Invincible Season 2 Ending Explained: Did Mark Finally Win a Fight?

This article contains spoilers for Invincible season 2 episode 8.

Invincible‘s first season finale was a tough act to follow. Mark Grayson a.k.a. Invincible’s bloody battle with his own father Nolan a.k.a. Omni-Man is already the stuff of animated superhero TV (and meme) legend. Still the Invincible season 2 finale comes closer to recapturing the excitement than it has any right to.

After Mark got his ass handed to him by Nolan last time around, it’s finally his turn to do some ass-handing himself. Multiverse-hopper Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) immediately became one of Invincible’s greatest threats by holding his family hostage. Those stakes give this finale “I Thought You Were Stronger” an impressive emotional throughline.

And of course, there is some multiverse nonsense to enjoy as well. Here is how Invincible season 2 ends.

Wait, Was That Spider-Man?

Speaking of the multiverse, “I Thought You Were Stronger” really makes a meal out of the infinite storytelling possibilities multiple timelines represents. Angstrom Levy knows he can’t beat Mark in a fair fight so he sends him off to several other worlds to get softened up first. The first of those worlds includes a “Spider-Man” – or something as close to Spider-Man as copyright law will allow.

As Mark emerges from one of Angstrom’s green portals, he immediately finds himself in a fight between a web-shooting superhero and a supervillain with four robotic arms. The masked superhero is wearing a black and yellow costume rather than a red and blue. The logo on his chest is an “A” rather than a spider. But the intent here is unmistakable. That’s Spider-Man and Doc Ock. Or more accurately: Arachnid-Man and Professor Ock. The spider guy is even voiced by The Spectacular Spider-Man voice actor Josh Keaton!

After Mark effortlessly takes out Professor Ock, he expresses some concern over beating up an old man, to which the pseudo-Spidey quips: “Look I saw the portal. I know you’re from another dimension. I’ve got way too much experience with that. Especially lately. So uh…trust me. I’m the good guy here and Mr. Mechanical Arms is not.”

Believe it or not, Invincible is actually paying homage to comic history here as Mark Grayson and Peter Parker have teamed up before. The scene appears in Marvel Team Up (Vol. 3) Issue #14, in which Mark tumbles out of a green portal and helps Spidey take down Doc Ock. This crossover issue was published in 2004, a full four years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began with Iron Man. Since then, Marvel has become a bit more restrictive with its IP and an actual Spider-Man/Invincible crossover was never going to be in the cards.

Still, this brief moment in the finale serves as a fun little Easter egg for comic fans in the know. And the show doesn’t stop with just Spider-Man. Mark also enters into a Walking Dead universe, a Mad Max landscape, and even meets a grim crime fighter named after a bat.

Does Mark Defeat Angstrom Levy?

Hell yeah, he does! Didn’t you see all the blood? Mark’s battle against Angstrom Levy represents a major moment in his superheroic development. As Nolan observed back on Thraxa, Mark has a habit of holding back in fights, afraid of what his half-Viltrumite strength can do to the people of Earth … even the villains.

But Angstrom Levy took things too far. He threatened Mark’s family. And no amount of multiverse-shuffling was ever going to properly soften Mark up. Mark beats Angstrom Levy to death with his bare hands in what is one of the goriest scenes on this already very gory show.

“It’s intense. We wanted to really capture the pent up kind of frustration that the struggle that’s been always in in his being,” Steven Yeun told Den of Geek. “He’s always trying to push this thing down that he naturally has power in. That struggle eventually … it came out.”

Unfortunately, killing Angstrom Levy also robs Mark of his ticket back home from the unknown plane he finds himself in.

Does Eve Love Mark?

For a moment there it really does seem as though Mark is screwed. He is in a completely different universe from his home and the only known person with the ability to access other universes is in a puddle of guts at his feet.

“I’m gonna die here. Angstrom Levy. He kind of won,” Mark observes with a dark laugh.

When things look the most hopeless, however, the Guardians of the Globe arrive to save him. This isn’t the Guardians of the Globe we’ve come to know though. This lineup is from the future and includes older versions of Bulletproof, Robot, Monster Girl, Atom Eve, and two figures we haven’t met yet (a woman with boxing gloves known as “Knockout” and a man with a hammer who is probably “Kid Thor”). They’ve been searching for Mark for the past 20 years as their world has become dystopian without Invincible. Robot opens a portal to send Mark home and fix the time stream. But before Mark can take off, Eve has an important message for him.

