Invincible: Atom Eve

The special opens on a Lizard League raid that the Guardians, aided by a decisive Omni-Man, push back. Amid the chaos, a pregnant volunteer named Polly goes into premature labor as waves of raw atomic energy surge through her body in time with her contractions. Elias Brandyworth rushes her to a hospital, but a final devastating pulse kills her, and only an emergency delivery saves the infant. When Steven Erickson's forces sweep in to seize the child, a nurse instead quietly returns the baby to the grieving Wilkins couple, who name her Samantha Eve.

Growing up, Eve is fascinated by molecules and treated as a strange outsider, eventually shipped off to a school for gifted children where she keeps to herself. She loses her one friend, Val, after revealing her abilities, and is later expelled and sent to an ordinary high school. All the while Brandyworth watches from a distance, and a government program keeps trying and failing to replicate her gifts by producing flawed clones. As Eve grows into the hero Atom Eve, Brandyworth finally makes contact, warning her that her powers work by altering matter rather than conjuring it, and confessing that her real mother, Polly, had volunteered for the experiment that made her.

Their reunion is broken when Eve's engineered siblings, the unstable Phase clones, go on a rampage. She battles them to a standstill, cradling a dying Phase Two who wishes things had gone differently before crumbling to dust. Captured alongside Brandyworth, Eve learns the agency kept a barely-living Polly to breed more weapons. When Erickson kills both Brandyworth and Polly, grief and fury unlock Eve's full power; she erases the officials' memories, wipes herself from their records, and collapses. She wakes and returns home to her adoptive family, breaking down in her mother's arms. In an epilogue, a newly-arrived Nolan nearly attacks Debbie and a young, powerless Mark, then freezes in shame, an early sign of how much Earth is already changing him.

Eve's true parentage and the experiment behind her creation are revealed, tying her abilities to the atomic energy that killed Polly. The government's cloning program and Eve's Phase siblings are introduced, ending with the death of Phase Two. Brandyworth and Polly are both killed by Erickson, and the resulting surge pushes Eve past the limiter Brandyworth secretly installed in her.

Eve erases the memories of everyone who knew her secret and returns to the Wilkins household, accepting the family she has. The epilogue shows Nolan's barely-suppressed violent impulse toward his own family soon after reaching Earth.

The special is set before the first season and gives the Lizard League their first speaking roles. Tatiana Maslany voices Queen Lizard here and would go on to play two more characters, both queens, in Season 2. Eve's friend Val is an original creation not found in the comics.

The scene of Eve meeting her biological mother is far darker than the comic version, and Erickson kills Polly deliberately rather than by accident. Stephen Root voices Brandyworth, while the late Lance Reddick voiced Erickson before the special's release. One burglar mockingly calls Eve a Powerpuff Girl, a nod to the character Blossom, who shares her color scheme.