We Need To Talk

The seventh episode of the opening season scatters its cast as Nolan's secret unravels. Debbie demands to know why he kept his old suit, and his shaky explanation only convinces her to throw him out. He warns that they will talk later and leaves. Elsewhere, Amber ends things with Mark; when he finally reveals he is Invincible, she tells him she already knew and is done being lied to. Adrift and blaming himself for being a poor friend and boyfriend, Mark eventually seeks out Eve, who reluctantly agrees to hear him out.

A parallel thread follows Robot. He collects a cloned body grown from his own cells by the Mauler Twins, transfers his mind into the healthy new form, and lets his original malformed body die. Reborn as Rudy Connors, he reveals he built the clone to grow closer to Monster Girl, then double-crosses the Twins by sending them back to prison. Furious, they retaliate by working to resurrect the murdered Immortal, betting that the supposedly unkillable hero can be brought back.

Hunting for Mark, Nolan finds only GDA agents staking out his home and slaughters them. Enraged to discover a surveillance house across the street, he crushes Donald's spine, and Donald detonates the building in a final act of duty. Nolan then presses on toward Mark, forcing Cecil to buy time. Cecil fires a costly orbital weapon that briefly downs Nolan, throws Sinclair's ReAnimen at him, and finally sics an upgraded, pain-numbed monster on him. Mark, spotting his father in apparent danger, rushes in to help, unaware that Cecil has been steering the beast to keep the two Viltrumites apart.

The revived Immortal tears free of the Mauler Twins' control and flies straight at Nolan in a blind rage. Nolan fends off the assault, and as Mark electrocutes the monster, his father drives a fist through Immortal's gut on camera for a horrified world to see. Even mortally wounded, Immortal jabs at Nolan's eyes before Nolan bisects him for good. Standing over his son amid the carnage, an exhausted Nolan finally says the words that give the episode its name.

The title comes from Omni-Man's closing line to Invincible in issue 10 of the comic, and it is spoken again in the episode's final scene. Flashbacks trace the Immortal's long history, including a turn as Abraham Lincoln and an early costume modeled on Golden Age Superman. Robot's storyline leans heavily on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, whose full text serves as the cipher key for the mind-control collar meant for the Maulers, inverting the novel by handing the once-malformed Rudy a flawless new body.