You Were My Hero

The fourth episode of the third season splits between Earth and deep space. After handing the Guardians the wreck of a machine caught spying on his family, Mark suspects Cecil and breaks into the Pentagon for answers, finding none while Cecil quietly watches. His date with Eve is interrupted when Dropkick and Fightmaster, the pair who stole the Declaration of Independence, emerge from a shimmering portal out of the future to ask for his help.

Though he refuses at first, Mark is pulled through the portal into a ruined future America. There, a once-capable leader has decayed into a tyrant enforcing brutal laws and work camps, sparking rebellion. The heroes explain that only someone of matching strength can stop this ruler, who turns out to be a maddened future Immortal. Captured and forced to fight, Mark ultimately kills him by beheading him, freeing the people but leaving himself shaken.

Far across the galaxy, Allen the Alien remains locked in the Viltrumite prison and works to turn Nolan toward the rebellion. When Nolan seems resigned to execution, Allen intervenes to save him, freeing Battle Beast in the ensuing chaos and adding his hunger for combat to the fight. With the Viltrumites subdued, Nolan admits a guarded secret: under fifty pure-blooded Viltrumites remain alive, and no reinforcements are coming, hinting that his loyalty may be shifting toward Allen's cause.

The title quotes a Viltrumite soldier from issue 55, spoken as admiring guards prepare to execute Nolan. The episode gives Mark and Eve their first official date and first night together, and it foreshadows several comic threads, including a cure for a coming sickness, rule of the Viltrum Empire, and Eve's future off Earth. During the execution, the guards list Nolan's crimes, from deserting Earth to fathering a child with the Thraxan empress Andressa, and even a murder likely committed on Thraxa. It is also the only episode in which Debbie appears by voice alone.