“Why’s everyone so nervous about fighting this Thragg guy?” the young superhero Oliver Grayson (Christian Convery) asks in episode 7 of Invincible season 4. “No way he lives up to the hype.”
Showrunners Robert Kirkman and Simon Racioppa built up the leader of the Viltrum Empire as one of the greatest threats in the galaxy, but he didn’t get much screen time before the final two episodes of the season. So it was up to Pushing Daisies and Foundation star Lee Pace to make the most of his scenes to ensure Grand Regent Thragg actually did live up to the hype.
“He carries some weight in this world, so I wanted to hit notes with the character that set him up for a big arc, set him up for a big journey,” Pace told Polygon in a video interview. “The best way I could think to do that was to be prepared to come into that recording booth, but give them a lot of options to work with so that they could tone the character the way they wanted to. As I was recording things, I would see Kirkman be like, Yeah, yeah, that’s it. That’s fun.”
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Invincible season 4, episode 7]
While Pace wasn’t familiar with Invincible before he was cast, he proceeded to read all of Kirkman’s comic book series so he could understand where Thragg is coming from (and where he’s going) as a character. The episode “Don’t Do Anything Rash” shows how Thragg took over Viltrum in a bloody purge after the rebel Viltrumite Thaedus (Peter Cullen) killed the old emperor. Later, in the show’s present, when the Coalition of Planets forces think that they are ambushing a weakened foe, they find even their best warriors are no match for Thragg’s might.
“I wanted to start playing him like a cool customer. He’s very calm. He’s very measured in what he’s trying to do,” Pace said. “Thragg is strategic and desperate in this story. The Viltrumites are down to a very few, and he’s tasked with either their annihilation or continuing the mission at their heart of basically moving through the galaxy and conquering it.”
Pace has a lot of experience playing powerful characters in space. Before taking on the role of Thragg, he played the fanatical Kree Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy and the cloned emperor Brother Day in Foundation.
“[Thragg] is similar to Ronan in his strict ideology, but we’re really setting him up to dismantle him in this story,” Pace said. “Brother Day is very different because he’s many iterations of the same man. Foundation is a story about some incredible intellects – Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, and the robot Demerzel – and he’s just a messy human with good instincts about what’s probably going to work out for him. He never says die. I found him really fun to play because he’s got a lot of blind spots, he’s got a lot of flaws, but he’s durable.”
The first seven episodes of Invincible season 4 are available to stream on Prime Video. The season finale will be released on April 22.
