What happened to Rick in ‘Invincible’?

Invincible season 2 part 2 returned with a bang on March 14, and has kept up the tempo with episode 6. 

The season has had a lot of shocking moments and huge revelations, one of which was the return of Rick Sheridan. Rick was a side character introduced for just one episode in the first season. This explains why many people had already forgotten about him. However, he’s back now, and his presence is certainly shaking things up. So who exactly is Rick, and why does his return to the show matter now?

Rick’s story in Invincible season 1

Rick Sheridan was introduced in the sixth episode of season 1 when Mark, William, and Amber visit Upstate University. He is a smart, sensitive, and sweet guy that William is smitten with. Since he already attends Upstate University, he agrees to show them around. Things take a dark turn when Rick is abducted by a fellow student, D.A. Sinclair, who believes he can create the perfect humans by enhancing them and creating what he calls Reanimen. 

During his capture and transformation into one of Sinclair’s Reanimen, Rick is tortured and dismembered. Will shows up to save him, but when he ends up getting captured too, Mark eventually shows up to save them both. In the end, it is Will who gets through to Rick, as he still seems to have held on to some of his humanity and affection for him. 

With Sinclair defeated and handed over to Cecil and the Global Defense Agency, Rick is still a cyborg-like Reaniman with limited speech, emotions, and memories. Cecil says that the GDA will take Rick and the rest of the Reanimen, and that is the last we see of him. Most viewers didn’t think we would ever see Rick again, which is why his return in season 2 was such a surprise.

Rick’s reappearance in season 2

In the latest episode of Invincible, episode 6, we saw the return of Rick Sheridan. To the audience’s surprise, he looked completely normal, despite being mutilated the last time we saw him. Specifically, half of his limbs were robotic, and a piece of his brain was missing. Now though, he seemed completely restored, to Mark and Will’s surprise. At first glance, it seemed that the Global Defense Agency was able to fully save him after all, but it is not what it seems.

Rick is returned by Donald Ferguson, a GDA agent who died at the end of the first season. Throughout season 2 part 1, we saw Donald slowly discover that he is no longer as human as he thought. By episode 5, we saw him confronting Cecil about what he has become now. When Donald eventually tells Mark about Rick, his words hint to the audience that Rick might have undergone the same transformation as him, with Donald saying that Rick went through “intensive body reconstruction.”

So what is Rick now?

It is most likely that the GDA did to Rick, and the rest of the Reanimen, what they did to Donald- preserve their brains and transfer them to robot bodies. This makes Rick a cyborg, just like Donald is. Rick and Donald now have their full memories, except for a few from their last moments. They also do not recollect the procedures the GDA carried out on them. Nonetheless, it is clear that both characters are experiencing some form of PTSD from the events. Viewers are now eager to see where this plot point might lead to, especially since it’s clear that the GDA can preserve human lives.