“We can be the good guys, or we can be the guys that save the world.”
Season 3 of Amazon Prime’s animated series Invincible presents this dichotomy through the characters of Mark Grayson, the titular superhero, and Cecil Stedman, head of the Global Defense Agency. The two are not-so-subtle stand-ins for the philosophies of deontology and utilitarianism: Mark regards all killing as wrong and generally eschews breaking the law for the greater good, while Cecil condones whatever action saves lives overall.
After a sadistic Viltrumite (imagine Superman, but fascist) and other villains murder 3 million people, nearly including Mark’s girlfriend and little brother, Mark abandons his personal prohibition on killing. The overwrought postcredit scene intimates that because of this, the hero is ripe for capture by the devil himself. Cecil has a rather different arc: After serving a prison sentence for executing two terrorists, he moves from seeing murderers as irredeemable to seeing rehabilitation and reparations as possible paths to redemption for those who’ve done evil.
Ironically, Mark’s worship of a seemingly perfect rule hinders his ability to save lives, while Cecil’s Machiavellianism makes him more humane and more capable of helping those in distress.
