Television

‘Invincible: Atom Eve’ recap/review

‘Atom Eve’ is a good reminder of what makes ‘Invincible’ such a consistently great series.

July 23, 2023

While we wait to see the fallout from the end of Invincible‘s first season (which debuts November 3), Amazon hit us with a surprise release this weekend of a new stand-alone episode featuring the origin of Atom Eve.

As always, the recap portion of this review will contain plenty of spoilers. The sequence of events has also been streamlined a bit for the sake of clarity.

Rebirth and Regret

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

The episode opens with a group of supervillains (a stand-in for the Serpent Society called the Lizard League) breaking into a top secret government lab. It’s not clear what their plans are, but they’re quickly thwarted by the arrival of the Guardians of the Globe from back before they were massacred by Omni-Man..or at least most of them.

During some in-fight banter between War Woman and the Immortal, we learned that she’s called in a “reservist” to aid the team. The superhero in question turns out to be Omni-Man, who rescues everyone moments before the building’s roof collapses.

Meanwhile, a man (Dr. Brandyworth) complains that the diversion he planned is going to end up bringing the entire facility down on him and a pregnant woman named Polly, who’s gone into early labor. As he attempts to comfort Polly while leading her out of the building, she has a violent contraction that causes her eyes to glow pink.

Brandyworth gets Polly into his car and begins driving toward a hospital. Along the way, he receives a phone call from Erickson, his boss at the Global Defense Agency. Erickson demands that he bring Polly back to the facility, but Brandyworth refuses. He gets her to a hospital, where a large contraction causes the woman’s power to surge and appears to kill her while also knocking out the medical staff. After taking a moment to grieve, Bradyworth notices a nearby scalpel and decides to attempt a DIY C-section.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

Later, Erickson arrives at the hospital with a battalion of soldiers and demands to see “the specimen.” Brandyworth lies and tells him that both mother and daughter died during the delivery. Erickson instructs his soldiers to search the hospital for their bodies before warning Brandyworth about the harsh punishment coming his way.

While this is going on, Adam and Betsy Wilkins grieve over losing their own unborn child. Their tears turn from sadness to joy when a nurse comes in holding a healthy newborn, who she explains somehow “came back.”

*Side Note: Brandyworth pulling off a switch-a-roo like this is perhaps the least believable part of this sci-fi superhero series.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

We’re then treated to a montage of Samantha Eve Wilkins’ early years. While things initially start off happy/normal, her ability to see individual molecules makes the girl vastly different from her peers. It also causes a major rift between Samantha and her father.

Things come to a head when Samantha helps a babysitter study for a chemistry exam using Legos to build molecular models. This causes Mr. Wilkins to agree with his wife to send Samantha to a school for gifted children, although he refers to it as a “school for weirdos” within earshot of his daughter.

As Samantha works on her entrance exam for the school, a disheveled Dr. Brandyworth watches her from a distance.

Growing Pains

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

Back at the GDA lab, a cybernetically enhanced doctor (Rodgers) works with a young boy named Phase 2, who’s had some pretty horrific experiments performed on him. When the boy is unable to maintain his shifting body mass, Erickson chastizes Rodgers for his lack of results in producing a living bioweapon. Rodgers then instructs a reluctant Phase 2 to get back in his stasis tube.

Meanwhile, Samantha’s displeasure with her new school is lessened a bit when she makes friends with a neighbor approximately her age named Val. The pair’s friendship starts strong and continues into their preteen years. Samantha confides in Val about how bad her parents make her feel about herself. She also expresses a desire to stop attending her special school and do something with her life that she considers meaningful.

Later, Mr. Wilkinson berates his daughter for only doing well in science along with her bizarre behavior, going so far as to call his daughter a freak. After isolating herself in her room, Samantha accidentally discovers that her ability to see molecules also allows her to manipulate/arrange them into completely different objects. She shows her newfound ability to Val, who gets freaked out and stops being friends with her.

Losing her only friend causes Samantha to spiral, resulting in her being expelled from private school and forced to attend a public one.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

That Christmas, Sam receives a ridiculous-looking dress from one of her family members. After rearranging its molecules into something more her style, she goes outside to shoot baskets. She also tries to change a squirrel into a puppy, but finds herself unable to do it. That probably would’ve been the weirdest part of her day if she hadn’t noticed Dr. Brandyworth waving from across the street, which understandably creeps her out.

Sometime later, Samantha decides to use her powers to create a mask while also testing if she can construct matter to carry her through the air. After seeing that she can, the young girl heads out for a thrilling solo flight before stopping by an animal shelter. Instead of helping herself to an after hours adoption, she ends up using her powers to stop a pair of criminals stealing animals for a lab.

Brandyworth (who somehow managed to track a flying teenage girl to this exact location) appears and offers to tell Samantha where her powers came from. She’s wary of the strange man, but takes him up on the offer. Brandyworth proceeds to explain how Samantha was actually a project he created for the United States government. He placed her with her current parents to keep her safe from the people he worked for — something he won’t be able to do if she continues to use her powers out in the open.

Predictably, a drone pops up nearby and causes them both to flee — but not before getting some footage of Samantha flying off. When Erickson orders Rodgers to find her, he releases Phase 2 along with three other children (Phase 3, Phase 4, and Phase 5) who are in even more grotesque states.

When Samantha arrives home and is berated by her mother for sneaking out, which causes the previously small rift between them to grow larger.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

Creating Fate

Samantha (now going by Eve) looks for Brandyworth at various homeless shelters without any luck. She pauses her search after spotting Killcannon robbing a bank, who she handles with ease.

