Invincible Season 2: Angstrom Levy powers & origin explained

❘ Published: 2023-11-23T19:56:16

Prime Video

Angstrom Levy makes his debut in Invincible Season 2, a new villain set to be Mark’s first major arch-nemesis – here’s what you should know about his powers and origin story.

In our review of Episode 1, we called it “a gruesome, thundering tonic to the MCU’s hollow programming, and a superb reintroduction to one of the best shows on TV.”

The first season had a large roster of antagonists: Mark was nearly beaten to death by Battle Beast, he teamed up with Atom Eve to put a stop to Doc Seismic, and there’s the likes of Isotope, Machine Head, the Flaxans, the Sequids, the Mauler twins, and Omni-Man.

The superhero-turned-villain may have been Invincible’s main adversary by the finale, but Season 2’s first episode sees the debut of a foe with a grave vendetta against him: Angstrom Levy. Here’s what you need to know.

Invincible Season 2: Who is Angstrom Levy?

Angstrom Levy and Mark in Invincible Season 2 Episode 1

Angstrom Levy (played by Sterling K. Brown) is an ordinary human man – but he was born with the ability to traverse between limitless dimensions. Little is known about how or why he has this power.

He’s troubled by the devastation he’s witnessed across the multiverse. In the majority of timelines, Omni-Man and Invincible have teamed up and conquered Earth, but there’s also extraordinary potential out there; “Shakespeares we’ve never read, technologies beyond our understanding… all of our problems have been solved somewhere else.”

He hatches a plan: with the help of the Mauler twins, who are experts in brain transference technology with their constant cloning, he wants to copy all of the memories and knowledge of his alternate selves from other dimensions, so he can become a modern-day Prometheus who’ll save trillions of lives. This is only a slight difference from the comics, where his main motivation is being able to travel through the multiverse more safely.

The Maulers successfully fix the encoder, and with all of his alternate selves strapped into the machine, Levy begins the transfer. However, it all goes wrong when Invincible crashes in on Cecil’s orders to stop whatever’s happening, not realizing (nor believing) that Levy’s intentions are actually for “the greater good.”

Levy summons several Maulers to restrain Mark, but as they beat him to a pulp, Levy removes the helmet in the middle of the procedure, causing a catastrophic blast that incinerates everyone in the building – except from Mark.

Angstrom Levy in Invincible Season 2 Episode 1

One of the Mauler twins emerges from the rubble and finds Levy alive, but he’s now gruesomely deformed and mutated as a result of the botched transfer. With the memories of hundreds of alternate Levys “scrambled” in his head, he vows to get revenge and make Invincible pay.

In an interview with IGN, Robert Kirkman said Levy represents the danger and vast scope of Mark’s world after the first season. “This is a character that kind of comes in at a time when Nolan is gone and really becomes a Mark-centric villain, and is one of the first villains that really put Mark through his paces and showed him as a capable superhero,” he said.

“Another thing that I see people talking about with Season 1 is, ‘When is Mark going to start winning fights?’ He starts winning fights in Season 2. He still does lose fights, though. Angstrom Levy is another big part of that, just showing Mark as a capable superhero who can stand on his own and to really give people a sense of what this show really is about.

“Angstrom as brought to life by Sterling K. Brown is a more lively, more vibrant version of what we know from the comics. What Sterling has been able to wring out of our scripts is something real and vibrant and genuine. A true villain, with a solid core of understanding that makes him as sympathetic and relatable as he is dangerous and terrifying.

“There’s a sympathy for his character that I don’t think is present in the comic. It’s possibly something that I intended, and maybe if I was a better writer, I would’ve been able to achieve on the page, but when you have an actor actually delivering the lines and living through that character and giving him this well-rounded, realistic emotion, there’s just a sympathy for Angstrom Levy that comes through much more than I expected, and that’s all Sterling.”

Invincible: Angstrom Levy powers explained

Angstrom Levy can travel between dimensions across the multiverse by opening portals at will.

So far, this is all we’ve seen him being capable of. However, in the comics, he becomes much stronger after doctors patch him up in the wake of the explosion, physically enhancing his body and making him far more resilient to any sort of damage.

Also, his original plan may not have been successful – but it did work, to an extent. While insane, he does have superhuman intellect that’ll make him a formidable, if flaky foe for Mark.

Kirkman continued: “I think if Angstrom Levy’s the backbone villain, I think that that’s his core story. I don’t think that we lean on [the multiverse] too heavily, and I also want to stress that we’re exploring the multiverse in a much different way. I think that there’s no end of movies and TV shows that are exploring that right now.

“We have a slightly different angle on it that I think makes it fresh and new, but yeah, it’s a big part of who his character is. His natural superpower is that he can access other dimensions, and so we’re following him on his journey as he tries to utilize that power in certain ways that over time possibly get corrupted. So yeah, we’re following him on this journey and seeing where things lead, and that puts him on a collision course with Invincible in the worst possible way.”

Invincible Season 2 Episodes 1-3 are available to stream on Prime Video now, which you can sign up for here. Check out our other coverage below:

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