Invincible Season 4 May Shake Up The Show’s Structure, But There’s 1 Thing Its Showrunners Will Never Do

Invincible co-showrunner Simon Racioppa reveals the one thing that Prime Video show won’t do. The third installment of the Prime Video superhero series ended with one of the best Invincible episodes ever, combining nearly relentless violence with lots of optimism and heart. The titular character saved the day, with a major assist from Atom Eve. But, by the end of it, more danger was teased in Invincible season 4.

In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Joe Deckelmeier at WonderCon, Racioppa addressed the possibility of whether the show would alter its structure. Although the co-showrunner revealed that the show might do some things differently for the already-confirmed season 4, Racioppa cautioned that he wouldn’t want to do what he describes as “gimmicky” episodes like musicals or an installment that’s done in black-and-white. “That’s not what Invincible is,” the co-showrunner says, noting that franchise creator Robert Kirkman agrees with his assessment:

We’re always going to try and push boundaries a little bit. I don’t want the show to become gimmicky, and I know Robert doesn’t want that either, where we’re just like, “Oh, this is our musical episode. This is our backwards episode. This is our episode that’s black-and-white.” We’re not going to do that. That’s not what Invincible is.

But we are going to hopefully surprise you in places. We’re going to move things around. We sometimes do our end-of-episode coda in the middle, or sometimes we put it at the start. We’re going to do stuff like that, like play around with the title card. We’re not going to, again, give you our musical episode or anything like that.

Invincible: The Musical. [Laughs] I mean, I say never, but I don’t know. Let’s see how many more seasons they give us.

What This Means For Invincible

The Show Isn’t Trying To Reinvent The Wheel

At its heart, for better and sometimes for worse, Invincible has proven to be exactly what it is in the season 3 finale. A typical episode features a lot of violence juxtaposed with the sentimentality and more mundane problems that Mark faces. The show does try to play around with the established formula, as in a season 3 episode that goes to great lengths to humanize the otherwise inconsequential bad guys that Mark faces.

But for the most part, as affirmed by the co-showrunner’s comments, Invincible wants to excel at its core mission statement rather than delve into detours and episode experiments. These can be great in the right hands and with the right creative visions. Some of the most indelible episodes of TV in the past few decades, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Sopranos, could be described as gimmicky departures, but they work like a charm.

Our Take On Invincible Avoiding Departure Episodes

There Is A Positive Side To It

Heading into season 4, the crew and cast of Invincible reached a new high. They successfully managed to make a finale that is essentially one long fight compelling and deeply moving. It was also tense and, at times, genuinely uncomfortable to watch. If the animated adaptation generally hopes to stick to one specific lane, then at least it is steadily starting to perfect the kind of show that it wants to be. It’s good territory to be in, with a trajectory that could only improve.

Invincible

Release Date

2008 – 2008-00-00

Network

MTV

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  Patrick Cavanaugh

  Mark Grayson / Invincible (voice)

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  Pete Sepenuk

  Nolan Grayson / Omni-Man (voice)

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  Victoria Garcia-Kelleher

  Debbie Grayson (voice)