This season of Invincible has some big shoes to fill, after the last season both raised the bar and simultaneously disappointed the audience in terms of what this show can do.
Now the question remains as to how can something raise expectations and lower them at the same time but that is for a different time, currently this show is dealing with some pretty interesting themes that I want to explore in this Blog post.
These three episodes have one job, catching us up to how things are and setting up the main conflicts that will drive the plot going forwards.
But that is alright, the point is, what are those two things?
Well I mean you have seen the title, you know what we are talking about.
Are there lines you should not cross? Is killing wrong? And if it is not in some cases, should the decision to do it lie in the hands of all powerful aliens who are out for conquest and eugenics?
Okay mark and Oliver are descendants of such an alien, they themselves are not those aliens, but moot point, they are super powerful people who have next to no checks and balances.
The only thing keeping them at bay, is their own personal conscience.
And can we really trust them with it?
Well Cecil definitely doesn't and he might appear to be absolutely reasonable or completely batshit insane, depending on what one already believes in, but just like everything else in this show, it is quite complicated.
We see where he comes from when he makes the decisions he makes, previously, his views on morality were pretty black and white just like Mark's views on the subject, but we see how gradually his views are worn down and eventually flipped(or so it would seem).
Some may see this as his way to justify himself, because the show itself does not justify the redemption in any meaningful way. What I mean is, it does not show the process of them going through the improvement, or it does not present a logical argument why they should be redeemed other than they are more useful alive.
And I am not saying it needs to, this is a strength, because the painful truth is, if Cecil hadn't commissioned D.A. Sinclair to make more Reanimen, Omni Man would have done a lot more damage.
Not to mention all the Heros would have been killed by Doc Seismic, in a world where threat can literally come from anywhere, where even the slightest misstep can lead to a literal world ending threat, where even the most deranged of people can have unimaginable power, you need all the hands you can get, and the line, "you can either be good or save the world encapsulates this perfectly.
Did Cecil go a little too far with leading Mark to the white room? Perhaps, if Mark did have some form of Trust in him, it was all gone the minute he said he wanted protection.
But what was Cecil to do then? Not get scared? We say yes because we have seen more of Mark than him, and the more important thing, in a flashback it is revealed that they could confirm Omni Man was lying because of his pupil dilation.
What does Mark's costume hide?
And while we can take the Moral high ground of "just trust Mark" remember that A, Cecil wanted to stop when he did see it getting too far i.e. Mark potentially dying, and B, we Trust Oliver? Right? He wants to help, he is altruistic and then he kills the Maulers.
Truth is there is probably some combination of words that Cecil could have told mark to convince him, probably go over his own disgust of needing to work with D.A. Sinclair, but all of this we see in hindsight, in the heat of the moment, it is almost an impossible decision.
That and the writer probably at least in part wanted things to go bad, because lets be honest the Story is more interesting this way, and also more believable, as opposed to Cecil knowing word magic somehow(it's not word magic, but that is how many would see it, don't you Deny it, I see you.)
But Cecil's betrayal still bothers me somewhat, so... he knows how to talk his way into Darkwing's head, into the Head of D.A. Sinclair, and he talks his way out of a confrontation with his super buff cell mate, in a situation where one wrong word could have meant his death, and he did in such a way that his cell mate actually calls him boss now... and somehow, Mark, who is essentially the same thing, a really strong person, who mind you, looks more human than his cell mate, this mark is enough to trigger his fight or flight....
This cell mate ruins so much, because in that situation Cecil was powerless, and he could talk his way out, yes, mark is probably a lot stronger but... after a certain point, does it matter, its like the difference between a Truck large enough to kill you one hundred percent of the time and a Truck that's ten times that... yeah okay...
And this Cell mate is a show only thing as far as I can see, and I do get why he is there, to show Cecil's diplomatic nature, but in doing so, it makes Cecil's fight/flight response to Mark less believable, and if you combine that to him telling Mark in the previous season that he did the right thing killing Angstrom Levy, yeah it doesn't work.
So the decision making team of the Show, that involves the original Comic's Author tried to make a seemingly small change but tried to keep everything else the same but ended up causing issues... Amazing.
But you know what, it happens, I like the story.
And going forwards,
Comic Spoilers
both Mark and Cecil are going to be extremely flawed in their approaches, so...
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