Is Mark Grayson meant to be this much of an asshole? (Invincible Season 3)

I’ve had my gripes with Invincible ever since season 2, but it reached critical mass with this most recent episode.

Invincible is sometimes a great show. It has an excellent cast of characters and some fantastic action set pieces. I used to love its writing as well. Season 1 is perfect in my eyes, there’s nothing I’d change. Season 2 was a serious step down. It felt extremely directionless and its main antagonist was frustrating to watch because of his nonsensical motivations combined with his extreme cruelty. Thankfully, he died at the end. Or not.

The first few episodes of season 3 felt like a return to form. It wasn’t as strong as season 1, but there was still a clear thematic throughline that demanded our main character take a hard look at his unexamined beliefs.

Then, we just did… nothing, for a good chunk of our 8 episode season. Mark would face deeply traumatic and thematically relevant antagonists, yet learn nothing from these encounters.

Finally, we get to the Invincible War. 18 evil Invincibles laying waste to the world, with the heroes of Earth barely able to keep up. People are dying by the thousands, and it’s all because of the season 2 villain coming back more hateful and nonsensical than ever.

But there’s one other person that deserves the blame: our very own Mark Grayson. He barely participates in fighting his evil alternate selves, even though he’s the one best equipped to fight them.

He fights a little bit on day one, but after seeing his girlfriend get injured, he spends the entirety of day two huddling by her bedside in the Pentagon medical ward. He says he’s guarding the place in case another Evil Mark shows up, but they already have enough defenses. They don’t need him there, they need him on the goddamn frontlines. Mark is even called out on this but he just whines and sulks and does NOTHING.

The tone here is what really gets me. Mark isn’t written to sound panicked or irrational. He’s written like a petulant child who refuses to help the people who aren’t right in front of him. The whole series he’s agonized over people he couldn’t save, yet there’s a whole planet being slaughtered and he does NOTHING.

Later he’ll blame himself for not properly killing the season 2 villain. The weight is put on having the strength to take a life for the greater good. This would be fine and dandy if not for Mark apparently being too selfish to save lives as well. He pulled an Achilles in his tent when the world needed him most.

This is supposed to be our hero?!