Orion
Episode 3 of Invasion Season 1 begins in Afghanistan. Trevante gasps for air, pulling himself free from the sand covering his body. His comrades are gone, the place is a wasteland and that tripod from before is nowhere to be seen. Trevante eventually makes it back to his transport but when he checks the laptop, none of the signals appear to be responding. He leaves a rather hopeful message about the attack but things don’t look good. With no food, miles of desert stretching on and water in thin supply, Trevante inevitably begins to hallucinate. At least until he’s picked up by a traveler out in the desert. He helps patch up Trevante and agrees to travel with him at dawn. There’s a pretty nice chat between the two, with the language barrier preventing the two from actually communicating properly but both connecting over the same topics – namely their wives. This traveler lost his wife to sickness, growing ever-more ill over the winter and eventually passing away in spring. Meanwhile, the Malik family realize they’re not the only ones with this idea to leave town. The roads are completely packed and worse, New York is plunged into a blackout. As night turns to day, the four make it to a gas station but tensions are high – especially when a couple of guys blast racist attacks at Ahmed. Making a big decision, Aneesha snatches up car keys left on the side and take off. Outside London, Casper scrambles free from the school bus, with all the other kids joining him. Most of them have cuts and bruises but they’re very minor, given what a huge tumble they’ve taken. The bus driver however, seems to be the only major casualty here. Jamai and Casper work together to try and stifle the bleeding but Monty and his cronies blame Casper for the bus crashing. At least to begin with. The pair do eventually patch up their differences… or do they? Monty ends up lying to coerce a confession about Casper’s abusive father, eventually laughing and promising to use it as ammo against him. That night though, he heads outside and destroys their campfire. What’s his end-game? Over in Tokyo, Yamato continues to reel over the loss of Murai and the other astronauts. However, JASA is plunged into chaos in the wake of the coordinated attacks across the globe. There’s also an independent review being conducted, but Yamato is convinced that she’s the only one who can help save the day. She snatches up the badge from her superior and breaks into the vault down in the basement. Desperate, she accesses the video log from the space shuttle. There she sees the shuttle explode as something hits them head-on. How the other guys at JASA haven’t accessed this log or even checked the audio is beyond me. Anyway, Yamato manages to decipher the audio with the word “Wajo” being repeated. Unfortunately, guards manage to break into the room and prepare to arrest her.
The Episode Review
So the third and final episode of Invasion this week bows out with a little more movement on the main story – but not much. This is very much a slow burn of the highest order, with the characters trying to escape this invisible threat but with a real boots-on-the-ground feel to this whole ordeal. Each of the storylines in this episode do get some development, with a Lord Of The Flies concept for Casper and the other kids to contend with. Yamato’s is the only one with a bit of development to the main story, while the Malik family literally just move from point A to point B. After such a bright start, Invasion seems to have slumped into a more slow-paced romp. This is an unfortunate trend with a lot of Apple’s shows, with a bright premise that’s watered down and stretched for way too long. With shorter episodes to come for the remainder of the run-time, it’ll be interesting to see what direction this one takes next. For now, Invasion is in no hurry to get to the actual alien bit of its invasion. Let’s hope the future chapters improve on this front.
