Invincible Season 4, Episode 2 Shows Us Something The Comics Never Did

Spoilers for "Invincible" season 4 episodes 1-3 follow.

"Invincible" season 4 episode 2 "I'll Give You the Grand Tour" focuses exclusively on the show's cosmic storyline as Nolan (J.K. Simmons) and Allen (Seth Rogen) make it back to the Coalition of Planets.

But before that, the episode opens on a flashback, creating a scene never glimpsed in the original "Invincible" comics (by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley). The flashback is to Nolan's youth on planet Viltrum, when he was about the same age that Mark (Steven Yeun) is now. Unsurprisingly, the young Nolan (voiced by Talon Warburton) looks like a blue-eyed version of his son.

Nolan is educating Viltrumite children on the history of their first emperor, Argall (which also sets up a twist about Argall from the "Invincible" comics). After the lesson, two older Viltrumites come down and attack Nolan. Who are they? His parents. On the strength-obsessed Viltrum, it's a rite of passage for a new adult to survive a death battle with their parents.

But this isn't any old day in Viltrumtite history. It's the day the Scourge Virus came to wipe out most Viltrumites; the virus is why there's less than 50 Viltrumites left in the present day of "Invincible." The "Invincible" comics briefly showed the beginnings of the Scourge Virus. Some images in the episode, like a crowd of dead Viltrumites floating in space, are lifted from "Invincible" issue #66. 

What the episode adds is Nolan's perspective; before that aforementioned shot, he's one of the living Viltrumites dumping his Scourge-killed brethren into space. Seeing Nolan live through the Scourge Virus also adds weight to the episode's ending, when he learns Coalition leader Thaedus (Peter Cullen, though you may know him as Optimus Prime) created and deployed the plague.

Nolan is thousands of years old now, so these opening scenes must take place millennia in the past. But it's clear that what Nolan witnessed and experienced shapes him to this day.

Nolan's mother pins him to a stairwell and punches him repeatedly, echoing when Nolan was beating a downed Mark's bloody face in during the "Invincible" season 1 finale, "Where I Really Come From." When Nolan's father pulls his wife off of their son, telling her that Nolan's had enough, she calls both of them weak.

Nolan hurting his son like that was and remains horrifying, but it takes on a new dimension knowing it's how Nolan's parents treated him. (Parental abuse is often a generational cycle, remember.) "Where I Really Come From" itself added a new bit compared to the comic; after Nolan beats Mark, the scene cuts to years earlier when Debbie (Sandra Oh) taught Nolan how human parents cheer for their kids during baseball games. Then, the scene returned to the present, for Nolan to give his now-famous speech asking Mark, "What will you have after 500 years?!" 

Mark's response ("You, dad. I'd still have you.") were the words that finally broke Nolan's Viltrumite programming. Seeing the kind of childhood he had, it seems likely that moment was the first time he'd ever experienced that sort of love.

"Invincible" stays broadly faithful to the source material, but the series also gives Robert Kirkman a chance to make small tweaks and improvements. For instance, the season 3 finale gave Conquest, one of the strongest and most vicious villains in the "Invincible" comics, a bit more character depth. Showing Nolan's youth is another small but noticeable improvement.

"Invincible" is streaming on Prime Video.