Robert Kirkman’s Blood-Soaked Twist In ‘Invincible’ Had Its Desired Effect

(Spoilers for Amazon Prime and Robert Kirkman’s Invincible will be found below.)

Amazon Prime’s Invincible debuted its first three episodes over the weekend. They were a huge hit with viewers and critics alike, as the series currently stands at 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (and 99 percent from audiences). The series hits that sweet spot between The Boys and Peter Parker, only the series also has the ability to surprise with intensely bloody sequences that manage to be gruesomely shocking even in animated form.

One such sequence comes at the end of the premiere episode of Invincible. In the episode, teenage Mark Grayson comes into the superpowers he inherited from his father, Omni-Man, an alien born on the planet Viltrum. Omni-Man himself is a beloved superhero and works with the Guardians of the Globe, an Avengers-like team of superheroes. Omni-Man seems like an honorable superhero and a good father to Mark, at least until the blood-soaked twist in the end in which Omni-Man brutally, violently murders the members of the Guardians of the Globe.

Why? That remains unclear, and for those who don’t know Robert Kirkman’s source material, it’s not even clear if Omni-Man knows himself. “Yeah, that’s by design,” Robert Kirkman told The Wrap. “There should be a little bit of mystery to that. Why did he do it? Was he being controlled? Is this something that he was aware that he was doing at the time? What purpose could killing these heroes actually serve? These are all questions that you should be asking yourself.”

Interestingly, however, that big twist comes later in the comics run, but Kirkman decided to move it up into the premiere episode for the animated series. It ends up being a huge stunner not just for casual viewers, but even among those who know the source material. Kirkman told The Wrap that he moved the twist up to create some early tension in the series.

“By moving that event up– in the comic book series, it happens much later and there isn’t this sense of, ‘Oh my gosh, when are people going to find out? And what are they going to do when they find out?’ Because everything just kind of rolls from there,” Kirkman told TheWrap. “By having it move up, we do get an extra sense of like, ‘Oh my gosh, Debbie [Omni-Man’s wife, voiced by Sandra Oh] has no clue what’s going on with her husband. And how is she going to find out, if she finds out or when she finds out?’”

The big twist also got viewers invested in the series very early on, and if Kirkman’s intent was to shock viewers and leave them talking, It was definitely a case of job well done!

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So far, none of the other characters on the series are aware that Omni-Man is behind the massacre of the Guardians of the Globe. Who finds out and when is just another of the early ongoing mysteries. “I think that’s kind of the ticking clock of the series is, who is going to find out and when and what they are going to do with that information?” Kirkman told The Wrap.

When that ticking clock explodes, Invincible may just have another twist on its hands.