“Invinceable” Season 1 was a beautifully subversive and refreshing take on the superhero genre, particularly its willingness to explore darker themes that Marvel won’t and DC can’t effectively. Coming into its new special, “Atom Eve,” which focuses on the backstory of its titular heroine, I was expecting more of the same — in a good way.
Samantha Eve Wilkins (voiced by Aria Kane at age 7 and Jazyln Ione at age 12) is the result of government experimentation by Dr. Brandyworth (Stephen Root), who has a crisis of conscience when Eve’s biological mother wants to keep her and have her live a normal life. Eve’s mother dies in childbirth, so Brandyworth switches her with a couple with a stillborn child.
Indeed, she does live a normal life, but she learns that she can see molecules. Later on, she learns that she can manipulate them — except for those of living creatures. This isolates her but grants her incredible powers she uses to fight crime, which draws the attention of her creators.
The special portrays a really good origin story of a girl who is isolated not only because she has these incredible powers she is not supposed to use, but her parents don’t understand her. And we get really disturbing, crystal clear consequences of her creation — she has siblings that aren’t as lucky as her, that were created without ethics in mind, and their lives are horrific.
Eve doesn’t get the traditional origin story — her first battles with super people sees them want to murder her. When she meets her siblings, who hate her because the government was trying to replicate her and was dissapointed with them, she does draw blood and people die. One of the things that makes “Invinceable” work so well is the fact that it completely sheds this mask that superhumans can do their superheroing without any consequences, carnage or collateral damage — the world isn’t that clean and nor is this show.
Phase Two (Jacob Tremblay), the only one of Eve’s siblings that can talk, is one of the best characters the show has to offer. He’s a troubled tragic character that acts out of spite, whose rampage has no happy ending. The horror of his existence hits home because it mirrors too well the horrors of unethical scientific experiments that have been carried out in the real world — what makes it so effective as a tragedy is that it’s painfully believable. Viewers might have to suspend their disbelief on the mechanics of the show’s superpowers but they need not do it with the character writing and motivations.
What makes this special work is its central theme of renewal and reconstruction. Eve has the power to rearrange molecules as she wishes, and the resolution to the show (light spoilers) is her literally being disgusted with how ugly the world and the minds of some of the people are in it and deciding to change them into something nicer.
This is really some top-notch stuff that elevates “Invinceable” and makes me excited for the next season.
“Invinceable: Atom Eve” gets a 9/10
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