INVINCIBLE Season 3 Finale: Conquest

     Continuing from the INVINCIBLE hype from my last blog post, I wanted to do a quick blog about my thoughts on the latest season finale from this show, since I feel like there was a lot to talk about! Spoilers ahead for all of Invincible (obviously)!

    Starting off with what's freshest in my mind: The Conquest Fight. After having this fight with Conquest hyped up for months, I am pleased to report that it was indeed worth the wait. As a fight that was referred to as "the best fight in the comic" by many of my comic reader friends, the expectations were set sky-high for this episode. Luckily, this episode benefitted from one of my main critiques with this season: the animation. In many other episodes, the animation is much lower quality than it was in the first season, with several errors bleeding into the final product. However, it seems that all of the animators' attention was on this fight, as it was not only flawless, but also in a vastly different quality to even that of the first season. The second I saw individual hairs being animated, I knew that this fight was what the entire season had been leading up to.

    The voice acting specifically was also amazing. Mark's voice actor knocked it out of the park, with his range varying from emotionally broken to bloodlust driven, with a crazed fury that really sold the brutality of the Conquest fight. Conquest's actor also did a phenomenal job, bringing a sort of insane western bandit energy to the villain's performance. The show-exclusive monologue he gave about Conquest's loneliness was a fantastic addition to this fight, giving him a more tragic story about feeding into a cycle of violence and isolation, but making him all the more monstrous when he refuses to change, choosing to relish in his violent nature and taking joy in the brutality he inflicts on others, as its all he has in his life. As someone who isn't really an "acting guy," I think that it's undeniable to say that these two performances were probably some of the best in animation this year!

    This is a little more of a side note, but I did actually enjoy Oliver for the first time this episode. Throughout this season, he's been a little bit of a nuisance, but his overall arc has been interesting, being a human-raised Viltrumite like Mark, but still lacking the basic empathy for human life that Mark has, thanks to his mom's empathetic raising of him. Seeing Oliver develop into more of an issue for Mark and the rest of the cast to worry about has been compelling, but the fact of the matter is... he's annoying as hell. Seriously, props to the voice actor, because this is exactly what I would imagine a superpowered little brother would sound like: whiny and misunderstanding. Having said all of that, Oliver's presence in the last episode of the season makes him more like he's just eager to help, not fully understanding how dangerous Conquest is. Granted, it could just be me wanting to see Oliver get his shit rocked, but seeing Oliver finally grasp how out-of-scale this fight is and understand that he isn't INVINCIBLE feels like a good place to start developing his character in the next season. Even if he did know how outmatched he was going in, it'd be heartwarming to see him try to sacrifice himself for his brother.

    I'm sure there's more I can write about, but I'm currently writing this from a cabin in the woods and I think my friends are calling for smores around a campfire. So I'm afraid I'll be cutting this blog post short. Can't wait to tell you about this trip I'm on!