Believe me, I understand that it is annoying when fans of a series keep bugging you to watch something, but you are really missing out if you do not watch Invincible, especially its newest season. The high stakes, the thrilling fights, the complicated familial bonds, and even “touchier” topics such as abortion are all possible subjects for another raring review by yours truly. In this piece, however, I would like to focus on the season’s engagement with right-wing and fascist ideas as well as its exhibition of themes around complacency and resistance. I find this to be especially important because there are some things to be learned by all of us in the current political climate.
But before that, let me briefly summarise for those who are unfamiliar: Invincible, in short, follows the 20-odd-year-old superhero Mark, aka “Invincible”. He is half Viltrumite, a superpowered humanoid alien species whose self-imposed mission is essentially to colonise and enslave the entire cosmos. However, due to Mark having grown up on Earth, he does not share their ideologies, making him one of the very few “good” Viltrumites. And since the Viltrumite’s strength supersedes that of every other species, it is up to Mark and his allies to save Earth and the entirety of the universe from them. This was established in the very first season, but what is new is the specific contextualization of Viltrumite mentality and history, explaining why they are (justifiably!) called “Space Nazis” by some.
Our first avenue for understanding this is seeing the origin of Mark’s generational trauma, or more precisely, the backstory of his father, Nolan. We are shown how a younger Nolan works as an instructor for children on Viltrum, indoctrinating them with Social Darwinist ideas. They are made to echo facts about “The Great Purge”, in which all Viltrumites fought each other to death in order to weed out the “weak”. The concluding lesson is that it made them “stronger” and that The Purge “carved away their cancer, so that the strong could stand free.” Nolan then concludes that their strength is why the universe is their “right and destiny” and that if they did not deserve it, they would not be capable of taking it. Sounds familiar, right? Yes, you would be right to think about the Nazis and their indoctrination of children at a young age, but think again. For many of us, history is an abstract variable, something that is too distant to apply to people of the twenty-first century. What we forget is that with the rise of extremist sentiments all over the world, we are heading down a similar path. The US, for example, has allowed several states to ban books on Critical Race Theory in classrooms, preventing students- our future!- from critically engaging with mistakes from the past. It creates room for the kind of susceptibility to believe one is superior and allowed to do as one pleases (like Trump believing he can invade whatever country he wants and his supporters cheering him on). Having all of us see how these beliefs can lead to devastating consequences is an entirely different matter because it forces us to stop viewing things from a distance. Here, I believe that the order of things also played a great role. As the audience, we were first shown the devastating consequences of Viltrumite brutality in the previous seasons, with entire cities having been laid to waste from battles between two Viltrumites, and thousands having died excruciating and horrifying deaths. To then show us, only after that, why some Viltrumites believe that they are justified in their colonial enterprises makes, hopefully, even the most naïve of us question them. It should make us think, “Why would they believe they are entitled to everything, when they are clearly tyrants who just want to become more powerful?”. Consequently, this can provoke a whole new realm of questions around our reality and hopefully incite some soul-searching in us as members of Western societies. It should make us question our misguided implicit belief that we are somehow superior and how that superiority ratifies our interference in other places, even if it is not easy to tell immediately because not all governments do it as openly and aggressively as the Trump administration. Still, it does not end there with Invincible: when Nolan is done teaching, he is attacked by a man and a woman, who, for lack of a better term, beat him to a bloody pulp. They are revealed to be his parents, enacting a Viltrumite tradition– one where parents ensure that their children would be strong enough to fight for the Viltrum Empire upon reaching adulthood. And what is a better way to do that other than almost killing your child, right? But once again, there is a lesson to be learnt: the Viltrum Empire does not thwart this brutality; it encourages it, and yet it still manages to ensure that every single one of its soldiers is perfectly loyal. It shows how many regimes do not care about their individual citizens, how they are considered as little more than cannon fodder, emphasising the absurdity of people still being willing to die for their countries. It is vital for us to remember, in turn, that the same goes for our governments, who might want to send us young people to fight their pointless wars sometime in the near future.
Furthermore, there is the weight of how pervasive and, dare I say, virulent this kind of indoctrination is towards its “own people” as well. In another flashback, we are shown what “The Great Purge” looked like, which was essentially the Viltrumite’s leader telling his people to start fighting each other “to root out any weakness”. And the Viltrumites’ response? They turned around and started fighting and killing each other, children included, without a second’s hesitation. The absurdity of it is almost funny if one ignores that some of these people must have been acquaintances or even family. Still, they managed to do so, to harm their own, just because they were told to. While it might seem exaggerated, it once more points towards reality: how people happily started signing up for ICE, violently detaining and even killing people who might have been their neighbours or acquaintances. Still, they did it. After all, their leader endorsed this behaviour to root out a specific group because their ethnicity and citizenship proved them to be “superior”.
In my opinion, not enough people have protested against this firmly enough, leading to the status quo remaining the same. A similar case existed in Viltrum: not a single Viltrumite rebelled against the Empire, other than a single rebel, until Mark, even after The Purge. It drives home how, even living among the worst of circumstances- that is, a constant paranoia that your own might try to kill you because you might be too weak- some people are still not capable of thinking independently, and believe that their leaders know best.
In conclusion, Invincible’s newest season serves as a warning with its terrifying proximity to reality. It shows us what greater terror we might face if we do not stand up against oppression and try to change things, if we do not act now.
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