Invincible Season 4 Introduces A Villain With The Same Plan As Marvel's Thanos

Spoilers for "Invincible" seasons 4 episodes 1-3.

The main villains of "Invincible" are always going to be the Viltrumites, the super-strong alien empire that Mark's (Steven Yeun) dad Nolan/Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) comes from. But as of the season 4 premiere, "Making The World A Better Place," those alien warlords aren't the show's best comparison to Marvel Cinematic Universe big bad, Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Enter Dinosaurus (Matthew Rhys). The reptilian alter ego of normal man David Anders, Dinosaurus sees a world about to collapse from climate change. So, he wants to kill as many people as possible to cull Earth's numbers and save human civilization at reduced capacity. He's grateful for the "Invincible War" last season that did a big chunk of his job for him, but now he wants to kill Mark because he knows Invincible will only save more people. 

"Your war cost so many lives. I know you think that's a tragedy, but you're wrong. Our planet is overburdened and dying. We're choking on our own filth, stupidly breeding like rabbits as we stumble towards extinction," Dinosaurus proclaims. (It should be clear why a mass extinction-obsessed villain has a dinosaur-inspired design and name.)

In the original Marvel Comics, Thanos (created by writer/artist Jim Starlin) was in love with Death herself. He united the Infinity Gems to kill half the universe as an offering to his unrequited love. The movies stripped out that motive (leaving Lady Death to debut on "Agatha All Along") and reinterpreted Thanos as obsessed with a cosmic "balance," wanting to kill half the universe to leave a more sustainable environment behind for survivors.

Like Thanos, any nobility to Dinosaurus' goals is overshadowed by the brutality of his methods.

Spoilers for the "Invincible" comic follow.

Thanos and Dinosaurus are not the first super-villains who have a much different definition of "saving the world" than superheroes do. Take Ra's al Ghul, one of the greatest Batman villains ever. Introduced by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams in 1971, Ra's is many things: an immortal, a criminal mastermind, the leader of an ancient League of Assassins, and a nature lover. In the 2000 "JLA" comic storyline "Tower of Babel" (by Mark Waid and Howard Porter), Ra's has one of his attendants executed for accidentally poisoning a specimen of the critically endangered Javan tiger.

Ra's wants to "pare the human race down to a manageable size" to preserve Earth itself — and create a civilizational blank slate upon which he can lead the survivors. But Ra's isn't the only eco-terrorist Batman villain. Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy (originally inspired by Julie Newmar's Catwoman on the 1960s "Batman" TV show) has grown past her femme fatale origins. She's now written as a radical environmentalist who goes a step further than even Ra's. Ivy values plant life above humans, and often wants to outright exterminate (or at least mutate) humanity so that flowers and vegetables can inherit the Earth.

Now, in recent years, some have started seeing villains like Poison Ivy in a better light. As man-driven climate change continues to worsen in real life with no substantive changes made, radical responses can look more and more reasonable. Without getting into specific spoilers, the "Invincible" comics explore this impulse with Dinosaurus, when Mark starts to believe the super-villain has a point. Come "Invincible" season 5 or so, the animated Mark will have that same crisis of conscience about fighting Dinosaurus.

"Invincible" is streaming on Prime Video.