The fourth season of Invincible, Prime Video’s ongoing adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s superhero comic, just wrapped up. As we digest the momentous finale, Kirkman weighed in on the series with TheWrap, where he explained his decision to gender-swap an important supporting character. In the Invincible comics, Zack Thompson is an ordinary high school student who inherits an alien battle suit and becomes an Iron Man-esque superhero named Tech Jacket. Zack actually predates the introduction of Mark Grayson, aka Invincible, appearing in his own series a year before the Invincible comics began their run in 2003. But when it came time to introduce Tech Jackson on the show, Kirkman opted to change Zack Thompson to Zoe Thompson, a high school-aged girl voiced by Zoey Deutch. “Tech Jacket has his own series and his own stories and is definitely a fully well-rounded character, but I think in the context of ‘Invincible’ and the way we adapted the Viltrumite War storyline, if Zack were to show up, there’s not a lot that you’re gonna get from that character that you’re not getting from Oliver or Mark,” Kirkman said. “There’s just a lot of similarities there.”
“One of the downsides of ‘Invincible’ is [artist] Cory Walker and I were like 23 and 21 when we started that book, and your default when you’re not really paying attention is yourself. Every time we introduce another character, ‘Oh look! It’s another white male! Who knew?’ It’s just a shortcoming that we hadn’t quite noticed and done our due diligence to correct.”
Kirkman also took some influence from his own daughter when reimagining Tech Jacket. “I tell my daughter not to curse, and it doesn’t work,” he laughed, recalling a moment from the show between Zoe and her dad, voiced by Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan. In typical Invincible style, the AI in Zoe’s suit is voiced by Star Trek legend LeVar Burton, another example of the show’s fondness for hiring high-profile voice actors.

Prime Video

Kirkman said something similar to Den of Geek early in April. “The vibrancy of that character and the energy that she brings is so much more affecting coming from Zoey Deutch,” he added. “She’s just a really, really cool character that we’re having a ton of fun with.” The show hasn’t mentioned much about Zoe’s backstory yet, so it’s unclear if anything else about the character changed in the jump from page to screen. But with Kirkman planning around four more seasons of the show, there’s plenty of time to get into it.

Kirkman has gender-swapped a couple of other characters over the course of the series. In the very first episode, we’re briefly introduced to a hero named Green Ghost (Sonequa Martin-Green), who can become intangible and pass through objects. Green Ghost quickly dies along with the rest of the Guardians of the Globe at the end of the series premiere, but she’s around long enough for us to see that she’s a woman, whereas in the comics the character is male. Later, we meet an Ant-Man-like superhero named Shrinking Rae (Grey DeLisle), who sticks around for a lot longer. In the comics, the character is named Shrinking Ray and is a man. The fifth season of Invincible is in the works and expected to premiere on Prime Video in early 2027.

Release Date

March 26, 2021

Network

Amazon Prime Video

Franchise(s)

Invincible