‘Invincible’ Creator Robert Kirkman Teases Upcoming Season 4; “You Should Be Worried About Where Mark Is Headed” And Shares Lessons Learned From ‘The Walking Dead’

Prime Video’s Invincible, based on the Skybound/Image comic from The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, follows 17-year-old Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), who, after inheriting powers from his father Omni-Man (J. K. Simmons), sets out to become a worthy superhero. However, he soon discovers that the demands of becoming one of Earth’s greatest defenders is more challenging than he ever imagined. 

In Season 3, 19-year-old Mark is forced to confront his past and future while discovering how much further he’ll need to go to protect the people he loves. After his father leaves behind a surprise younger half-brother named Oliver (Lincoln Bodin), who is also developing superpowers, Mark finds himself taking on the role of mentor in addition to his other stressful superhero duties, which include impending global threats to humanity. 

Here, Kirkman breaks down Mark and Oliver’s dark-sided brotherly bond, choosing narrative over violence and carrying over lessons learned from adapting The Walking Dead.

DEADLINE: A lot of this season contends with Mark’s viewpoint on how superheroes should act without slaughtering. But, as he shows his brother the ropes, Oliver leans towards destroying threats by any means necessary—even humans. Talk about their dynamic as brothers this season. 

ROBERT KIRKMAN: I think it’s good to give Mark as many outside influences as possible. One thing that we dealt with in Season 2 was, “Am I becoming my father?” And his fear of that. And one of the results of interacting with his father was that he brought Oliver home. Oliver has the same dad but is from an alien world. As Mark interacts with Oliver, he gets to see how Oliver sees the world versus how Mark sees the world. So, it’s an interesting contrast to see how someone who has superpowers, who shares the same father, and who lives in the same house can have a wildly different view. For Mark, his feelings can sometimes be scary when he seemingly agrees with some of the crazy things that Oliver is saying. For example, after he’s killed the Mauler twins.

But the interesting note over the course of Season 3 is that Oliver says very harsh things that make you worry. Then, by the end of the season, the completion of Mark’s arc is that he’s more aligned with Oliver than he was before. So, by the end of this season, you should be worried for where Mark is headed in Season 4 and beyond. 

DEADLINE: The big battle with Conquest was the breaking point for Mark, right? He was pushed to his limits. 

KIRKMAN: Well, I think the real thing was about this unrelenting barrage that Mark has to experience toward the end of the season. When he goes from Powerplex to the alternate Invincibles to Conquest, he is unsure of himself and fears that he could be on the path getting closer and closer to what Omni-Man was. With Powerplex, he begins to see some of the damage he has caused individually. Powerplex is kind of crazy, but he did cause him a tremendous amount of pain. Not directly, but he does feel some responsibility for that. And then, by the end of Episode 7, when the Invincible War has happened, he’s starting to see more people in the world seeing him the way that Powerplex does. And without getting ready, without having any time to process that or work through it in any way whatsoever, Conquest comes and does more damage that Mark feels responsible for.

But thankfully, Mark’s able to stop Conquest. And I think that regret over not actually killing Angstrom when he felt like he killed Angstrom and felt like he had done the wrong thing, coupled with feeling like he did defeat Conquest and is going to prevent him from doing anything like that ever again, is changing Mark’s mind a little bit and possibly could be pushing him to the dark side. But morality is a big part of not only this season but the entire show. We’re trying to deal with what it would be like to have the burden of the responsibility of having this much power and how it is that you manage yourself as you’re trying to stay on the right path. As you see all these different options for what you could or could not do with these abilities that you’ve been given. And we’re excited about how the show goes into some really dark places.

One of the other aspects that I really enjoy about the show is that Mark is young. He makes mistakes, and he learns from those mistakes. He’s a somewhat erratic character by design. And it’s something that we’ve worked very closely with Steven Yeun to develop. We’re constantly pushing this character to make bold statements and then go against those statements. And be very definitive on, “This is the way things work.” And then go, “Oh, crap, that’s not how things work. I have more information now. So now I’m doing this.” Because that’s kind of the life that we all experienced as a teenager, I think we’ve all had very passionate arguments when we’re very young about things we don’t really know anything about. And then later on, I was like, “Oh, I was kind of a moron.” And it’s fun to see a character go through that same process while he’s able to crush planets.

