J.K. Simmons, Robert Kirkman on the final line of Invincible Season 2: It’s the “first hint at a huge revelation”

Every episode of Invincible has a mid-credits sequence. And every one of them isn’t a throwaway gag, it’s a crucial piece of information for understanding the show – including the one that streamed as the final moment of Season 2.

In the Season 2 finale episode, which hit Prime Video today, Omni-Man, aka Nolan (J.K. Simmons) has been imprisoned and sentenced to death by his people, the conquering empire of the Viltrumites. He’s resigned himself to his fate, and even thinks he deserves it, something he confesses via telepathy to Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), who allowed himself to be captured so he can recruit Nolan to the anti-Viltrumite cause. And in the final moment of the season, Nolan realizes something. Out loud, he says, “I think I miss my wife.”

“It's such a great line because… it's a realization in the moment,” Simmons told Bam Smack Pow, “because it's such unfamiliar territory. Feeling anything other than omnipotence and power and rage is just mysterious and frightening, and the concept of actually being emotionally vulnerable is so far from everything he's ever known and ever aspired to as a Viltrumite.”

Simmons also demurely called himself a “conduit” for EPs Robert Kirkman and Simon Racioppa’s writing; and at least in Kirkman’s case that’s a line pretty much pulled directly from the comics Kirkman wrote for Image.

“That's a big moment in the comics, but it's also the first hint at a huge revelation of who Omni-Man is as a character,” Kirkman added. “As every scene that we have with him in season two isn't necessarily a softening of what we saw in the finale of season one, it's an explanation or giving the audience a better understanding of what we saw in the finale of season one.

“So if you watch the finale of season one now, rather than focusing on the ‘I'm slaughtering people with a train, I'm bashing you into the side of a mountain,’ after seeing season two, you might focus on the grief that he feels in those final moments when he can't bring himself to kill his son, the moments where he's remembering the T-ball game with Mark as a child, and you can recognize which Nolan is taking control in that moment a little bit more. He's not necessarily this violent lunatic that's doing all these horrendous things. Hopefully you're getting a better understanding of the fact that he's pushing himself to do those things.”

Just as a little side-trip, and because it probably needs some elaboration: Nolan is talking about Debbie Grayson (Sandra Oh), his wife from Earth who he called a “pet” in the Season 1 finale. He is not talking about his wife Andressa the bug lady (voiced by Rhea Seehorn) who was introduced this season. Joked Racioppa, “I mean, I don't want to tell you which wife he's thinking about. If you think Debbie, then I think that's a great answer for that.”

But this is part of a much bigger plotline for Nolan that presumably will be followed further in the forthcoming third season of the series… One that ties all the way back to the series premiere.

“If you go back and watch the very first episode of the series, when he's at that dinner table, he is almost distraught at the thought of Mark gaining his superpowers,” Kirkman continued. “Debbie has to remind him to be happy and congratulate Mark. And it's because in that moment, Nolan is upset because he knows what he is now going to have to do, and if Mark hadn't gotten his powers, he would've been able to continue to live his life on Earth that he had grown accustomed to and grown to like. And so really by ending the season on the ‘I miss my wife’ moment, we're solidifying that there is a consistent character to Nolan. He has been changed by his time on Earth, but you may not have recognized it until this point.”

Added Racioppa, “He was a complicated character in season one torn between two different worlds. In season two we see more of that. We see that he is changing, he's feeling bad, he has problems with who he was before and is trying to do better. And I think this is just one more step in his character evolution and also showing you that he's thinking about these things. He's deeper than you might think. He's not just a mass murdering space monster from across the stars.”

Invincible Season 2 is streaming on Prime Video.