Finally! A series about an alien invasion shows humanity desperately fighting for its existence against, you know, aliens.
Invasion Season 2 Episode 1 revealed a new, more enjoyable direction for the Apple TV+ show.
Too much of Invasion Season 1 involved several humans/groups of humans determining something was wrong with the world.
But even after it was gradually revealed that the breakdowns in society were because of aliens, disbelief still reigned because, well, aliens aren’t real.
And that extremely slow boil continued until the aliens finally burst forth in abundance on the Invasion Season 1 finale.
Which begs the obvious question: Now what?
Now it’s four months after the alien invasion, and humanity is still grasping at straws when finding an effective solution to being inundated by the spider-like aliens.
It’s a positive development that the globe’s nations have stopped clashing with each other and turned their united attention to the invaders by forming the World Defense Coalition, or the WDC.
That’s the fighting spirit. Acronym them to death.
Still, that beats the self-pity often used as a bludgeon during the first season. So that’s progress.
Invasion has continued with the compelling narrative of telling the stories of four divergent humans.
Two of those four were featured in this season’s premiere, beginning with the most impressive from last season, Mitsuki Yamato.
Mitsuki spent most of that season mourning the loss of her astronaut lover, Hirata.
The big difference was that she actually took action. She was determined to prove Hirata was still alive, regardless of the JASA command structure’s belief.
It turned out that Mitsuki was kind of correct. Some essence of Hirata survived. coopted by the aliens. While Mitsuki was learning to talk to the aliens, the military took advantage of the situation and shot down the ship, destroying whatever part of Hirata remained.
Not surprisingly, Mitsuki did not handle the loss of her lover well. Instead, she left the space bureaucracy behind and took to the street. Her story opened with Osaka under siege and her fighting a one-woman campaign against the aliens, one Molotov cocktail at a time.
It turned out that humans have discovered that fire is the most effective weapon against the aliens. Who knew?
But amid her short-handed battle against the creepers, Mitsuki gets pulled from the battlefield, kicking and screaming naturally, by two men from a mysterious chopper.
Then she was cryptically told that she could help save the world. That’s when things started to get good.
It turned out that the ship Mitsuki inadvertently helped to be shot down had been recovered in the Amazon and was being researched.
Shortly after arriving, Mitsuki met the man who had ordered her abduction: rule-breaking billionaire Nikhil Kapoor.
In a global crisis, bringing in the arrogant and wealthy makes sense. Some of them got rich by using their big brains. (Others simply inherited their wealth, having done little to earn it.)
The good news is that Kapoor has more personality than any of the characters from last season. Then again, that’s a damningly low bar.
Kapoor brought in Mitsuki for one excellent reason: only she could communicate with the aliens.
That makes sense. Someone needs to find these things’ weaknesses.
The one thing Kapoor soft-peddled to Mitsuki that his science advisor, Maya Castillo, wouldn’t: No one came out of an encounter with the ship’s energy source unchanged.
The thing was, Mitsuki had been in a similar situation before. Granted, being face to whatever with the pulsing blue blob had to be scarier.
But she knew the correct frequencies to get through to it. Who could have guessed that would be David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”?
Still, it was left hanging how Mitsuki came out of that meeting.
Also returning was Aneesha Malik, a medical student turned stay-at-home mom.
Aneesha was doing exactly what one would expect. After her philandering husband finally did something worthwhile, getting himself killed to buy his family time to escape, she and their children went on the run. They still were.
Last season, Aneesha was one of those characters who was less than she should have been. She had the intelligence to be a doctor, but instead, she settled for being a housewife to an unfaithful husband, as it turned out.
Now Aneesha has been forced by circumstances to become more. She has taught her kids, Luke and Sarah, the necessary skills to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, whether they liked it or not.
Unfortunately, Luke has ceased to buy his reality. Aneesha had a rebellious tween on her hands, precisely what she didn’t need.
Luke decided it was a good idea to steal two cans of gas off the back of a military truck. As a result, the whole family got caught and exposed.
Fortunately, their fellow prisoner was Clark, who turned out to be a member of The Movement. This militia group preached a different method for dealing with the aliens than the military.
The Movement sprung Clark and the Maliks, which leaves Aneesha with a tough call to make: does she stop running and throw in with Clark?
How did you like this new direction?
Will it help Mitsuki to have a mission?
Will Aneesa stop running and make connections?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.