Being a superhero is tough – just ask Invincible protagonist Mark Grayson.

Mark’s life has turned upside down since he embarked on a crime-fighting career in the first season of the animated series, and things aren’t set to get any easier in the first half of Season 2, which premieres on Prime Video this month. Don’t take our word for it, either: Invincible co-showrunner Simon Racioppa said as much when Popverse chatted with him recently, confirming that – as in the original Image Comics series by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley – Mark still has plenty of harsh lessons left to learn.

In this interview, Racioppa breaks down Mark’s Invincible Season 2, Part 1 journey in detail, including how it will impact our hero’s character arc in future seasons. He also explains how new antagonist Angstrom Levy is like Batman’s nemesis the Joker, addresses the possibility of more Walking Dead veterans joining the show’s cast, and unpacks Season 2’s shocking opening scene.

Note: This interview contains major spoilers for Invincible Season 2, Episode 1, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Popverse: Invincible Season 2 opens with Mark Grayson still coming to terms with the revelation that Omni-Man, was not the superhero (or father) he thought he was. Is it fair to say that Mark's unresolved issues with his dad will drive his character arc in the second season?

Simon Racioppa: Absolutely. One of the things we promise you in Invincible that is different from a lot of other adaptations is that we never wipe the slate clean. Season 2 starts a month after the events of the end of Season 1, the last episode of the season, and everything is still 100% fresh in everyone's mind. All the trauma, all the lies, all the deceit, the death, the destruction, everything is still there. And we picked that right up in Mark's character, and Debbie and Eve and Amber and all of our other characters.

You don't get over that kind of betrayal in a month – you’re just barely scratching the surface of it. So, the ramifications of what Omni-Man does to Mark, to Debbie, to the world, really we're just at the start of it at the start of Season 2 and it's going to echo all the way through Season 2 and beyond Season 3. And I'm sure if we get to do a Season 4 or 5, we're going to still have bits of that echoing that far along because that was the scope of what Nolan did to Mark and to Debbie and his family and to everybody else.

While Mark is now at pains to point out he’s nothing like Omni-Man, Season 2 sees him take on a similar role to his dad as Cecil’s on-call superhero. This also brings him back into the orbit of the Guardians of the Globe, who have a new member this season: Jay Pharoah’s Bulletproof. Will we meet any other new crime-fighters this season? And if so, is there are chance they’ll be voiced by The Walking Dead veterans, like most of the original Guardians line-up?

Quite possibly. I mean, you're going to see Jay Pharaoh as Bulletproof. You're also going to see Ben Schwartz as Shapesmith – he gets added to the Guardians of the Globe too and he's incredible. You know, we’re happy to expand our cast and we're very lucky with the actors who say yes to us and get to come on the show.

I can't tell you who else is going to play [new superhero characters] but we always love mining the cast list from any Walking Dead project and seeing who [could fill an Invincible role], but we don't do it gratuitously. We just find the people who make sense for the role and then we bring them back. So, yeah, it would be crazy if it never happened again, let me put it that way.

Shifting focus back to Mark’s journey, Season 2 establishes early on that Mark has developed even greater control of his superpowers since Season 1, via a beautifully choreographed and animated montage of rescues. Was communicating Mark's heightened superhero prowess visually something you talked about with Invincible's directors and animation crew?

Absolutely. It's there on the pages and it's also a conversation that we’ve had. [Mark’s] matured a little bit. Over the course of Season 1 even, he gets better from the first episode to the last episode. In Season 1, he gets beaten up a lot, he's not a great superhero, but also, you don't become a superhero overnight.

Think about how long it takes to become good at anything in this world. I don’t care, you could go and have the best ninja teacher in the world and you're not learning how to become a ninja in six weeks. It's just not happening. So, I feel like we play with that a little bit. Like, Mark probably is better than he should be given how long he's been a superhero. But I want to make sure it feels like he doesn't become great overnight.

It's a leveling up as he practices, as he gets in more fights, as he gets more experience, that he will become better and better. And of course, if you read the books, he eventually becomes a really great, competent superhero, but that takes time. Again, you don't become a world-class tennis player in a year – you’ve got to practice.

Mark also still has a tendency to charge into situations, and this impulsiveness is indirectly responsible for the creation of Season 2’s new villain, Angstrom Levy. Is learning to think before he acts a priority for Mark this season?

I think so. But I think, especially in that first episode, Mark is hurting inside after what happened in [the Season 1 finale]. He feels responsible for a lot of the deaths and for a lot of what happened. And when any of us have that kind of feeling in us, you just want to solve it, you want to make things better as fast as you can, and that causes you to make rash decisions.

