‘Invincible’ Creator Robert Kirkman Talks Tone of Season 2, ‘Amber Hate’ & Peter Cullen

Robert Kirkman, known for creating The Walking Dead, took the storm once again when yet another of his acclaimed works got an adaptation. The world exploded when the 2020 adult animated series Invincible hit Prime Video. The animation, reveals, and the premise hooked newcomers and loyal fans of the original source material alike.

In TV Insider’s exclusive interview, we talked about the upcoming season (premiering November 3) and its rather unexpected opener. “I think that we just really wanted to start the season off with a bang,” creator and executive producer Kirkman said when he stopped by our office. “We wanted to get people into the season and kind of hit the ground running. And I’m really proud of that opening sequence because it has a layering effect. It’s ‘Oh my gosh, Mark and Immortal are fighting, and oh my gosh, is that Omni-Man? Why is he here? And oh, my gosh, what are they doing, and why is Invincible on screen? And oh my gosh, did they take over the planet?’”

Courtesy of Prime Video

Despite all of the superhero action, this season, compared to the first, is very somber and melancholy. Finding out your dad and the world’s hero is a bad guy has to have some sort of fallout, right? But you’d be surprised just how many people are reeling from the revelation, and in their own different ways. “We start the season in a real bad place for most people,” Kirkman said humorously. “Debbie (Sandra Oh), Mark, Donald (Chris Diamantopoulos), Cecil (Walton Goggins), most of the Guardians of the Globe, Rex Splode (Jason Mantzoukas), Adam Eve (Gillian Jacobs) is also in a weird limbo place where she’s not wanting to be a superhero anymore.”

He also noted, “at its core, this is an animated superhero show, but it’s an hour-long cable drama to us. And so we’re really kind of turning the screws and amping the drama up as much as possible in this season.”

When talking about Amber (voiced by Zazie Beetz) and the ire she received online during the initial season, the creator didn’t hold back: “I think that the reaction to Amber was very unfortunate. And I think that most of it comes from a segment of the online population that is best ignored. So I don’t even really like commenting on it, to be completely honest.”

Watch the video above to see what else he said on the topic, including how he felt getting the voice of Transformers’ Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) to do the voice of a newly introduced character.

Invincible, Season 2 Premiere, November 3, Prime Video