Invincible: Who is Atom Eve?

This article contains spoilers for Invincible episodes 1 through 3.

TV adaptations of comic books come along with some inherent advantages. In the animated realm, seeing existing comic art brought to life in dynamic fashion can add a whole new storytelling perspective, like in Amazon Prime’s Invincible. 

These adaptations also have some disadvantages, of course. One rather unusual drawback is that, unless a viewer is watching the series with closed captioning on, they are at the mercy of knowing characters’ names only through phonetic pronunciations. This isn’t a big hurdle 99% of the time. In Invincible’s case, however, it has led to one rather humorous case of mistaken identity. 

After Invincible premiered its action-packed first three episodes on March 26, some interested watchers took to Google and social media to learn more about a character named “Adam Eve,” Invincible’s new friend and ally played by Gillian Jacobs. Unfortunately, there is no such person…or at least not one named Adam Eve. Because, while Jacobs’ character’s name is obviously a play on the Biblical progenitors of humanity Adam and Eve, her name is actually “Atom Eve.”

Whoopsy daisies! It’s an honest mistake to make. But now that we’re all on the same page in knowing Atom Eve, it’s worth examining her character further and what makes her an integral part of Invincible’s story. 

Make no mistake, despite getting relatively limited screen time in relation to the Grayson family in Invincible’s first three episodes, Atom Eve is a major player in the world that writer Robert Kirkman created. As a member of the superhero outfit Teen Team, Atom Eve serves as a helpful guide for Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) as he enters into a world of superheroes. 

“Atom Eve is important in the early days of Mark figuring out what it means to be a superhero,” Jacobs tells Den of Geek and other outlets. “They have this dynamic from being classmates at the same high school who don’t really know each other to now having this new dynamic of both being superheroes.”

This can be seen early on as Atom Eve helps Mark stave off an invasion of extra-dimensional aliens in episode 2 and then assist him in taking down Doc Seismic in episode 3. Due to his Omni-Man ancestry, Mark will soon be more powerful than Eve and his other superhero peers if he isn’t already, but for now Eve is the practiced pro in this whole hero thing while Mark is still getting his sea legs. 

Though Mark’s powers are sure to outstrip everyone else’s eventually, Eve’s are pretty impressive from the outset. The “Atom” portion of Atom Eve’s superhero name is fairly literal. Eve possesses an ability to alter reality at a subatomic level. On its surface, this means she can change certain matter into other matter, Hogwarts Transfiguration class style. But Even is able to apply that power even further, and use it to achieve all of your traditional superhero feats: creating force fields of energy, and flying by manipulating the density of the air around her. 

Based on Invincible’s first three episodes, it would appear that Atom Eve and Mark have the makings of a love triangle alongside Amber Bennett (Zazie Beetz). After all, it’s probably telling that the first person Eve thought to seek out after discovering Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas) cheated on her was Mark. As comic readers know, this dynamic just cracks the surface of the journey that Mark and Eve are set to go on.

Invincible is about the perils of growing up and maturing in an increasingly chaotic, confusing world. Viewers will soon find out that there aren’t many better people to endure the twist and turns of adolescence into adulthood with than Atom Eve.

Invincible streams Fridays on Amazon Prime.