This Missive, This Machination!

This Missive, This Machination! is the third entry in the second season and the eleventh overall, airing November 17, 2023, written by Adria Lang and directed by Tanner Johnson. As Mark settles into the start of college, Debbie wrestles with lingering trauma, and Allen the Alien carries word of his findings back to the Coalition of Planets. The installment splits its attention across these threads before steering Mark toward a shapeshifting visitor whose request will upend everything.

Allen briefs the Coalition on his mission to seek out beings capable of matching the Viltrumites, recounting Mark's defiance and Nolan's abandonment of Earth. Coalition leader Thaedus backs his conclusions and privately tasks him with rooting out a suspected mole, but Allen is then ambushed and savagely beaten by three Viltrumites, after which Thaedus quietly sabotages his recovery. On Earth, Debbie joins a support group for the widowed spouses of fallen heroes, only to reveal herself as Omni-Man's ex-wife and leave in shame.

Mark encounters Nuolzot, a shapeshifting insect-like alien from the distant world of Thraxa, who warns that his people face annihilation and begs for help. Defying Cecil's explicit orders, Mark travels to Thraxa and unexpectedly comes face to face with his father, now serving as the Thraxans' ruler. The episode title references the card that reintroduces Allen the Alien in the twenty-third issue of the comic, a phrase the Narrator also speaks aloud during the episode.