DEADLINE: Does it get more challenging or easier as you continue to develop more seasons in transferring things from the comic to the TV series? 

KIRKMAN: This is where The Walking Dead is a tremendous benefit to Invincible. With The Walking Dead, I was wholeheartedly on board with all the changes but not necessarily paying attention to and properly planning for the butterfly effects that came from those changes. So, in a lot of cases with The Walking Dead, I hadn’t written the entire comic book series when we were making Season 1-Season 4 decisions. I didn’t know exactly where the comic book story was going to go. There were times when it was like, “Yeah, let’s make that different. That’ll be fun.” But then you get to Season 6-Season 9, and you have entire storylines from the comic that don’t work anymore because none of the work was done to set those up beforehand. 

Now, having the full Invincible series finished and also having the experience of dealing with this on The Walking Dead, there’s a lot of decisions that were made on Invincible Season 1- Season 3, that were made just in case we get to adapt the entire comic so that when we’re going Season 5- Season 6 if we’re fortunate enough to do those, we know the track has been laid, and things have been planned. So, we can do that. We go from season to season, so the process of adapting the comic book into the show isn’t getting more difficult because we’ve done the hard work of making sure that everything is where it needs to be. 

DEADLINE: Was the Conquest battle one of the harder animations you’ve had to do?

KIRKMAN: I mean, until some of the stuff that’s coming up in Season 4. And that’s also by design. We’re trying to make the show an escalating show. So that, every season, in some sense, tops the season before it. It may top emotionally or physically. We’re not going to be able to stage bigger and bigger battles every season until the show becomes impossible to produce. But we are planning aspects that will elevate every season so that when you watch the show, you get a sense of growth. And you get a sense of an intensifying stakes that will constantly be pushing down on the characters.

But yeah, the Conquest fight, production-wise, was an absolute bear. I mean, we had to get extra board artists to come in and board extra scenes and work harder on smaller chunks of the episode. Usually, you have four or five board artists that handle five to eight-minute chunks. And I think we had six or seven board artists that were doing two to four-minute chunks. And so, we definitely had all hands-on deck kind of effort to make sure that we got through the show. I think it was moved forward in the production schedule to give us more time to work on the episode. And a lot of different things were done behind the scenes to make sure that it was doable. But from the minute the script came in, everybody was like, “OK. Let’s see how we’re going to pull this off.”

DEADLINE: Everyone always talks about how impressive the violence is each season. I’m curious: Is there any fear about ever hitting a threshold, even though you’re on a streaming platform? 

KIRKMAN: Content-wise, I feel fairly confident that we’re OK on Prime because we get to hide behind the trailblazing of The Boys as they keep pushing the envelope every season. And so, I get to watch that show and go, “We can do anything.” For Invincible, as long as there’s an emotional punch and a narrative reason for it to exist, I think anything goes. I don’t really think of the violence as are we going too far in and of the violence itself? I’m thinking, is this violence resulting in the correct emotions we’re trying to elicit from the audience? When you see Conquest doing the things that he’s doing in our finale, are you feeling the right things that you should be feeling for Mark? For the people of Earth? For any number of people that are put in danger in that scenario. We’re trying to push the emotional buttons in the story to make sure that it has as much impact and as much weight so that you have that feeling.

With all of my work, I’m just always trying to push the emotions as far as possible. When you see people struggling, that’s when you start to feel compassion or fear for them. When you push the violence beyond where people usually see it, I feel like it just enhances those emotions even more. Because you’re starting to see unreal things that you’re not used to seeing. So, for me, it’s always about trying to push that envelope so that the violence takes you by surprise and that you never get numb to it. Always making sure there’s an emotional reason for it to exist will hopefully prevent it from ever being blase or, “OK, another eyeball popping out. Cool.”

DEADLINE: What would you like to tease about Season 4? 

KIRKMAN: Thragg is cast and will be in Season 4. So, I won’t reveal anything other than if you’ve been watching the show since Season 1, you might be like, “Hey, when is there going to be more Viltrumite stuff?” I will say that Season 4 has more Viltrumite stuff that you might be wanting. In Season 2, we got the cool Anissa stuff and then Nolan’s story. In Season 3, we got Conquest, and Nolan’s story, and stuff going on in space with Allen. In Season 4, it really ramps up. So, the people that are loving that aspect of the show, you will definitely get more of that.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]