Invincible Season 2 Episode 8 recap: He wasn’t stronger

Episode 8 closes out Invincible Season 2 in superb, traumatic style, adapting one of the comic’s most iconic moments to bloody perfection.

Whether Mark knew it or not, Invincible has been leading to this moment: a long-awaited face-off with Angstrom Levy, the multiverse-hopping villain whose grotesque origin kicked off Season 2.

While Mark’s been fighting deep-sea Depth-Dwellers, reconnecting with his dad in a faraway galaxy, tussling with Viltrumites, and curbing the Sequid threat, Levy has been busy tracking down other Invincibles across countless alternate realities — and in all of them, he’s broken bad to help Omni-Man.

Our Mark isn’t the same as the rest, but this climactic showdown with Levy is a frightening forecast for the character’s future in the show. “I thought you were stronger.”

Angstrom Levy sends Mark through the multiverse

Before we catch up with Mark, we open on Omni-Man smashing his way through training droids. Four guards shoot him and think he’s been neutralized, but moments later, one of them is uppercutted so hard he splats into multiple pieces on the ceiling. General Kregg comes in and tells him to stop. “It seems you’ve passed inspection, finally fit for your execution… congratulations,” he says.

Back on Earth, Mark arrives home to find Angstrom Levy with his hands around Debbie’s head. “There’s a chance you could kill me before I snap her neck, I’m not sure. You could try if you like, do you want to take that risk? Is the Mark Grayson of this dimension a risk-taker?” he asks, and Mark stands still. “Noted for future reference,” Levy adds, before silencing Mark’s earpiece to prevent them being “interrupted.”

Mark asks Levy to let his mom and Oliver go, as well as explain who he is and why he’s here. Levy is shocked that Mark doesn’t remember him at first. “You’re that guy,” Mark realizes. “That’s all you remember of me, that I was ‘that guy’? You made me into a monster. I was gonna save the world, all of them,” Levy says, tightening his grip on Debbie’s head as Mark clenches his jaw, before throwing both of them across the room and onto the floor.

Levy then explains he was saved by doctors in other dimensions, but they weren’t able to fix his appearance. “So now, I’ll always have a reminder of you and what you did,” he says. As Mark stares him down, Levy taunts him. “Oh I agree, come get me,” he says, but as Mark rockets toward him, Levy opens a portal and leaves Mark in an alternate reality with talking dinosaurs. They’re shocked that Mark can speak, but as they try to eat him, Levy brings him home.

As Mark falls through the portal, he sees Levy holding Oliver. “I like your brother’s color. So unique. It’ll give him something to talk about at parties, if he lives to attend one,” he says, noting that this is the first reality with him in it. Mark threatens to kill Levy if he hurts his brother. “Your little family is safe, as long as I don’t determine that the only way to hurt you is to hurt them. So do them a favor and die,” he says, before chucking Oliver across the room. Debbie catches him, but before Mark can get his hands on Levy, he sends him through another portal.

This time, he lands in the middle of a fight between… Agent Spider and Prof Ock (yes, it’s definitely meant to be a spin on Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus). Agent Spider hints he’s had a lot of experience lately with different dimensions (could this be canon to Spider-Verse?), and urges he’s the good guy here. Prof Ock then yanks him into the air.

Meanwhile, Debbie assures Oliver that it’s going to be okay. “There’s no way to know that for sure,” Levy tells her. “What kind of mother lies to her son like that? I said you were safe, as long as your son suffers and dies like he’s supposed to. And speaking of,” he adds, before Mark appears again. He warns him not to attack, as Levy will make sure Debbie and Oliver plummet to their deaths through a portal.

“You’re not gonna hurt them, and you’re not gonna hurt me. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but you’re not a killer. I’m sorry I didn’t remember you, but I remember that night. You were trying to save me. Maybe that accident changed you, but you were a good person trying to do a good thing,” Mark says, but Levy is enraged and sends him through another portal. He can’t imagine why he’d save Mark, but his memories collide and drive him even crazier; we see the moment he stopped the machine, Omni-Man telling Mark to kill everyone, and his son being murdered by Invincible (sporting a cape) in another dimension, among other traumatic flashbacks (we even see Mark carrying out mass executions).

