Sandra Oh loves complicated women. This might be her most complicated character yet

Over her 20-plus year career, Sandra Oh has always excelled at playing characters that are pigeonholed – wrongly – as “difficult women” – from ambitious surgeon Cristina Yang in hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy to obsessive MI5 agent Eve Polastri in Killing Eve and the complex academic Ji-Yoon Kim in the under-watched dramedy The Chair.

So it’s not surprising to find Oh playing an equally strong-willed character in Invincible, the animated superhero drama based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book series. What is surprising, though, is the show itself. Despite its bright primary colours, and almost throwback 1980s animation style, Invincible is not a sunny superhero story. And nor is it for kids. It’s violent and bloody with plenty to say about motherhood, being a teenager, marriage and bad dads.

Oh’s character, Debbie Grayson, is at the forefront of that, managing her 17-year-old son Mark, who is the superhero Invincible (voiced by Steven Yeun), while her ex-husband is the “fallen superhero” Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) and her stepson Oliver (Christian Convery) is also showing early superhero signs.

Invincible’s Gillian Jacobs (left), Robert Kirkman and Sandra Oh in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

It’s a lot for anyone, animated or not.

“She has a level of confidence in her personhood, in her womanhood, in her motherhood that is extremely admirable,” says Oh. “The way that she holds on to not only herself, and how she is there as a fulcrum for her children, and eventually, I think also that will be her relationship with Omni-Man.”

It’s a ridiculously thoughtful answer from Oh, who is sitting with Kirkman, who also created The Walking Dead, and fellow Invincible star Gillian Jacobs, who plays Atom Eve. They are in Sao Paulo, Brazil, ahead of their appearance at the mammoth pop culture festival CCXP, where they will launch season three of the series. That night, as they walk on stage, the fans go berserk, chanting Oh’s name over and over again, while Jacobs wipes away a tear.

The crowd’s reaction is not only a testament to Oh’s popularity, it demonstrates why Invincible has resonated with fans. Ever since Kirkman’s comic series, which he created with illustrators Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, debuted in 2003, it has been acclaimed for its atypical approach to superhero stories. It wasn’t simply good (Mark) versus bad (Omni-Man), it was about complicated family dynamics, consequences and heroes with human emotions.

When season three premiered on Amazon Prime Video last week, it shot to the No.1 spot on the streamer, with a 100 per cent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Pop culture site Vulture, meanwhile, has called it an “interesting entry in the growing pantheon of movies and TV shows that want to take the idea of superheroes seriously in one way or another”.

Mark Grayson, voiced by Steven Yeun, in Invincible.

“When you go to those dark places, you can find some light afterwards, and it has a little bit more value,” says Kirkman, who has written all 144 issues in the Invincible series. “There are huge moments in Invincible throughout every season, where there’s a happy moment, there’s a loving moment, there’s a quiet moment of reflection. And they have more impact because of the darkness that exists that is almost unrelenting in every other minute of every season.

“And to me, that’s kind of what I’m after, making you appreciate those moments. I want the story to be as interesting as possible and, I guess, what I find interesting is traumatic events.”

Atom Eve, voiced by Gillian Jacobs, in Invincible. 

For Oh’s Debbie Grayson, one of those traumatic events was Omni-Man’s mass murder of the Guardians of the Globe in season two. Surely Debbie wouldn’t seriously consider getting back together with him?

“I don’t see it so much as that,” says Oh. “It’s like, how do you get balance? And how do you make choices towards either a peaceful balance or just a balance? Inherently, you have to have peace in it. So that’s been great to kind of follow through with.”

And while Oh’s Debbie is not your typical superhero mother – she is not Martha Kent, sitting at home on the farm – Jacobs’ character Atom Eve, who has the power of transmutation, is also not a typical girlfriend-in-waiting.

“She’s a person who thinks and cares deeply and is constantly questioning herself,” says Jacobs. “She has seemingly infinite powers – great job! – but really is trying to figure out how best to use them. She wants to do good, and she’s very conflicted. And I enjoy that about a character, where there’s endless complexity to it. What I love about the world of this show is that we deal with the ramifications of all of our actions as superheroes for episodes and seasons to come.”

All of this talk about superheroes and powers, of course, can only lead to one very serious question: if Oh, Kirkman and Jacobs could have their own superpower, what would it be?

Oh: “I would have hers,” she says, pointing to Jacobs.

Jacobs: “Which is you have the power of basically remaking anything that’s made out of atoms.”

Oh: “So it’s just really the limit of the imagination.”

Jacobs: “Maybe time travel, or, I mean, travelling through space and time, both space and time.”

Kirkman: “I would stop time so that I can hit my deadlines.”

Same.

Invincible season three is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The writer travelled to Brazil as a guest of Amazon Prime Video.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.