So, Mark is in a hurting place and then Cecil is like, “OK, here's something you can do.” And of course, Mark just wants to get out there and do it – he just wants to get out there and solve that problem and make things as right as possible. That kind of blows up in his face, no pun intended – or pun intended, I guess.

He's 20 years old. He's hurting. He's looking for a way to make things better and that causes him to make some rash decisions. Is he going to learn to maybe slow down and think a little bit more along the way? Well, I think that will just come with experience and with character growth, as the pain starts to not go away but maybe ease a little bit through the course of the season.

Was this the reason why Angstrom Levy was the perfect baddie for Invincible Season 2: to teach Mark that there are some situations he can't punch his way out of? And that there are consequences to this mentality, even if he’s trying to be the hero?

Yeah, and I think also one of the really interesting things with Angstrom is Mark is kind of responsible for Angstrom's creation, he's there for Angstrom’s creation. People can argue – and I hope hopefully people will do online – how responsible he is, because obviously Angstrom is doing stuff there, and the Maulers are there. But certainly, Mark is there when Angstrom becomes who he is: the villain.

You can argue about Mark's responsibility for a lot of the events in Season 1, but definitely, he's here for all of this in Season 2. So, if Angstrom does terrible things in the future, what is Mark's responsibility for that? If you help create a villain and then that villain goes and does terrible things, don't you carry a little bit of that on yourself? And what effects does that have on your psyche and on how you're feeling?

Those are all topics we want to explore. Like, if Batman made the Joker and then the Joker does terrible things, isn't Batman kind of at fault, at least a little bit? And even if he's not, doesn't he feel like he is? Those are the stories and the ideas that we want to explore with Mark going forward.

Something that separates Invincible and Angstrom from Batman and the Joker is that Angstrom essentially started out trying to be benevolent. He had certain rules, and he wasn't necessarily an out-and-out villain in the way other people Mark has fought are. So that probably adds an extra element of 'What did I cost the world?' to Mark’s feelings towards Angstrom?

Yeah, exactly. [Angstrom’s] motivation, even if it's a little twisted, makes sense on paper if you write it down. Like, he explains he has all these memories in his head of Mark being terrible in other dimensions and killing hundreds of people. So, that's part of the motivation of why he wants to take down Mark: it’s not just for revenge, but to make him pay for all these things he's done in other dimensions.

Now our Mark's not responsible for that, but our Mark is maybe capable of it. Again, Angstrom’s motivations are a little twisted, but they make sense – and they certainly make sense to him. So, that's kind of what's behind his character.

And Angstrom isn’t the only antagonist Mark will go up against in Season 2, either. But aside from returning foes such as the Mauler Twins, can we expect Invincible to go toe-to-toe with any other previously unseen evildoers?

Yes, if you're asking me if there's gonna be new villains this season that you haven't seen yet, absolutely there's gonna be new villains you haven’t seen yet this season, for sure.

Finally, Invincible Season 2 ushers in the show’s take on the multiverse concept, complete with an “evil” alternate universe version of Mark – is this a chance for Mark (and viewers) to learn more about himself via his extra-dimensional counterparts? And how did voice actor Steven Yeun differentiate his portrayal of mainstream Mark from the "Evil Mark" we meet in Season 2's premiere?

For sure. I think this is definitely a way to show another facet of a character. I think everyone has a dark side in them; Mark’s just happens to be a person you can actually see, and you can go into another dimension and visit them. But there is another world where Mark joined up with his father, where he's like, “Okay, yeah.” That Mark probably had a different life. Maybe Debbie wasn't around. Maybe Debbie died in a car accident, and he was just raised by his father. There's a hundred different ways that could have happened, but there's versions of Mark that sided with his dad.

For Steven – Stephen’s such a great actor, so versatile – for him, it was just getting his head in that character’s spot and being like, “Okay, is he arrogant? Is he the same as Mark, but just on this one little dimension? Is he a little different? Is he just siding with his dad? Is he cruel? Has he gone a little mad, is he a megalomaniac? I think the one you see in Episode 1, that Mark is not that different from our Mark – just a little different. He still loves Eve, in his own twisted way. But he’s taking that one step with his father and that changes everything.

But he’s not a crazy, maniacal supervillain. He’s our Mark – he’s just a little different.

That makes it much more chilling, in a way, because the easy thing would be for him to be at the heightened end of villainy. Instead, it’s like, “Wait, this guy could be our guy.”

Yeah, this could be our Mark, where just, like, Debbie left and didn’t have her influence on him. Or something else happened when he was a kid, or something like that, and then it just diverges into our two Marks. So, who knows?