Invincible Season 3 Episode 6 Review – “All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry”

This review contains spoilers for Invincible Season 3, Episode 6 Review – “All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry”

It’s been a while since large-scale devastation mattered on Invincible. To date, season 3 has shrugged off any and all bloodshed, but with its flashback to the highly-effective season 1 finale – in which Nolan/Omni-Man uses Mark/Invincible as a battering ram to kill thousands of civilians – “All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry” sets the stage for an emotionally rigorous reversal of that trend. The destruction of Chicago is seen through the eyes of GDA employee Scott, whose sister and niece are revealed to be two of the minor characters Mark brutally and inadvertently killed. This sets Scott down a path where he first seeks justice – it turns out Earth’s laws remain too inadequate to deal with the intricacies of superheroics – and then, failing that, cold-blooded vengeance, even if it means putting his wife and son in harm’s way.

The events in Chicago, while horrific, were never really rooted in any specific, individual loss before. Now, they’re jumping-off point for a difficult reckoning. As the anniversary of the event approaches, Oliver questions why people aren’t ready to forgive his father – who he only knew as a benevolent leader on Thraxa – forcing Mark to verbalize a difficult answer. People are still holding on to a pain that he buried long ago(if only so he could better function as a superhero), but Scott ­– now the villain Powerplex – doesn’t have that luxury. Holding Mark responsible for his family’s deaths, he shows up to Chicago repeatedly in a suit that turns physical blows into electricity, quite literally channeling his pain into power. (It’s a dark echo of the character Speedball/Penance in Marvel’s Civil War comics; in addition to its myriad parodies and pastiches, Invincible continues to draw immense power from its sincere, grounded reinterpretions and remixes of other superhero comics. See also: The traces of Watchmen and Miracleman in “All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry.”) Scott keeps demanding Invincible’s presence, and it takes a particularly dangerous scheme for them to finally come face to face during the episode’s climax. In the meantime, the arriving Shapesmith – who finally comes into his own as the show’s version of DC’s uber-annoying Plastic Man – only makes Powerplex more irritated, and thus, more dangerous.

The show builds its other subplots with more skill and balance than it has in recent weeks. Despite only factoring into one scene each, the Robot-Monster Girl and Rex-Rae pairings are allowed enough time and breathing room to make significant dramatic headway. Robot’s Hail Mary play to stop Monster Girl from aging in reverse finally pays off thanks to a tech-savvy belt – a moment of much relief for Monster Girl – though this emotional upswing dovetails into relationship tension elsewhere. After their first proper date last week, Rae confesses to Rex that she’s ready to leave the Guardians; being the hot-headed jerk he is, he can’t help but take the timing personally.

Some of the episode’s more charming and heartwarming (not to mention its funniest) moments come from Paul, Debbie’s boyfriend and the new awkward addition to the Grayson household. As the only “normie” in the group – Mark, Oliver, and Eve have powers, while Debbie has long been the mother and (ex-)wife to superheroes – Paul is hilariously out of his depth, especially when they “take the car” from the suburbs to Chicago for the memorial (i.e. Paul and Debbie sit inside the car while Mark carries it through the air, with Eve and Oliver flying alongside him). Of course, this tongue-in-cheek transition leads to a much more somber occasion, involving the inauguration of a memorial with all 2,300-plus names of the people who died that day, forcing Mark to really sit with what happened.

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