I think it’s a good idea in theory, but in practice it stretches belief. I can believe that Mark has been holding back his “true power” to spare others, but not to the point where he’s already powerful enough to defeat a renowned Viltrumite with relative ease
My problem isnt the lack of Mark per se, just that I feel that we could have seen more of Thraxa, and more of it uninterrupted.
Soooorta wish this was episode had been focused solely on Mark’s storyline, like S1’s finale. Kind of left me feeling like his scenes could’ve used more fleshing out and more time to breathe. Good episode regardless, of course.
Haven’t read much of the comics, but I think most stuff has been handled better by the show so far. I certainly think both Omni-Man killing the Guardians and his confrontation with Invincible are given much more weight in the show. You could say that the comics flesh out Omni-Man’s backstory even more and make his split allegiances more clear in that scene, but I think it’s sort of tonally muddy - the way the show zeroes in on Omni-Man as an antagonistic force and immediate threat was the right move imo.
I think the pacing’s been mostly fine, but there were some poor decisions in the Thraxa fight (Mark feels way too strong all of a sudden)