Once again, Brandyworth is somehow able to find Eve, who he repeats his warning to about using her powers in public. Eve responds by revealing the superhero name she came up with for herself (Atom Eve) while brushing off his concerns for her safety. Brandyworth counters by revealing that he knows it’s her birthday. Upon hearing this, Eve asks for the full story about who her mother was.

We learn via flashbacks (and Brandyworth’s incomplete narration) that Eve’s mother was a pregnant homeless woman who volunteered to be a test subject. Brandyworth and his team manipulated her amniotic fluid, induced controlled mutational change, and flooded her system with rapidly decaying particles.

As the experiment went on, the two became friends. Eve’s mother asked Brandyworth to make sure her daughter didn’t end up being raised in a lab. He made plans to help her and her unborn child escape, but the early labor (and its resulting complications) ruined them. Since then, he’s dedicated himself to watching over Eve and making sure he has as close to a normal life as possible.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

Brandyworth’s heartbreaking story is interrupted by police sirens. Despite his pleas not to use her powers, Atom Eve follows the vehicles to a scene of massive destruction on the interstate caused by Rodger’s lab experiments. After saving the overmatched officers’ lives, she’s attacked by one of the children, who ends up disintegrating in front of her.

Phase 2 angrily explains how they are all Eve’s siblings — each attempt at replicating her powers less successful than the last without Dr. Brandyworth’s expertise. Clearly resentful of their “perfect” sister (and under orders from Rodgers), the remaining children attack. Atom Eve is forced to kill one sibling in self-defense and severely injure the other, resulting in her and Phase 2 engaging in a frantically brutal confrontation. Things get even worse when she’s forced to divide her efforts between the fight and saving people from the collateral damage.

After Phase 3 recovers, he and Phase 2 finally get the upper hand. They’re about to kill Eve when Brandyworth somehow drives through a completely wrecked interstate and runs over Phase 3, killing him. Phase 2 flips the car over, pulls Brandyworth out of the vehicle, and drops him in an effort to hurt Eve, who’s barely able to save him. As Phase 2 pounds against her protective forcefield, Brandyworth tells her that he implanted her subconscious with mental blocks so that she couldn’t alter living tissue.

Phase 2’s efforts eventually cause the force field to explode, which causes his body to start disintegrating. He says goodbye to Eve as they hold hands, which is pretty contrived considering the absolute beat down they just gave each other. Brandyworth and Eve are then surrounded by Erickson and a battalion of soldiers, who knock the pair out and take them back to the lab.

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

Eve awakens in restraints to find Erickson lecturing Brandyworth about how she’s his weapon and how he’ll be forcing the doctor to make more for him. She offers herself in exchange for Brandyworth’s freedom. When Erickson laughs her off, Eve breaks her restraints and restates the offer. Erickson responds by showing her that he’s been using Eve’s vegetative biological mother to create more human experiments.

*Side Note: This doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to attempt with a traumatized/superpowered teenager.

A horrified Brandyworth charges Erickson, resulting in the latter firing his weapon and hitting the stasis tube keeping Eve’s mother alive. As Eve watches her die, Erickson messes up even more by accidentally shooting and killing Brandyworth.

This final trauma pushes Eve over the edge, unlocking her ability to rearrange the molecules of human beings. She uses the newfound ability to erase Erickson and Rodger’s memories before returning home to discover that her parents have been waiting to celebrate her birthday. Mr. Wilkinson once again proves himself to be an awful father by screaming at his daughter to the point that she runs back to her room. Before she can close the door, he reminds her that he and Mrs. Wilkinson are the only family she’s got.

As she begins to cry, Eve knocks over a picture of her family. She picks it up and changes the image into a family portrait of what could’ve been with Dr. Brandyworth, her biological mom, and her healthy/happy siblings. When Eve’s mom comes to check on her, she hides the picture before opening the door and collapsing into her mother’s arms.

In a mid-credits scene, we see a pre-powered Marky Grayson attempting to create a superhero costume out of duct tape. What begins as a fun moment turns serious after Mark and his mother leave the room. Nolan’s face initially flashes with anger for his son not developing his powers, but quickly collapses into grief/despair over his conflicted feelings about the family he isn’t supposed to love.

The Verdict

Invincible (Amazon Studios)

If you didn’t miss Invincible or simply forgot how good it is, this episode served as an excellent reminder of why so many of us liked it in the first place. Utilizing the unseen history of one of the show’s most interesting characters (which is really saying something), “Atom Eve” utilized all the usual elements that make Invincible such a consistently great series:

Complex character-based narratives buttressed by brilliant/brutal action sequences.
Unexpected and hilarious moments of humor.
Exceptional world-building.

Fantastic voice acting
Superb animation.

The episode was also well aware of the tropes found in superhero stories, but never pushed the mocking of those elements to a point that it detracted from the story.

All that’s not to say that ‘Atom Eve’ didn’t have any issues, although they weren’t the title character’s fault. Dr. Brandyworth was basically a walking plot device, able to inexplicably show up wherever he was needed to move the story forward. The episode also completely whiffed when it tried to give Eve and Phase 2 an emotional moment that was earned at all.

Thankfully, those issues weren’t enough to significantly detract from the main narrative — one that provided us with a powerful and heartbreaking background for Atom Eve when the Invincible series returns this fall.

Next Episode: ‘A Lesson For Your Next Life’