Fan favorite Invincible crime lord Machine Head returned in Season 3 of the TV show, with an expanded role from his humble comic book origins.
While the Invincible series stuck far closer to its source material than its peers, like The Boys, it still makes changes. Some examples are making Mark Grayson's best friend, William Clockwell, gay out the gate or opening the show with Omni-Man immediately killing the Guardians of the Globe.
Another change in Invincible has been removing redundant characters while elevating others. However, despite an expanded role in the show from the comics, Machine Head's origins remain a bit of a mystery.
Origin of Invincible's Machine Head's Head
Created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Mark Englert, Machine Head debuted in issue #18 of the Invincible comic before being quickly arrested in the following issue by the Guardians of the Globe, never to be seen again until issue #83 one last time.
Appearing in only three issues of Invincible and several issues of the Guarding the Globe spin-off comic, it is no wonder Machine Head's origin and the source of his cybernetic enhancements are never explained. He is essentially a blip on the radar that is the Invincible universe.
However, issue #2 of The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe divulged more details about the cyborg criminal to readers in 2007.
According to the handbook, Machine Head's head "is an artificial bio-synthetic neural computer manufactured to ostensibly resemble a human head." The current level of technology on Earth is supposedly "incapable of grafting a fabricated bio-computer onto the torso of a living being."
The handbook theorized that the crime lord either employed someone "with greatly enhanced technological knowledge" or that the technology was alien. Regardless, the book is still uncertain whether Machine Head is a robot "grafted onto a humanoid body" or a human consciousness shoved into a machine.
Of course, this is left unexplored in the Invincible comic and its spin-offs. However, with the animated TV show making Machine Head far more important than he ever was in the comics, the Prime Video series could expand on the theories of aliens making his head.
Major Changes with The Order and Machine Head
Warning - The rest of this article includes major spoilers for the 'Invincible' comics and potential future events in the 'Invincible' animated series.
In Season 1 of the Invincible series, Machine Head's role was nearly identical to the comics, including hiring Battle Beast. If the show had stuck to the source material, this would have been his last appearance until at least Season 6. However, he returned in Season 3, Episode 5, "This Was Supposed to Be Easy."
Instead of disappearing from the story and Titan just having Isotope teleport Liu away with zero consequences, as he did in the comics, his former henchman hatched another plan and had Machine Head usurp Liu as head of The Order.
The cyborg's first order of business was to let Titan leave the organization and keep New York. Of course, Liu survived, meaning this storyline with The Order is not over. it is also unknown if The Order's true leader, Set, will still appear in the series since he was completely absent from the meeting.
In the original comics, The Order does not play a huge role in Invincible outside the spin-off Guarding the Globe, which had the criminal syndicate launch a deadly attack on Paris to prove their power to the world before being defeated by the global superhero group.
As for how Machine Head's story ends in the comics, it is left entirely unclear. His last appearance is in issue #83 of Invincible, where Titan orders Tether Tyrant and Magmaniac to kill Machine Head to prove themselves. Unfortunately, Magmaniac dies, which causes Tyrant to go berserk and merge with the tether symbiote.
After going on a city-wide rampage, the fate of Machine Head is unknown, with the above image being the last appearance in the Invincible comics. If Tether didn't kill him, he was killed or captured by a tyrannical Robot instead.
Invincible Season 3 will end on March 13 with Episode 8 on Amazon Prime Video.
