Invincible season 4 episode 5 explained by the showrunners: ‘It unnerves us’

Robert Kirkman and Simon Racioppa on the rematch we've all been waiting for

“Everything has to be an escalation,” franchise creator Robert Kirkman tells Polygon.

Polygon spoke to co-showrunners Kirkman and Simon Racioppa, who broke down the most grotesque and brutal scene so far in a show full of them.

[Ed. note: Spoilers below for Invincible season 4, episode 5, “Give Us a Moment.”]

Invincible season 3 ends with a showdown between Mark Grayson/Invincible (Steven Yeun) and an angry Viltrumite alien named Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Mark just barely wins the fight, and while he assumed Conquest was dead, we learn at the start of season 4 that the alien is actually being held deep underground in a government bunker. He quickly escapes, though, setting up a potential rematch.

“We saw Mark and Conquest fight in season 3,” Kirkman says. “So if we're going to see Mark and Conquest fight again so soon in season 4, there had to be an escalation. I feel like we achieved a natural escalation.”

In “Give Us a Moment,” a group of Viltrumites ambush Mark and his allies during a trip through outer space, leading to a zero-gravity battle. When Conquest first shows up, Mark is shocked, but he immediately focuses his energy on killing his enemy by any means necessary.

During their fight, the two crash down onto a rocky nearby planet. Mark wraps his hands around Conquest’s neck and refuses to let go, slowly squeezing the life out of him. But Conquest angles his hand like a knife, and with tremendous force, cuts into Mark’s stomach and begins to pull out his intestines like spaghetti. Mark shouts in pain, but never releases his grip. Finally, Conquest dies. Mark survives, but just barely, and his father finds him passed out in the dirt.

For Kirkman, this disturbing scene only works because it’s been earned through character development over multiple seasons of Invincible.

“We went above and beyond in that scene,” Kirkman says. “The grotesqueness of it and the brutality of it is heightened by the stakes of what's going on, and who Conquest is as a character, and who Mark is as a character. It all lands in an emotional way.”

There’s also a certain degree of realism to the encounter. Yes, these are superpowered aliens trying to kill each other in space, but given the context of Invincible, it seems likely their rematch would be this gory and no-holds barred.

“It's these two titans facing down for the second time,” Racioppa says. “They're not taking it easy. This is what would really happen. It would get to this level. They're both very tough to hurt. They're both extremely strong. So we wanted to be true to that, and true to what they're capable of.”

Then again, Kirkman also admits that the goal was to see how far the showrunners could push the violence, to the point where even they struggled to watch their own work.

“We really wanted to push that scene as far as we could possibly, conceivably go,” he says. “We’ve seen that scene like 50 times in its various stages of production, and it still unnerves us. That's when we know we're doing the right thing; when it's so affecting that we're still feeling it.”

Ultimately, however, a scene like this is just Invincible’s co-showrunners giving fans what they’ve been asking for.

“People have been wanting Mark to win more fights,” Kirkman says, “and this is how he wins fights.”

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Invincible season 4 is streaming now on Prime Video.