Invincible Season 3 ended with a game-changing reveal for fans of the animated series and the original comic series, alike: the return of Damien Darkblood. (SPOILERS) Darkblood has been missing since he was exorcised from Earth back to Hell by Cecil and the GDA back in Invincible Season 1, after ignoring Cecil’s orders not to pursue the investigation into the murder of the Guardians – and to especially stay away from looking into Nolan/Omni-Man’s involvement. Whoever, a button scene at the end of Season 3 reveals that Damien (having been in Hell for over a year in the show’s timeline) has figured out a spell that will allow him to drag a very powerful individual down to Hell so that Damien’s “lord,” an elder demon can possess that person and use that power to conquer the “infernal throne.” Invincible Season 4 will now be tasked with delivering an entirely new storyline that was never part of the comics – and fans have questions, the biggest being:
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Invincible Season 4: Who Is Damien Darkblood Trying to Possess?
The most obvious guess is that Damien Darkblood is going to possess Mark Grayson/Invincible, who is (after all) the protagonist of the entire show. However, the devil is in the details, and Damien Darkblood’s wording in that button scene was pretty purposeful. He told his demon “lord” (voice of Bruce Campbell!) that he knew of a “surface dweller” whose power hadn’t been seen on Earth in eons; that could be either Mark or Nolan, really, depending on how Damien views the situation.
Of course, Invincible has never really been a show that follows the expected story beats – quite the contrary. There have been any number of times that Invincible has taken sudden left turns – including the final episodes of Season 3, which saw Mark and Co. ambushed by an Angstrom Levy and an army of Invincible variants from across the multiverse, followed swiftly by Conquest, the most brutal and insane Viltrumite enforcer, yet. So, expecting a straightforward answer to the Season 3 cliffhanger seems too easy.
One curveball some fans are predicting is that Damien is looking for some direct payback, and to make good on his word. When Cecil was banishing the demon detective during an occult ritual in Season 1, Damien promised Cecil he would see him in Hell one day – and would have an even worse fate waiting for Cecil when he got there. Maybe that promise is about to be fulfilled.
[RELATED: Will Invincible’s Hell Arc Include A Spawn Crossover?]
Going back to Damien’s wording: A minor subplot of Invincible Season 3 saw Cecil continuing to transform corpses into mad scientist Sinclair’s superpowered cybernetic soldiers (ReAnimen) as potential deterrents to high-level threats – including Viltrumites. The Season 3 finale revealed that the ReAnimen have entered a new phase, wherein Cecil and the GDA are using the bodies of Mark’s dead variants as foundations for new ReAnimen that can presumably fight at Viltrumite power levels. Between those new soldiers, the army of superheroes, and other military/espionage resources at his disposal, Cecil is, arguably, the most powerful man on Earth, ever. He’s also a man that Damien would consider to have the “blackened heart” he mentioned, possibly the most telling clue that his target is Cecil, not Mark. Damien’s master demon has expressed his desire to once again feel the thrill of battle: and who could better unleash war and chaos on the globe than Cecil?
Invincible show and comic creator Robert Kirkman has confirmed that this Damien Darkblood ‘Hell Arc’ is a new storyline that’s exclusive to the animated series and represents some ‘missed opportunity’ content that he never got to add to the comic when writing it.
“Every superhero story has some chapter where they go to hell and they fight the devil. It happens in DC and Marvel comics. It’s a big deal. I never got around to doing anything like that in Invincible, Kirkman explained to Variety. “I kept getting sidetracked and there was never a good time. So it’s entirely possible that we may be doing something like that in the show, and that scene at the end of that episode is setting that up. Oh my God, and we got to work with Bruce Campbell. It’s the best.”
Invincible has also been no stranger to side quests, with several episodes of the series outright Rick Rolling viewers by starting out centered on one set of characters, before veering entirely away to a different set of characters for the bulk of the episode. With Kirkman adding this Hell Arc to the show, there is some level of possibility that the storyline will be treated as a side quest, to minimize interruption of the main story continuity. In that sense, we could see Invincible fake most fans out by doing something like pulling Nolan (J.K. Simmons) in for more screen time in his own arc, while Mark and co. carry on the storyline from comics.
Whatever the case turns out to be, it’s thrilling to for once have every fan of Invincible on even ground when it comes to (not) knowing what twist is coming (soon) with Season 4.
Invincible streams on Amazon Prime Video.
