Originally, Invincible’s Angstrom Levy wanted to help people. To achieve this goal, he decides to absorb the memories and collective knowledge of his alternate selves from across the multiverse. Then he would use that knowledge to make the universe a better place.
Unfortunately, Angstrom Levy becomes a monster instead. Not a misunderstood one. Not a tragic figure who simply made hard choices. One who terrorizes a mother and her child, and engineers a war that kills a countless number of innocent lives. All so that he could destroy a threat he invented inside his broken mind.
The accident that changed Angstrom’s life
Angstrom already has the ability to travel between his own dimensions and alternate realities. After encountering different versions of himself, he decided to channel all the knowledge these Angstrom variants had. Then he would use that knowledge to create a utopia across the multiverse, giving him the power to save multiple worlds.
To absorb the memories of his alternate selves, Angstrom breaks the Mauler Twins out of prison to build a machine capable of merging those memories and experiences into his mind all at once. He specifically picked the Mauler Twins since their knowledge of cloning was greater than Angstrom’s alternate selves.
Before the process could be complete, Invincible shows up under the impression the Maulers were up to no good. A fight breaks out with Angstrom trying to explain what’s going on but his words fall on deaf ears. Since reasoning with Mark didn’t work, he summoned alternate versions of the Mauler Twins to stop the fighting, but that only made everything worse.
Angstrom finally removed the helmet linking his mind to the device to prevent the Maulers from killing Mark. He didn’t want anyone to die on his behalf. He was a pacifist trying to do what he thought was the right thing. But when Angstrom removed his helmet he triggered an explosion that killed all of the alternate Angstroms and Mauler Twins. It also destroyed the good man the main universe Angstrom was.
What replaced him was a man that is now horribly disfigured with an enlarged cranium. And that’s the least of Angstrom’s worries. His mind is flooded with borrowed memories from the alternate Angstroms who’d watched evil versions of Invincible burn their worlds to the ground. Hundreds of lifetimes of grief, loss, and fear, with only one man responsible. His own memories start to merge with his variants. He can’t separate which memories were his from his alternate selves. Angstrom forgot about his mission to help reality and how this was all his fault due to disconnecting from the device. He looks for a scapegoat and he places all the blame on Invincible for his condition.
Projection disguised as justice
Angstrom frames his crusade as a form of prevention. He’s seen too many evil variants of Invincible in other universes. He knows what Mark Grayson is capable of. Stopping him now, before he becomes a major threat is a necessity. That’s the story he tells himself.
There’s just one problem. Angstrom seems to be living in one of the few, if not the only universe where Mark Grayson is good. He never travels to the universes where Mark is already evil and tries to stop him.
You know what he does instead? Goes straight to the Grayson home to hold Debbie and Oliver hostage. He breaks Debbie’s arm, scares Oliver who’s only a baby at this point. And he does it to hurt Mark. Not to save anyone, but to make Mark feel the pain Angstrom feels.
Angstrom accuses Invincible of being a dangerous sociopath willing to harm innocent people. Then Angstrom harms innocent people because of their connection to Invincible or they happen to be in his way.
Debbie sees it through it. In the season 2 finale “I Thought You Were Stronger,” she points out that for all of Angstrom’s talk about Mark being the real threat, it’s Angstrom who’s standing in her home holding her family hostage. She accuses Angstrom of being bitter that for once, he’s the villain while Mark is the hero who has to stop him. Considering that’s the reason why Angstrom nearly rips Debbie’s arm off, you can’t help but agree she has a point.
Angstrom Caused The Invincible War to Prove a Point
To force the world to see Invincible as a monster, Angstrom travels the multiverse to recruit 18 evil versions of Mark. He sends them to the main Earth with a simple objective: destroy everything, and make the world think of the war whenever they remember the name “Invincible.”
Think about what he’s doing. He doesn’t just use evil Marks as a weapon. He knowingly unleashes them on civilians. Heroes are brutalized with some even dying to stop the Invincible War. He decides that collateral damage is acceptable. Every innocent person hurt in that war was hurt by Angstrom’s choice, wrapped in the justification that he’s doing it to expose a would-be tyrant.
His own theory collapses under the weight of his actions. He wanted to show the world that Invincible destroys things he touches. Instead, Angstrom proved he’s willing to let innocents suffer for his own ends. The irony isn’t subtle.
How Angstrom’s feud affects Mark
The cruelest part of Angstrom’s arc is how it impacts Mark.
When Mark finally gets his hands on Angstrom at the end of season 2, he beats him to a bloody pulp. The scene is played for horror. Mark’s hands are soaked in blood. He keeps telling himself he had no choice, that Angstrom pushed him there. And then he stops, and he admits the truth: “I lost control. I wanted to kill him.”
That moment of honesty is what separates Mark from the other versions of Angstrom feared. He acknowledges that his brutal beatdown of Angstrom was a loss of control, a flash of the tyrant he’s terrified of becoming. But instead of viewing himself as a victim, Mark works to find a balance so he can protect his family and do his job.
Meanwhile, Angstrom became the monster to fight a villain that doesn’t exist. His story is about how good intentions can warp a person into something unrecognizable. Angstrom didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be evil. He’s the way he is now because he kept looking for someone to blame for his predicament.
The line between being a savior and a destroyer is thin. Angstrom spent every resource trying to prove that Invincible was the real threat. Yet all he did was prove the opposite was true. The most dangerous person in Angstrom Levy’s world was never Mark Grayson. It was Angstrom Levy and his battered ego.