“He’s a murderer, a monster, I would never save him. He deserves to die right now!” he screams, but Mark manages to land a punch as he comes back through a portal. He tells Levy it’s over. “It’ll never be over, not until you pay for everything you’ve done,” he says. Mark asks him to let his mom and brother go and offers Levy a chance to take his “best shot” — but Levy isn’t interested. “Where would be the fun in that?” he asks.

“I thought you were stronger”

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Mark says he’s not flying through any more portals, so Levy throws a knife at Debbie’s head. As Mark flies over to catch it, he makes himself vulnerable to entering another dimension — and this one is full of zombies. “Your son is more resilient than anticipated. Maybe I should leave him somewhere time runs quicker,” Levy ponders, before Debbie smashes a vase over his head. He slaps her to the floor, she slashes him with a piece of glass, but it’s futile — just as Mark reappears, he’s sucked into another portal.

Levy calls Debbie a traitor to humankind and says her family’s legacy is blood. Debbie explains that Mark defied Nolan and chose to not take over Earth. “You make it sound like this is the one world where Mark is good and you’re the one who’s bad… oh, that’s why you’re so angry! Because you turned out rotten here, and Mark is the hero for once,” she tells him, so he slams her into a table and breaks her arm as Oliver cries. “I am not the villain,” he shouts.

“Your attack accomplished nothing… I am going to make your son hurt. I’m gonna make you hurt. I’m even gonna make this child hurt,” Levy growls, holding Oliver upside down. Meanwhile, Mark sits around a campfire explaining his situation to random people, when he’s suddenly transported through multiple dimensions with massive cavemen, Omnipotus, Batman (!), and Mad Max-esque ravagers.

Levy pokes his head through, but before he can close it, Mark catches Levy. He catches sight of Debbie and loses it, torpedoing him out of the house and into the sky. They crash down, and Levy reveals he now has super-strength. “Why do you think I sent you across the multiverse, huh? Why do you think I was softening you up? I don’t want you to die in some random dimension. I want to do it myself,” he tells him, punching him through several dimensions.

“This doesn’t stop until you and your family are dead,” Levy says, and it’s the final straw for Mark. “Stop threatening my family,” he shouts, before unleashing his true Viltrumite strength. “You have no idea what I’ve been through, how much I’ve been holding back,” he says, slamming Levy into the ground and beating him to a pulp like never before. Mark is sickened and shaken by his actions. “I thought you were stronger,” he mutters, trembling (we don’t even see Levy’s face, so it must be pretty bad).

Back at home, Cecil arrives with the GDA. “Where’s Mark?” Debbie asks, but Cecil doesn’t have any answers. For now, Mark is stranded in another dimension as he tries to justify his violence. “He made me do it, I didn’t wanna do it… I had to,” he says, arguing with himself. “I lost control… what does that make me? I thought he was stronger, he told me he was stronger! I wanted to kill him but I didn’t know if I could.”

Mark realizes he’s stuck on this Starfield version of Earth. “I’m gonna die here,” he says, as he starts laughing manically. “Angstrom Levy… kinda won.”

Allen finds Omni-Man

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Up in the Viltrumite prison, General Kregg beats lumps out of Omni-Man. “The council states that for a Viltrumite to be executed, he must be whole and intact, worthy to stand and face the end of his life at full strength. But they say nothing of bruises,” he says, before ordering the men to return Nolan to his cell. As he walks back, Allen catches sight of him. “I’m here for you,” he tells him telepathically.

Mark gets a lifeline: Guardians from the future — 20 years exactly — arrive through a portal, having used a time machine to find him. “The world we come from, the world where we’ve been missing all these years… it’s not good,” Eve explains. Robot (who’s actually Rex) is wary of disrupting the time stream, so he sends Mark home. Before he walks through the portal, Eve tells him she loves him and has done so for a “very long time… I should have told you… tell her you love her, or tell her you don’t love her. Tell her something so she can go on with her life.”