“I love you, Mark. I have for a very long time,” she says. “I should have told you. No, don’t tell me. Tell her. Tell her you love her or tell her you don’t love her. Tell her something so she can go on with her life.”

This raises all sorts of fascinating time travel questions. Did Atom Eve always love Mark or did she come to in the 20 years of his absence? Does older Atom Eve telling Mark this information affect their eventual romantic destiny in one way or another? How does Mark even feel about all of this? Even Steven Yeun doesn’t know what to make of it all.

“It’s conflicting, right?” Yeun said. “It’s surprising but at the same time a relief. Or maybe like a real touching moment. It must confirm things to him and also betray things that he thought were true. Then at the same time, that’s who she is now – not necessarily who she is in his time. You’re not always the same person.”

Does Rex Become Robot in the Future?

Here’s a fun one. After Eve speaks with Mark, Robot takes his helmet off to chastise her. Under said helmet is none other that Rex Splode. Eve even addresses him as “Rex.” So does Rex Splode take on the mantle of Robot in the future? Not necessarily.

Recall that, back in season 1, Rudy Conners a.k.a. Robot used Rex’s DNA to build himself a new, functional body. It stands to reason then that, as Rudy Conners ages, he will come to look and sound just like Rex Sloan a.k.a. Rex Splode. He’s apparently even going by “Rex” now. It must be confusing to have two Rexes around, you know: assuming the other Rex is still around…

How Did Dupli-Kate Survive?

A few episodes back, Rex Splode, Shrinking Rae, and Dupli-Kate all appeared to meet their violent ends against an unusually lively Lizard League. It was then revealed that Rex survived a gunshot to the head and Rae survived being eaten alive. Now, in the finale, we find out that Dupli-Kate made it out as well.

Her method of survival was pretty simple: she never died in the first place. Since her ability is to make cloned copies of herself, she has essentially been retired the past few years – allowing Clone 1 to live and operate as the real Dupli-Kate as she herself, Clone 0, resides in a safe location. She actually had plans of leaving this whole superhero game behind and letting Clone 1 take care of things but she came to realize that she couldn’t leave her love, The Immortal, behind.

What Was With That Egyptian Mummy?

After all the drama between Mark, Angstrom Levy, and the Guardians of the Globe, the Invincible season 2 finale takes some time out for a bizarre detour. Without warning, the action cuts to somewhere in the desert. Two women, one of whom has super strength, invade the tomb of magical mummy known as Ka-Hor. There they find the emaciated body of a man (who the blonde woman says is her father) and then encounter the infernal spirit of Ka-Hor. The mummy begins to complain about not being able to inhabit the body of a woman before he is cut off by Mark flying by and scattering sand over the tomb.

So uh…what’s all that about? There is no character named Ka-Hor in the Invincible comics and nothing close to this plotline appears in the original canon. What this appears to be is a running joke for the Invincible TV series. We first “met” Ka-Hor and the man he killed back in season 1 episode 4. That scene was similarly cut short by Invincible flying by, lost in his own world. It’s certainly possible that these Ka-Hor appearances are building to something but for now it’s probably best to assume that the writers are just having some fun.

The “Trivia” section for Ka-Hor on the Invincible Wiki really does say it best: “It is unknown if the Ka-Hor plotline will be taken seriously from now.”

What’s Next for Omni-Man and Allen?

It’s not an Invincible finale if it doesn’t have a mid-credits scene. The stinger in “I Thought You Were Stronger” is actually more subdued than you might expect though. We had already seen Allen the Alien deliberately get captured by the Viltrumites and now we witness him meet up with Nolan in space prison.

Nolan is not particularly pleased that Allen has come to rescue him as he is ready for death. That’s because he has done the impossible and overcome his Viltrumite coding. He feels regret and remorse. And he feels something else as well…something impossible.

“I think…I miss my wife?” Nolan utters before the season comes to a close.

While a simple and sweet statement on its face, a Viltrumite expressing actual love for his human wife (someone he compared to a pet not too long ago) is downright revolutionary. It’s with that sentence, it’s clear that Nolan is not going down without a fight. Just one season after he became the ultimate villain, Nolan looks to be a powerful ally for Mark in the wars to come.

All eight episodes of Invincible season 2 are available to stream on Prime Video now.