Invincible Season 3 ended with a bang, with Viltrum’s strongest warrior, Conquest, arriving on Earth and engaging with Mark in a battle to rival that of the Season 1 finale. As is the case with most of the finales in the show, the last few minutes of the episode focused on setting up a few cliffhangers for audiences, ranging from the Sequids to the Invincible Reanimen, to Conquest actually still alive.
However, the post-credit scene of the show seems to have something for even comic book fans, deviating from the source material in a major manner for the first time. Damien Darkblood has a very small and comedic role in the comics, which was greatly expanded in Season 1.
Now, his role is further expanded in a cliffhanger that is bound to deviate from the original story in a significant way, making good on what Kirkman had said he would like to do with the show.
Robert Kirkman finally gets to do with Invincible what he has enjoyed in Marvel and DC
Robert Kirkman, in an interview in 2020, revealed that one of his biggest regrets was that he did not get to do a story that saw superheroes facing the forces of hell. Speaking with Cartoonist Kayfabe he said:
One thing I really regret is I never had an adventure where the superheroes went to Hell. There’s been so many superhero comics where they gotta go fight Mephisto or something, and I just never got around to that. The Damien Darkblood character in Invincible was there so I could eventually do a story like that, and I never got around to it.
Robert Kirkman, in the same interview, cited Invincible as being a story that allowed him to look at a lot of tropes and ideas that he wanted to explore. However, there was a slew of things that never made it to the comics.
During his interview with Grace Randolph for the first season of Invincible, Kirkman actually revealed that he would like to do a Damian Darkblood storyline if possible. He said:
We never got round to doing it in Invincible but I’d always planned for there to be some adventure where Invincible has to go to Hell to do something with Damien Darkblood, and we’re hopefully going to be able to do it in the show.
Given that Kirkman has already talked about these ideas, Invincible, which is planning to be eight seasons long, will probably insert some storylines that never made it into the comics.
This is completely uncharted territory for even those who have finished the comics, given that Darkblood’s status in the source material remains that of being a comic relief. Further, given that the show does not have an equivalent for Spawn, it will be interesting to see how the Hell in the World of Invincible is going to play out.
What can we expect from Invincible‘s ‘Hell Saga’?
Given that there is no comic book backing to any story that could involve Damien Darkblood at length, there is very little that can be pieced together from the bits and pieces that have come the way of viewers in the show. Audiences know that Darkblood is a demon, who was on a quest to save his own soul from past transgressions.
The idea was that Darkblood had become a detective to liberate himself from Hell (something that was completely original to the show). Now, with the finale, there seems to have been the introduction of a new character – the king of hell, simply known as The Great Beast.
This character seems to be a master of sorts of Darkblood, with their conversations about restoring the character to his ‘infernal throne’ by means of summoning someone with a ‘blackened’ heart to Hell.
This recontextualizes a lot of why Darkblood was trying to prove that Nolan was the murderer. While initially the character might have been looked at in a heroic light, not it is possible that Nolan was being looked at as a host for the Great Beast to inhabit.
Now, given that Mark has resolved to kill anyone who threatens his family without remorse, it means that he could be the ‘blackened heart’ that Darkblood is referring to, who will be used to bring back the Great Beast.
All episodes of Invincible are now streaming on Prime Video.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
