Prime VideoUltraviolence is inevitable in Invincible. From the moment it revealed that its Superman parallel, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), was actually an evil alien intent on colonizing Earth, brutality became one of the things that defined the series. And Season 4 doesn’t drop the ball; in actually ups the ante by transporting it to the stars. Fans who’ve been waiting for Invincible to adapt the infamous Viltrumite War weren’t disappointed, either. Episode 7 delivered an appropriately harrowing conclusion to that intergalactic battle. Planets blew up! Our favorite characters nearly perished in gruesome ways! Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace) delivered a punch so powerful it was essentially a vortex! It was the kind of event that so many have been waiting to see on-screen, and it came dangerously close to overshadowing the comparatively quieter finale that followed. But just because the war is over doesn’t make its aftermath any less harrowing. Invincible Season 4 subverts the animated violence that’s always felt inescapable, opting instead for something much more psychologically scarring.Spoilers ahead for Invincible Season 4 Episode 8.The Invincible Season 4 finale, explainedThe Viltrumite War ends not with a bang, but an impossible ultimatum. | Prime VideoThough Omni-Man, his son Mark (Steven Yeun), and their allies do deliver a crippling blow to the Viltrumite Empire, they also might make things worse for themselves. By destroying the planet Viltrum at the end of Episode 7, Thragg and his followers have no home to return to. Crucially, they can’t retaliate by murdering Mark or his family. “There are too few of us left,” Thragg says mournfully — and he’s not wrong. Viltrumites are darn near extinct: there are fewer than 10 full-blooded aliens left by the time the dust settles, but that makes it all the easier for them to disappear somewhere in the galaxy. Mark is haunted by the idea that Thragg will show up on Earth to destroy everything he loves, just as he did to the Grand Regent... and at the end of Episode 8, his fear manifests in a far graver form. Thragg appears just as Mark is recovering from his post-traumatic stress, revealing that the Viltrumites have spent the past few weeks hiding out on Earth. Like Omni-Man before them, they intend to repopulate with humans. Their children won’t be nearly as strong — Mark and his little brother Oliver (Christian Convery) are each half-Viltrumite and significantly more vulnerable — but Viltrum will survive, kinda. Most importantly, they’ll coexist with humanity in peace, so long as Mark doesn’t instigate another battle.Naturally, that’s a nightmare for Mark, who’d rather rid the universe of Viltrumites once and for all. And though Thragg gives him the right to refuse this compromise, doing so would mean starting the war all over again — this time on Earth, with what could be millions of casualties. Mark is completely alone, so he has no time to ask his dad, or any of his mentors, what to do. He’s forced to accept Thragg’s terms. When we next see these characters in Season 5, the last surviving Viltrumites will have made homes of their own on Earth, hiding in plain sight, and quietly intermingling with the human race.But wait — why was Mark alone?Mark is Earth’s sole (Viltrumite) defender at the end of Season 4. | Prime VideoInvincible Season 4 does a lot of work to bring the Grayson family back together, but by the end of it, they’re scattered to the winds again. Oliver is gravely injured in the battle on Viltrum; when Mark and Nolan return to Earth, they’re forced to leave him behind on the planet Talescria, home to the Coalition of Planets. The doctors there are far more advanced than those on Earth, anyway. But when Debbie (Sandra Oh) learns about Oliver’s fate, she demands to be taken to Talescria, even if it means traveling with Nolan, her kind-of ex-husband. The pair had a blow-out fight in Episode 5, with Debbie telling Nolan that she never wanted to see him again. (Considering he called her a pet, murdered millions, and traumatized their son with a brutal beating, she could have been much meaner.) But Oliver’s injuries force these two crazy kids back together when they least expect it. Perversely, it’s also set up Invincible for the second-chance romance we never knew we needed.Nolan has been yearning for Debbie and not-so-quietly praying for her forgiveness since Season 2, so their reunion has been a long time coming. What makes it so gratifying is that Debbie is loath to take Nolan back, making true reconciliation much harder to come by. But that reconciliation still feels inevitable, even for those who don’t know the future as laid out by the comics by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker. Ideally, Invincible won’t rush one of the most fascinating redemption arcs it has: Nolan and Debbie’s rekindled relationship could be an incredible parallel to the much scarier goings on back on Earth. As the series continues, outright violence is taking something of a backseat to various Viltrumite-human relations — but that’s becoming just as exciting as the punches thrown and lines drawn in the sand.Invincible Season 4 is streaming on Prime Video.