The image is from Apple.
The first season of Invasion is incomplete. The story slowly teases out the reality of what is happening as it charts a few humans grappling with an alien invasion. The biggest reveal of all doesn't happen until the very last shot of the final episode, but there are hints here and there. The pull has a lot to do with potential. The first season of Invasion feels like the beginning of a much larger science fiction epic.
The invasion starts slowly. Invasion is different from most alien invasion stories in that it focuses on human trauma. There was barely a mention of the aliens early on. Invasion tracks a bunch of different threads across the world, which end up being connected. There is a young boy in London who is prone to seizures that may be connected to the invasion, a family from Long Island that is struggling with infidelity, and a space engineer who may have a weapon that can kill the aliens.
The show makes you care about these characters because you spend so much time with them. You understand why the engineer is working so hard to find a stranded astronauts after seeing so many emotional scenes about their secret relationship. The soldier's slowly revealed backstory eventually turns him into a sympathetic figure. It takes a long time to get to the aliens, so there is a lot of character development going on. The first half of the season shows that there is something going on beyond a natural disaster.
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It is a huge deal when the aliens show up. The reveal changes the tone of the show. Invasion becomes something different, balancing out its character drama with some intriguing alien mysteries and the horror of dealing with the invaders. There is a scary scene in a secluded house where a family tries to escape from one of the spiked blob creatures, and then we see the soldier making his way through a war-torn hospital as if this was a first-person Resident Evil game.
You don't get much in the way of answers.
You don't get much in the way of answers. When you learn that the London teen had visions of the invasion before it happened or that the Japanese researcher discovers how the aliens communicate, there are some small revelations. There is nothing clear. The show throws another twist when it seems like the aliens have been defeated. This is not a bad thing. Mystery is important and part of what has kept me coming back. The result is that season 1 doesn't feel like a complete story. There are 10 episodes of setup.
Apple revealed earlier this week that Invasion is coming back for a second season, with co- creator Simon Kinberg saying they would be "expanding our universe in the most intimate and epic ways." I am anxious to see where it is going after a full season of setting things up.
