Overall, I’d say a vast majority of the changes the show has made have been for the better. It’s adding a lot of much needed depth to a lot of characters that the comics weren’t able to do. That being said, I seriously do not enjoy the Donald plotline the show is adding.
When I was reading the comics, I did like Donald as a character, but he wasn’t someone that I was itching to have explored more. When it’s revealed that he is an android, they pretty much just move past it immediately. They do later give it some depth because its a detail they can’t just ignore forever and I think the way they handled it was great. They just have him talk to William’s boyfriend who underwent heavy body augmentations to stay alive and they bond over how difficult it was to “feel human” when you’re mostly machine, and Donald talks about how hard it will be to come to terms with it but eventually he’ll be alright. It will be a constant struggle, yes, but he will still live and love and experience life more as a human than as a machine. I think that’s as much depth as he needs. But the show is dragging that shit out waaaaay too much for me, personally.
I just don’t see the reason for it. Donald isn’t a very important character even if he is very much liked by the fandom as a whole. There will come a point where he becomes almost irrelevant to the larger story. Is it for an extra mystery for the non-comic book readers to attach themselves to? If that’s the case, most people I’ve seen so far already guessed what he is and don’t seem very interested in getting a clear answer. Is it to add to the idea that Cecil is a morally grey character? If that’s the case, we already know the lengths he’s willing to go. He literally spells it out for the audience in season 1 when he tells a LITERAL DEMON “I’m trying to keep things grey.” I just don’t understand why they chose to create this whole plotline for something so trivial in the scope of the Invincible universe. It feels so jarring to go from Mark and Nolan fighting off the Viltrum empire as they commit genocide to “oh gee, Donald is curious about whether or not he’s real.” Like…I don’t care. It doesn’t seem like a lot of people do to begin with. The comic book readers already know and the show-only crowd figured it out during episode 1. It’s messing with the pacing quite a bit and I find myself getting impatient whenever he appears on screen because now I have to sit through 5-10 minutes of Donald aimlessly wandering around going “am i truly…human??” I hope it ends in the next few episodes.
It’s not the greatest storyline, but I kind of like it. I’m reading through the comics, and one thing I think the show does far better is ordinary people. Debbie is a fantastic character in the series and feels achingly real in a way she doesn’t in the comic. Ik people give show Amber a lot of shit and not unjustified, but compared to comic Amber she actually comes with flaws and a whole personality. Comic book Donald does have his moment (and might have more later on idk), but I do kind of like what he adds to the show. He’s kind of the humanizing element in Cecil’s whole outfit in s1, till you realize (and he realizes) that he well… isn’t. It makes show Cecil a hell of a lot more menacing if nothing else. Book Cecil is frankly kind of a caricature of a spook; aside from being the government guy who does a lot of morally suspect shit for the “greater good” it just doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot else to him, he’s totally comfortable with his brutally authoritarian outlook. I kind of like it that the show hides the ball, where you could really feel like he’s a moral person who legit feels bad for the shit he does, then boom turns out his underling’s an android who doesn’t know it.
Tl;dr I think the change works within the context of the show. Imo, I don’t think we’d notice this as much if the release schedule for the show wasn’t as fucked as it is.