Robert Kirkman Explains Why Season 2 of Invincible Took So Long to Make

The long-anticipated announcement of the late Fall release date for Season 2 of Invincible was met with immense fanfare a couple of days ago at SDCC, where fans were also treated to a new trailer that has predictably set the internet abuzz for what’s to come next in Mark Grayson’s story after the catastrophic fallout of season one. While audiences everywhere wait for the premiere and breath a sigh of relief that the acclaimed animated series is still on track, the million-dollar question still being asked is, of course, why exactly it took so long. Now, per an exclusive report from Collider, show creator Robert Kirkman has divulged the reasons why Invincible‘s next chapter took over two years to get off the ground.

Related: Robert Kirkman Teases a New Villain in Invincible Season 2

Invincible is an adult animated superhero series created for Amazon Prime by Robert Kirkman, who is also the brains behind the original comic of the same name along with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. The show follows the origin story of teenager Mark Grayson and his father who is known worldwide as Omni-Man and helms the Guardians of the Globe ensemble of superheroes, at least briefly. Mark struggles to balance his personal life at school and embracing his long-buried powers to become a superhero of his own, albeit out of view of his friends, all in the hopes of living up to his father’s achievements.

Starring in the series are Steven Yeun (Nope) as Mark Grayson/Invincible, Sandra Oh (Turning Red) as his mother Debbie, J.K. Simmons (Night Sky) as Nolan/Omni-Man, Gillian Jacobs (The Contractor) as Atom Eve, and many more. The first season of the show debuted in early 2021 and received immense accolades upon its release, getting an outstanding 98% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and being praised for its “clean grit” and compelling performances. The blood-soaked finale was especially heralded and not only has since become cemented in pop culture, it left fans with the cliffhanger of the century for where the story would head next. The next two years proved to be an agonizingly long wait, and the sudden appearance of the new poster, followed by a new trailer and a release date only three months out was all audiences could ever ask for.

Creator Kirkman Clarifies Why Season 2 Took Two Years

Robert Kirkman made his grand appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic Con (SDCC), along with plenty of promotional content for Season 2 of Invincible. When approached by Collider about the noticeable time gap between the first two seasons, he laid out a number of very valid reasons why it was unavoidable.

“It’s three things. It’s the animation process which is difficult in and of itself. Two, very complicated show. We have a larger cast than you might see in any other show…We’re an hour long animated show which is very unusual, but we have so many characters and so many settings, even in just one episode that we’re really kind of pushing the limits of what can be done in animation. So it takes a long time to make it. But it has also taken a long time to learn how to do it and figure it out because we’re doing a lot of things that you don’t necessarily do in animation.”

On top of all that, the first season released in the middle of the pandemic, which Kirkman also mentioned as a primary factor for the pacing.

We debuted in 2021, and when we got the pick up for Season 2 and 3, we had to kind of figure [it] out. We finished the show as COVID was starting, Season 1, and so we had to figure out completely new processes to work with all the restrictions that came from that. Animation studios were shut down quite a bit during COVID because animators work in a lot of cases in large rooms and in giant groups. So we had to figure out like a whole new way of working and that slowed things down quite a bit.

The second season of Invincible soars onto Amazon Prime on November 3, its first half premiering that day, while the second half the season is slated for an early 2024 release. Until then, a unique origin episode for Atom Eve has been released on the streaming platform.