Invincible Season 4 Just Reopened The Walking Dead's Deepest Wound, 10 Years Later
Invincible Season 4 just blew up the internet: the Viltrumite empire’s shadow crashes hard into Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and his family after Episode 4, and Episode 5 looks set to push them past the breaking point—just as comic readers feared.
Well, that escalated quickly. The latest Invincible drops a fight so gnarly it feels designed to poke at a very specific TV trauma a lot of us still haven’t processed. And yes, the voices you think you recognize are exactly who you think they are.
Big spoilers for Invincible Season 4, Episode 5 ahead
Episode 5, titled 'Give Us a Moment,' finally brings Nolan back through the door. Omni-Man shows up to face the family he shattered, claims he’s changed, and says he’s now protecting Earth from the Viltrumite Empire. That redemption pitch comes with a recruitment offer: he wants Mark to join the Coalition of Planets and take the fight to the Viltrumites. Mark isn’t exactly thrilled, and neither is his half-brother Oliver, but they both sign on anyway.
The trip to Talescria goes sideways
Nolan, Mark, Oliver, Allen the Alien, Tech Jacket (Zoe), and the rest of their crew head out on the long haul back to Talescria. Mid-flight, they get jumped by a Viltrumite warship led by Conquest — the unhinged enforcer Mark nearly took off the board back on Earth.
What follows is a bloodbath in the void. Conquest goes after Oliver not once but twice, which flips a switch in Mark. He drags Conquest across the surface of a nearby planet, choking the life out of him. In a last, desperate move, Conquest literally punches through Mark’s abdomen and yanks out his intestines. The brawl ends with Mark wrecked on the ground, barely conscious and bleeding out, while Conquest appears to die from the strangulation.
Why this one hit a nerve
'Invincible vs. Conquest: Round 2' is rocketing up the trending charts for the obvious reason: it might be the most shockingly graphic animated fight a lot of viewers have ever seen. But there’s another layer here. Mark is voiced by Steven Yeun, Conquest is voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and both of them once headlined another ultra-violent TV moment together — on a show also created by Invincible co-creator and showrunner Robert Kirkman.
'The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be'
Back in October 2016, AMC ’s The Walking Dead returned for its Season 7 premiere with that episode, after the Season 6 finale left everyone dreading a brutal death at the hands of Negan (Morgan), the bat-wielding leader of the Saviors. The premiere pulled a nasty switch and killed two characters, with the gut-punch being Yeun’s Glenn — the group’s moral center. Negan’s bat, Lucille, crushed Glenn’s skull so viciously his left eye was dangling as he tried to get a goodbye out to Maggie (Lauren Cohan). That scene didn’t just cross a line; it drew a new one for TV violence and traumatized a whole generation of viewers.
Cut to almost a decade later, and Kirkman, Morgan, and Yeun have us white-knuckling it again. Between Episodes 5 and 6, expect a lot of anxious fans wondering if we’re about to watch a Glenn-esque fate play out all over again — this time in space.
Who’s who in this mess
- Mark Grayson/Invincible: Steven Yeun
- Nolan Grayson/Omni-Man: J.K. Simmons
- Conquest: Jeffrey Dean Morgan
- Oliver Grayson: Christian Convery
- Allen the Alien: Seth Rogen
- Tech Jacket/Zoe: Zoey Deutch
- Creator/showrunner connection: Robert Kirkman (also the creator of The Walking Dead comics)
Where to watch
Invincible Season 4 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The Walking Dead is streaming on Netflix.