The last few years have been great for viewers who enjoy standard-issue CW teen dramas (Gossip Girl forever!) but want a little something extra mixed in. Bridgerton blends in period-piece flair and a Cinemax "Skinemax" pulse, while I Am Not Okay With This blends a teen story with dark supernatural mystery. And don't forget how Anna and the Apocalypse manages to weave together teen drama, Christmas stories, zombies, and musicals (albeit in a film).
But no show has playfully leveraged genres with a teen narrative at its core as creatively as Invincible, Amazon Prime's new animated series based on the Robert Kirkman comics. The story follows ho-hum high school nobody Mark Grayson doing all the usual stuff: trying relationships, considering his post-graduation future, and dealing with overarching family drama. But all that noise only gets more complicated because Mark happens to be the son of the most powerful being in the galaxy, a Superman-like figure known as Omni-Man to the world (and Nolan to his family). Teen drama meets a superhero story, meaning the guy coming of age happens to be coming into his powers, too.
Invincible wraps its first season this weekend, and Variety reported Amazon has renewed the show for two more seasons already. That's great news, because it means people who love superheroes now have time to catch up. This show may not have "Marvel's" in the title, but after these eight episodes, I'm extremely confused why you'd get your new caped crusader kicks anywhere else.
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Way better than that Wahlberg movie
Invincible is far from the first show or film to blend teen drama and superheroes; see everything from last year's X-Men: New Mutants to the entire existence of Spider-Man. And of course merely alluding to, referring to, or borrowing from a multitude of genres and archetypes does not make successful entertainment (sorry, Ready Player One). Instead, what makes Invincible's initial eight episodes stand out is that the show juggles so many different influences in such a natural way.
Invincible starts as a teen drama with a superhero element that gets quickly introduced. But season one also has the systemic-driven crime drama of The Wire when Invincible (aka Mark's costumed identity) is getting his hero feet wet in episode 5. That's when he wants to help Titan, a Hulk-like henchman he took down earlier in the season. Titan is in debt to a bigger (equally superhuman) bad pushing drugs named Machine Head, and the former says he just wants out of the game to be a better husband and father. Perfect case for a burgeoning hero, right?