WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Invincible Season 1, Episode 8, "Where I Really Come From," available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
While the animated adaptation of Invincible began with blood and fury, the Season 1 finale topped itself as Invincible and Omni-Man's showdown resulted in catastrophic mayhem that shocked the entire world. For series creator Robert Kirkman, the eight-episode first season provided the perfect pacing for the story.
Kirkman noted Omni-Man's massacre of the Guardians of the Globe kicking off the series was always intended to be bookended with the brutal fight against his own son. Kirkman felt eight episodes allowed enough room to weave in more elements of the story while avoiding killing the momentum from the series premiere.
"Now that the season is concluded, you can see we wanted to begin the season with the Guardians' confrontation with Nolan and then end the season with Mark's confrontation with Nolan and have that be the bookend to the season," Kirkman tells CBR. "If it was a six-episode season, we would've wanted to do that and, if it was a twelve-episode season, we would've wanted to do that. It would've been harder to do that because then you have those eleven episodes in the middle where you're like, 'When are we getting to this Nolan stuff that we set up in the first episode?'"
Invincible been renewed for two additional seasons by Amazon Prime Video, continuing the story from the comic book series created by Kirkman, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. As development moves forward on the animated series, Kirkman remains proud of how the first season was able to establish the world of the comic book in eight episodes while having room to explore certain characters more.
"Eight really was the perfect number for being able to begin and end the season with these massive, monumental events that would really cement the show for what it is and what it's going to be while also having enough room in the middle to fill out all the characters to a necessary degree, but not having so much room where you have to plug stuff in and it seems like Star Wars," Kirkman continues. "We have a great block of episodes that I think work really well there."
Invincible stars Steven Yeun, J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Gillian Jacobs, Andrew Rannells, Zazie Beetz, Mark Hamill, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Mae Whitman, Chris Diamantopoulos, Melise, Kevin Michael Richardson, Khary Payton, Grey Griffin and Max Burkholder. The series is produced by Skybound, and executive produced by Robert Kirkman, Simon Racioppa, David Alpert and Catherine Winder. The first season is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.