Is Allen the Alien Dead? Robert Kirkman Answers Burning Questions About Invincible Season 2 Episode 3

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Invincible Season 2, Episode 3, "This Missive, This Machination!" Read at your own risk!]

There's an issue in the Invincible comics that's all about Allen the Alien. The story departs from main character Mark Grayson's journey — more specifically, his time with girlfriend Amber — and instead features the Unopan and his work with the Coalition of Planets. This week's episode of Prime Video's Invincible takes a similar approach. "We did that exact same framing device where we were like, oh no, there's sex in the comic, go see this other storyline while this is happening," Robert Kirkman, who created the series and wrote the original comics, told TV Guide. 

The episode introduces Allen's (Seth Rogan) background — he was bred to be the strongest Unopan in order to defeat the Viltrumites — before showing him get utterly beat up by those very enemies.The alien survived the brutal attack, but barely. His lover Telia (Tatiana Maslany) is entirely devastated as she sits next to a machine that holds the unconscious Allen. She leaves when the leader of the Coalition of the Planets, Thaedus (Peter Cullen), says he will watch over the alien. But Thaedus does something unexpected: He turns off the machine's power, and says, "Forgive me, Allen." 

Just moments earlier, Thaedus had told Allen that there is likely a mole in the coalition. Does his action mean that he is the traitorous one? And more importantly, is Allen dead? 

"He's not dead because he's in that iron lung at the end of the episode, so he's still alive," Kirkman said. But the next time we see Allen, he won't be the same. "He may be a vegetable for the rest of the show, or he may be a severed head that's got a robot body that exists in that form, or he could just be a disembodied voice that's driving a drone from that iron lung thing," Kirkman said. "So any number of ways Allen could continue on in the show, but it's definitely going to be different from the way he existed before."

The writer also shared the implications behind Thaedus shutting down the machine — though he kept it vague. "There is definitely a sinister turn to Thaedus at the end of that scene," Kirkman said. "Whether or not that's representative of him being a different character than he is from the comics or it's something that we don't quite grasp just yet, that's something that we'll just have to figure out."

And while the episode returned to following Mark's story, Kirkman said Allen's story sets the stage for many future events in Invincible. "We knew it was going to be a big monumental event and we wanted to give it its own kind of focus," he said. 

Invincible Season 2 premiered Nov. 3 on Prime Video, with new episodes releasing every Friday.