How Invincible gets around Marvel’s shared universe problem

The MCU is full to the brim with superheroes at this point. You can’t take a walk in New York City without tripping over some guy in spandex. But where are all these heroes when you need them most?

For as long as there has been a shared universe of superheroes, be it in the comics or on screen, fans have pointed out one big, ongoing problem: why don’t they help each other out more?

Why didn’t a few more Avengers show up to help Spider-Man fight off all those baddies at the Statue of Liberty in Spider-Man: No Way Home, for example? Heck, even Daredevil could have pitched in, given his appearance earlier in the film.

There are countless examples of this, especially in New York-based battles where it seems as though 99% of the earth’s superhero population are based. Would it have hurt Iron Fist or Luke Cage to pop by and help Daredevil in the Disney+ series Born Again?

Of course, the obvious answer is that you should just shut up and enjoy the story for what it is. Not every fight can involve every hero, and if they did, the crossovers that do happen would be a lot less meaningful. 

But in-universe, it’s a little annoying when you know that a flyer or speedster is probably just a few minutes away and could swoop in and save everyone if the writers really wanted them to. Instead, our hero has to fend for themselves, despite having dozens of super-powered besties on speed dial. 

Marvel writers tend to come up with vague reasons why the likes of Captain Marvel are off-world

Everyone has their own thing going on, of course, but it does impact the suspension of disbelief. That is, unless you’re watching Prime Video’s Invincible.

While Marvel writers tend to come up with vague reasons why the likes of Captain Marvel are off-world, Invincible doesn’t need excuses to sidestep these shared world issues. Instead, it faces them head-on. 

In Mark Grayson’s world, massive, cataclysmic events are par for the course. And crucially, many of them hit all at once. As such, heroes such as Invincible or Atomic Eve can’t just jump in and save each other at the last minute. That does happen occasionally, because this is still a comic book world, after all. But more often than not, it’s very obvious why some heroes can’t just drop what they’re doing. 

The season four premiere really rams this home, even as the villains ram Mark’s face into concrete.

Early on, Invincible gets into a fight with Dinosaurus, a new foe who’s going to be very important to this story at a later date. For now though, Mark manages to defeat him, and almost breaks his code of ethics in the process. Luckily, the Guardians of the Globe show up just in time so he doesn’t end up killing the guy to prevent future casualties.

There’s no time to rest though because an alien race known as the Sequids resurface soon after. It takes everything the Guardians have just to contain these creatures and, if they don’t do something soon, the Sequids will take over the entire planet.

Invincible smartly renders any fan nitpicking null and void

Mark can’t just swoop in and help though because he and Atomic Eve are tied up with their own fight against a new villain named Universa. Using her staff, she tries to steal energy from a nuclear reactor, which will soon go into meltdown if Invincible doesn’t stop her.

By timing these threats to occur simultaneously, Invincible smartly renders any fan nitpicking null and void. The Guardians can’t help Mark fight Universa because they’re too busy trying to save the world from another threat. 

The same thing happens two episodes later when Oliver needs help fighting a giant dragon who’s really kicking his ass. Unfortunately, Mark and the others are tangled up stopping an inter-dimensional invasion in which humans are being snatched up into another realm where time runs faster.

Mark does eventually get around to helping Oliver in that particular case, but this kind of controlled chaos only adds to the tension, rather than deflating it.

Of course, it helps that the world Invincible lives in contains fewer heroes than Marvel, so it’s easier to believe everyone is tied up elsewhere. Plus it’s easier to throw in more world-shattering events at once when the story relies on animation rather than expensive CGI and live-action, as it does in the MCU.

Even so, this organic approach taken by the Invincible team is still a lot more effective in the long run, bypassing the need to come up with awkward explanations offscreen. See Kevin Feige telling EW that the Eternals didn’t help the Avengers fight Thanos because they don’t get involved in human affairs. Or the tie-in book for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania explaining that the Avengers watch the news to decide when they should jump in or when they should just let someone else handle whatever’s going on that day.

It looks as though Avengers: Doomsday won’t have that problem though, if the infinite number of actors who have signed up to return is anything to go by. If Thor gets so much as a splinter from his hammer, there will be at least fifty heroes ready to jump in with a first-aid kit.

Of course, not every MCU story needs to prioritise team-ups or lead with battles on multiple fronts. And it’s much easier for Invincible to manage all these moving parts as it’s one self-contained story. But still, it would be nice if Marvel could come up with some more inventive ways to bring the synergy, apart from ignoring the rest of the MCU and hoping no one notices.