Invincible Season 4 Delivers Justice For The Walking Dead's Most Vile Murder

Spoilers for "Invincible" season 4, episode 5 follow. 

Last season on "Invincible," Mark (Steven Yeun) thought he had killed the most brutal Viltrumite of all, Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). But Conquest had really narrowly survived, locked up and hidden by Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins), The "Invincible" season 4 premiere's stinger featured Conquest waking up and effortlessly escaping.

Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace) said he still had a use for Conquest, and that purpose appears to be rectifying his failure. In "Invincible" season 4, episode 5, "Give Us A Moment," Mark and his little brother Oliver (Christian Convery) are leaving Earth with their dad Omni-Man/Nolan (J.K. Simmons) — a reformed Viltrumite warrior — Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), and Tech Jacket (Zoey Deutch) on Coalition of Planets' starship the Venture. (A send-up of the USS Enterprise, complete with a crew modeled on the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation.") 

Conquest and two other Viltrumites show up to attack the Venture, leaving Mark in shock. While Conquest has thought that Mark was too weak to kill him, Mark absolutely intended to and thought he had killed him back in the season 3 finale, "I Thought You'd Never Shut Up." While Conquest briefly spars with Nolan and chases Oliver, this battle ultimately comes down to the rematch we've been waiting for — and this one is to the death.

Both "Invincible" and "The Walking Dead" comics were co-created by Robert Kirkman, and before "Invincible," Steven Yeun played Glenn on "The Walking Dead" TV series. Casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Conquest has always carried some metatext because Morgan's character on "The Walking Dead," Negan, brutally murdered Glenn by bashing his head to bits with a baseball bat. Mark, in effect, avenges Glenn's murder in this episode by finally killing Conquest. 

Mark first defeated Conquest by smashing his head until it was an unrecognizable bloody mess. For "Walking Dead" fans, it resembled Negan killing Glenn — only this time, the actors playing the basher and bashed were reversed. A common reaction after "I Thought You'd Never Shut Up" premiered is that Glenn got revenge on Negan.

(The similarities in the source material are a coincidence, granted — Mark beating Conquest happened in "Invincible" #64, published in 2009, years before Negan killed Glenn in "The Walking Dead" #100, published in 2012. Both issues were written long before the "Invincible" TV series, too. Speaking to Variety in 2025, Kirkman acknowledged the "meta" of casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Conquest due to him playing Negan, but thought the inevitable jokes were worth casting Morgan.)

How does Invincible vs. Conquest round two get even bloodier than the first fight? After pursuing Conquest onto a planet, Mark wraps his hands around Conquest's throat and strangles him. Conquest's hands are free and he can still fly, though, so he thrashes both of them around and strikes Mark, again and again.

Mark does not release his grip, even after a blue-in-the-face Conquest punches through Mark's torso. Mark's guts slowly fall out in graphic detail, but still he doesn't relent. "Invincible" has always been bloody, but this is the most upsetting the violence has gotten since Omni-Man was beating Mark in the season 1 finale. 

As the episode ends, Nolan and Oliver fly down to find a critically wounded Mark lying next to a lifeless, asphyxiated Conquest. It's no spoiler to say Mark isn't dead (the show is called "Invincible," remember) but after that, a small part of him might wish he was.

"Invincible" is streaming on Prime Video.