At one point he tells Mark, “this isn’t your world, it’s theirs,” despite it being the only world that Mark has ever known. Nolan wants Mark to reject his humanity outright, telling him that his DNA is so pure that he’s virtually full-blooded Viltrumite anyway.
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It’s notable that Nolan’s comments about Debbie are often what affect Mark the most: throughout the series, Debbie has represented the best of Mark’s humanity and conscience. Invincible S1E8 brings the central duality of the show-Mark the Viltrumite and Mark the human-to the forefront like few episodes before this.
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Later in the episode, he sets off Mark again by saying that Debbie’s life is worthless in the grand scheme of things as well. It’s one of the more heartless lines in both the show and the comic, and it understandably sets Mark off. After Nolan explains that everyone that Mark knows on Earth will die long before him, he tells Mark that while he does love Debbie, “she’s more like a pet” to him. This sets in motion a few important lines: one that sets off the violence of the rest of the episode, and one that ends it. Nolan also reveals to Mark that he will live to be almost impossibly old. Instead, Mark getting his powers meant that Nolan had to begin to put his plans for Earth into motion. I can’t help but think, maybe our lives would be better if he hadn’t gotten them at all.” Mark overheard them at the time, which made him think that Nolan didn’t believe in him. This admission recontextualizes another scene from S1E1, in which Nolan tells Debbie, “Mark got his powers so late, I wasn’t prepared for this. Nolan explains to him that he couldn’t tell Mark until he got his powers because he needed to make sure Mark would even get his powers. Understandably, Mark doesn’t take this news very well. It’s something I hinted at in my S1E1 review : Viltrum’s already somewhat problematic cultural imperialism was actual imperialism the entire time. Nolan was sent to Earth to weaken the planet by himself so it would join the Viltrum Empire more easily when the time came. They decided to expand their empire, but spread their forces too thinly.
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Nolan reveals that the Viltrumites culled their population of members it deemed to be weak, halving their original population. Just like in the comics, Nolan’s story mirrors the one that he first told Mark when Mark was young, including mimicking some of the shots from the original scene with a new, more violent context. Nolan explains that no one is controlling him, and tells Mark the truth about Viltrum and why he did the things that he did. Remember that Mark has no idea that anything is even wrong with his father-he shows up in S1E7 to fight the kaiju while thinking that they’re going to team up. Mark is disoriented from the shock of seeing his father kill Immortal and attacks him because he-like the Guardians in S1E1-rationalizes Nolan’s behavior by thinking that someone is controlling him. The camera pans back up to Mark and Nolan, and Nolan repeats that they need to talk. We get a preview of where the episode is going from the very opening shot, which holds on a still field of grass for five seconds before getting interrupted with blood raining from the sky and Immortal’s once again dismembered body hitting the ground. Nolan says the line in the episode, but it could have been just as easily delivered by Mark at the burger joint later in the episode when he is talking to his friends. The episode’s title has a double meaning: not only do we find out the truth about Nolan and his crimes, but Mark also finds out where he really comes from. It feels like there’s so much that I should write about that is impossible to totally capture in a review I haven’t said this for any other episode so far, but if you haven’t watched the episode yet, watch the episode right now ! That said, Invincible S1E8, titled “Where I Really Come From,” was so much more than I personally ever could have imagined: more brutal, more devastating, more shocking, and more compelling. Unsurprisingly, the fight consumes over half of the episode’s runtime. It was obvious to everyone familiar with the comics that Mark’s fight with Nolan would be at least somewhat expanded from the comic the way that time unfolds in comics, with the reader mentally filling in many of the in-between details, is different from television. The following contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Invincible, S1E8 “Where I Really Come From,” and the Invincible comic book.