how things are going with Amber. Mark admits it’s not been great, so Rex offers to cover for him for a whole day.

The GDA is struggling

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Back at Guardians HQ, Rudy helps Amanda train in a new robot suit that would stop her from needing to transform — but she hates it. “Let me fix you,” he says, but she angrily responds: “I’m cursed, not broken.” At the same time, Bulletproof laments the naivety and issues with the team. “You’re right, we’re not the best superhero team on the planet: we’re family… we’re unbreakable when it counts. You’re new, so you just don’t get it yet,” Black Samson tells him.

The Immortal tells Cecil he’s “unstable, dangerous even” and wants to quit the Guardians. “I almost started an interplanetary war with his one-eyed friend. I was already broken. Kate’s death just finished me off,” he says, but Cecil refuses. “This is a temporary leave of absence,” he insists, before making Rudy the team’s leader once again.

Elsewhere, Rick struggles with nightmares of D.A. Sinclair ripping him limb from limb. “It was real, William, it happened,” he urges as William tries to calm him down. “I don’t want to adjust to this. I don’t know what’s worse: D.A. Sinclair tearing me apart or those doctors putting me back together.”

Back at the GDA, Donald tries to hand in his resignation. “You rebuilt me, lied to me, took away my agency… that crossed a line, sir. I cannot in good faith continue to work for you. I don’t even know who or what I am anymore. How am I supposed to be me? You erased my memories,” he says, so Cecil gives him access to all of his deaths; every time he was pancaked by a tentacle, burnt to a crisp in an explosion, and shot to death, among 36 other fatal incidents.

Mark builds up the courage to see the dean after all of his absences. However, he’s greeted by a familiar face: Principal Winslow, now the university’s dean. “I can’t decide which is worse: your grades or your attendance,” he tells Mark, saying that he should suspend him. “You need to make a choice, Mark: if it’s college, then commit to that. If it’s not, then commit to something else, but make a decision,” he urges. When Mark insists he wants to stay, Winslow tells him he’s got a month to convince him.

Mark tries to learn from Debbie’s past

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Debbie returns home from work, but before she goes inside, her co-worker Paul asks her out to dinner. She says yes, before going inside to see Oliver, who’s picking up things “quicker than any child I’ve ever worked with,” April says. Debbie asks if he’s shown any sign of powers, and while she hasn’t seen anything yet, she expects them to appear sooner rather than later.

Mark then talks to his mother about Amber, and asks about her relationship with Nolan before he was born. “He literally swept me off my feet. I was dating a superhero. I was so much fun back then, and he was so clueless too. He brought me a tree once instead of flowers,” she recalls, but it wasn’t all laughs. “He was also gone for so much of our time together. I was lonely a lot. When you came along, I thought that would help, and I love you, but it’s not the same. It was hard having to parent by myself for weeks at a time. Even now with Oliver, your dad’s not here — not that I would want him here, but still. Is it really a relationship if you’re mostly alone?”

Mark asks if she ever wishes she never met Nolan. “No, because I wouldn’t have you or Oliver,” she says, but when he asks how she’d feel if she didn’t have them, she struggles to answer. “I don’t know,” she awkwardly responds.

Over at the university, William calls Donald after finding Rick teetering on a rooftop, threatening to throw himself off it. He’s struggling too much with the trauma of what happened, and he thinks he’s missing parts of himself. Donald tells him he knows how he feels, revealing his robotic frame. “Each time I died, each time I was put back together, it was because I helped make this world a little better. You did the same when you fought back against Sinclair, when you saved Invincible and William’s lives. We’re not our bodies, we’re the decisions we make, the lives we change, the people we love… or who love us,” he tells him, and Rick starts sobbing as he allows William to help him off the ledge.

Mark and Amber meet Anissa

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That night, Mark assures Amber that he’s off the clock, so he takes her for a quick flight and some dinner. Soon, it goes very wrong: Anissa, a feared agent of the Viltrum empire, appears with her hand around Amber’s neck in a vice grip. “Come with me now, or this woman dies,” she tells him.

Mark promises to meet her in the sky if she leaves without hurting Amber or anyone else. He suits up, expecting another fight. “How little you know of your own people,” she tells him. “[And] we are your people. You simply haven’t accepted it yet.”

Anissa tells him that humanity has less than an 18% chance of surviving the next two centuries without the loss of billions of lives. “The powerful of this world destroy their own home… large areas of this planet will soon be uninhabitable because of human greed,” she says, and she has little patience for Mark telling her it’s complicated. “No it isn’t, we have the technology to repair their climate, feed their hungry, punish their criminals. We will save more of their lives in a single year than you could in 100. You are failing this planet and its people,” she explains.

Donald tells Cecil that Mark’s chances of surviving a fight against Anissa are less than 18%. After she insists the empire doesn’t want humans to die, Mark asks her to prove it by helping him fight a kaiju. “I will accompany you, I wish to see how strong the son of Nolan is,” she says. Mark is swotted away like a fly, so Anissa steps in — in other words, she fires through its head like a bullet and kills the monster instantly. “Humans were dying, so I took action, much like our empire will do when it controls Earth,” she tells him.

Mark and Anissa get the cruise ship to a nearby island. “Viltrumite occupation would make events like this a thing of the past. Be the person you’re supposed to be. Be your father’s son,” she says, but Mark refuses, believing humans need to make their own decisions. “I think you should go now,” he tells her. “Remember that we started with reason,” she says, before uppercutting him so hard he nearly reaches space and slamming him into the ocean. There’s no other words for it: it is a total ass-whooping, but Mark knows she can’t kill him. “Soon, another will come, and if he finds you still resistant to your destiny, he will demonstrate the error of your ways and this whole planet will pay the price. I pray you come to your senses before then,” she says before shooting into space.

Mark and Amber break up

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Mark goes back to Amber’s dorm; bruised, battered, and heartbroken, knowing what’s about to happen. Amber has been left terrified. “Her hand was like iron on my neck, like she could have pulled me apart in a second,” she says. “This isn’t about being brave or strong… this is different. I have no agency, Mark. who am I to be upset or sad or feel anything when you’re literally saving the world, when you disappear for months at a time? When I’m alone again instead of being with my boyfriend?”

“My life matters too. Maybe it’s small, maybe it’s not Earth-shattering, but it matters. It doesn’t matter when I’m with you. Worse than that, it’s a weapon someone can use against you like that woman did,” she adds. Mark says he doesn’t know who he’d become if Amber got hurt, but he doesn’t want to lie to her and say everything’s going to be okay. “I can’t live in your world, I really tried, but I can’t,” she says, and they both cry together. It’s officially over.

As Mark sits alone on the roof, he gets a call from his mother — but it’s not her on the phone. “Hello Mark, when are you coming home?” Angstrom Levy asks, before the episode cuts to the credits.

In the post-credits scene, Anissa returns to the Viltrumite prison. She explains to General Kregg that Mark refuses “both reason and heritage” and he’s “poisoned” like Nolan. Suddenly, collide with Allen as he’s flying through space, so Kregg sends Anissa out to fight him — but she can’t hurt him. She threatens to take him to the prison and cut him open to find the true source of his strength, so Allen allows himself to be captured. He smirks as he’s dragged in — it’s all part of the plan.

Invincible Seasons 1-2 are streaming now. You can also find out more about everything else we know about Invincible Season 3, the show’s soundtrack, and its cast, and see what other TV shows you should be streaming in April.

Episode 1 recap | Episode 2 recap | Episode 3 recap | Episode 4 recap | Episode 5 recap | Episode 6 recap | Episode 7 recap | Episode 8 recap

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