Invincible Season 2’s Most Meta Scene Is Also a Hilarious Comic Easter Egg

This article contains spoilers for Invincible season 2 episode 7.

Robert Kirkman, creator of superhero comic Invincible and producer for Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of it, has heard all your complaints about the long wait between seasons 1 and 2. No like … really: he’s heard them all.

In just about every interview leading up to Invincible season 2 (including one with Den of Geek), Kirkman has dutifully addressed the 18 month delay between episodes and promised to make future waits shorter.

“This is a very complicated show,” Kirkman told ComicBook.com. “There’s a lot of work going into it. Making an animated series is kind of like assembling a factory and getting that factory running, and now that we have everything in place, this is going to be the longest gap there will ever be between seasons. From this point on, every gap between seasons will be smaller.”

Still, Kirkman (who also created The Walking Dead) has operated within the genre fandom realm long enough to know that many onlookers won’t believe it until they see it. Perhaps that’s why Invincible season 2 directly addresses the difficulties of animation in one perfect, hilariously meta scene.

Invincible season 2 episode 7 “I’m Not Going Anywhere” opens with Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and Amber Bennett (Zazie Beetz) attending a comic book convention. The show doesn’t explicitly confirm that this is San Diego Comic-Con but the palm trees and distinct angles of the San Diego Convention Center suggest that it is. After enduring the indignity of seeing Invincible cosplayers, Mark makes his way inside to get his comic books signed by one of his favorite writers, Filip Schaff.

As Mark presents his copy of Seance Dog (an update of Science Dog from the Invincible comic) he has a question for his literary hero: “I gotta ask: when’s the new season of Seance Dog coming out?”

“You mean the show? Probably not for another year,” Schaff says. “Sorry, animation takes a looooong time.”

That alone is enough to canonize Invincible acknowledging the long wait between seasons within its own text. But the show then even goes a step further, delivering a detailed lesson on the various strategies used to cut corners in animation. The full conversation is transcribed below, along with some revealing “stage directions.”

Mark: “Ah I can’t imagine how much work it must be for those fight scenes.”
Filip (Mouth off camera): “Yeah those take awhile but we cut corners in other places to make it manageable. You ever notice that sometimes whoever’s speaking has their mouth off camera so you never see their lips moving?
Mark (Covering his mouth): “Huh, I hadn’t noticed that.”
Filip (Camera positioned behind his head): “Or we’ll cut to the back of someone’s head when they’re talking for the same reason. Other times we’ll do a wide shot and pan across it. It looks like it’s animated but it’s so far away you don’t notice nothing’s moving. The best part is, because all these scenes have limited animation, we can make the drawings even better. But sometimes the artists get carried away and it kind of looks like a different show.”
*CUT TO MARK LOOKING WAY DIFFERENT*
Filip: “It’s crazy what you can get away with. Thanks for coming by!
Mark: No, thank you! I’m gonna watch season 2 way closer.

Mark’s closing thoughts surely occurred to viewers themselves. It’s hard to imagine not watching the rest of season 2 more closely (which at this point consists of only the rest of this episode and next week’s episode 8).

What’s really remarkable about this hyper metatextual moment isn’t that Invincible season 2’s writers thought of it in the first place … it’s that they didn’t think of it. A version of this scene actually plays out early in the Invincible comics’ run. Just as the Invincible TV show uses the Seance Dog interaction to reveal how challenging animation is, the comic uses the Science Dog moment to reveal how challenging illustration is. Here is a screenshot of the moment in full:

Invincible‘s first issue was released on Jan. 22, 2003 and the next two issues followed on a strict monthly schedule. Beginning with issue 4, however, Kirkman and illustrator Corey Walker weren’t quite as punctual – with the wait between installments often taking up to two months. The above scene takes place in Invincible #10 and serves as an acknowledgement of fan frustration and a promise that the book would get back on track.

The Invincible comic eventually did get back to a more regular monthly schedule. So we have every reason to believe the show will do the same. Especially now that we know all the tricks of the trade.

The Invincible season 2 finale premieres Thursday, April 4 on Prime Video.