Mark makes it back to his timeline and goes to see Debbie in the hospital. “Is it over?” she asks, and he starts sobbing — he’s killed before, but never like that. Cecil tells him he’s not his dad, but Mark admits to “losing it” and “crossing the line.” Cecil says he kept his mother and brother safe. “If the bad guys are dead and the good guys are alive, that’s a good day,” he tells him. “You weren’t there,” Mark whispers, before flying off.

Rudy asks Amanda to talk. “I’m still learning to navigate the world of in-person interactions… I apologize. But your transformations are a problem. You’ve expressed that yourself, and I fix problems. It’s what I’m good at, it’s who I am. I care for you, so I wanted to fix your problem. I’m sorry if along the way I became a problem myself,” he says, and she accepts his apology. “I get that you wanna help, just talk to me first like a person, not a broken gadget or computer… and not just what’s wrong with me, most days I’d rather talk about literally anything else,” she tells him, but adds that if he finds out a way to stop her de-aging, he should tell her. Oh, and she wants to go on another date.

The finale then reveals a big surprise: Dupli-Kate isn’t dead, and the Immortal finds her last clone in his cabin. “I always kept hidden and lived through a copy, just in case. I was so tired of dying, I was gonna walk away and become someone else… but I couldn’t, because of you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she explains, and the Immortal hugs her. “It’s okay, everything’s okay,” he says.

Mark goes hypersonic

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Over in Egypt, two women (one of whom has superpowers, though they’re not particularly strong) break into a tomb. They stumble on the body of the same archeologist from Season 1 — and he’s the father of one of them! The spirit rises from his sarcophagus, but pauses his ghoulish speech when he realizes they’re both women. “I must inhabit a living male host to escape the curse of this tomb,” he says.

Suddenly, rubble starts falling around them. Outside, Invincible flies by so fast in anguish that he buries the tomb. As he booms through the sky, his mind is cast back to telling his dad he wanted to be “just like him”, his fight with Nolan, and his blood-soaked hands after killing Levy. He goes faster than ever before, entering a stargate beyond the speed of light before arriving back in Chicago. He hovers above the university, smiling as Amber walks with her friends — but just as he’s about to say hello, he thinks better of it and leaves.

Debbie returns home; it’s absolutely pristine. April takes Oliver to bed, and Mark asks his mother if she’s okay. “I’ll be fine,” she assures, and she makes dinner. Later that night, they sit on the rooftop together. “Things are gonna be different now, aren’t they?” she asks. “I was starting to feel like we were getting close to some version of normal.”

Mark reveals he’s quitting college, believing it’s pointless. “With everything I can do, tell me why I need to go to college,” he tells Debbie, but as she tries to explain how it’ll help him with more than qualifications, he starts to cry. “I can’t, I just… can’t. The things I can do, it’s too much… I have to get better, I have to learn how to control myself. It’s important. It’s the most important thing I can do… do you understand?” he asks, and Debbie gives him a hug.

Eve meets Mark on the bridge. She asks how he’s doing, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I’m always here for you — if you ever need a shoulder, I’ve got two,” she says. Their hands nearly touch, but Mark decides not to tell her anything about the other dimension. “It’s not fair, you don’t deserve this,” she tells him, and the episode ends as he rests his head on her’s.

Wait! There’s a post-credits scene, and it’s a whopper: back at the prison, Allen chats to Nolan. “I heard about what you did on Thraxa, we are on the same side now… you turned against the empire, Mark told me all about it,” Allen says, but Nolan asks him to leave Mark out of it. “Let the boy have a moment of peace, let me pay for what I did,” he tells him.

“I’m not a Viltrumite anymore, not really. I feel shame and regret for my actions, I see the suffering of lesser beings and it upsets me, deeply. What I did on Earth, the pain and destruction I caused, was immeasurable. What I did to those people, what I did to my son,” he says, and Allen tells him he could help stop the empire. “I deserve death,” Nolan responds, before adding: “And yet… I think I miss my wife.”

Invincible Seasons 1-2 are available to stream in their entirety now. Find out more about the show’s cast and soundtrack, and check out our other recaps below:

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

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