‘Invincible’ Finally Shows Where Omni-Man Has Been Since Season 1

It's one thing to abandon your son. It's another thing to abandon your son after pummeling him within an inch of his life. Alas, the latter was what Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) chose before shooting off into space at the end of Invincible's first season. Invincible Season 2 has largely explored the destructive ripple effect of the world discovering Omni-Man is a dictatorial dick without the tyrant himself appearing. But the latest episode finally gives us an update on where he's been in one of the most touching moments of the entire season.

Before we see Omni-Man, we see how, even in his absence, he's leaving a trail of broken lives. After learning that the man she loved and had a child with considers her nothing more than a pet, Debbie Grayson (Sandra Oh) fell into an alcoholic depression until she discovered a grief support group for spouses of superheroes. When she finds a sympathetic ear in Theo (Daveed Diggs), she's surprised to learn he was the partner of Green Ghost (Sonequa Martin-Green), one of the Guardians of The Globe massacred at the hands of Omni-Man in Season 1. As soon as he finds out she is Omni-Man's wife near the end of the episode, he scolds her for not knowing his true malevolent self and effectively cuts her off from returning to the only group of people who can understand what she's going through.

As for Mark (Steven Yeun), he was finally starting to settle into his life after Omni-Man. In this episode, he moved into his college dorm and found out he could have sex with his girlfriend without tearing her apart with his super strength. All is well for him until a sequence of events leads him back to his father. And it all started with a caped canine crusader.

What Happened To Omni-Man?

Right after taking a step into manhood by losing his virginity to Amber Bennett (Zazie Beetz), he gets a strange visit from his childhood in the form of a real-life version of the Seance Dog comic book character he has a poster of on his wall. After rightfully being suspicious and throwing Seance Dog into the ground, the fictional dog loses the disguise and reveals he's a blueish grasshopper-looking creature named Nuolzot (Rob Delaney) from a planet called Thraxa that is currently endangered by meteor showers. Mark still feels guilty about the people who died because of his inaction, so, against Cecil's orders, he takes the trip to Thraxa to help Nuolzot's people.

It turns out Nuolzot wasn't just hiding his identity from Mark initially. When they arrive, there are no meteors, no planet in dire need of help, and no apparent reason for Mark to be there. Then Nuolzot drops a bombshell on Mark when he leads him to the planet's monarch, who happens to be Omni-Man. With a hand extended and a smile on his face, the only thing the galaxy's worst father has to say is, "It's been a while." Yeah, no shit!

It appears Omni-Man left Earth and somehow became the ruler of a foreign planet. But, by the looks of the planet and how the civilians happily revere him, it doesn't appear he gained that position through the Viltrumite way of brute force. That's the opposite of how we last saw him in Season 1, when he was ready to kill anyone who got in his way of preparing Earth for the Viltrumite takeover.

This is a big enough revelation to have Invincible eschew its traditional mid-credit scene. But, with one scene in the penultimate episode of the first half of Invincible's second season, it looks like this season is just getting started.