The jarring effect of the slow-poke second episode gets somewhat assuaged as the third episode of AppleTV+’s sci-fi series Invasion takes a leap forward. After going through a state of economic and social destabilization for months in the aftermath of the alien invasion, human forces scored a major victory by successfully utilizing a single opportunity to take offensive measures. In the first episode itself, it was established that the fallen mothership was biotech in nature, and a formless alien entity residing inside it made contact with Mitsuki Yamato, the JASA administrator, whose role was integral during the only counterattack against aliens in Invasion Season 1 as well. Aneesha Malik and her children met with the leader of the insurgent group, the Movement, Clark, and agreed to station at their stronghold for the time being. In the previous episode, while browsing through and researching the symbols drawn in Caspar’s notebook, former Navy Seal Trevante Cole reached ground zero of the alien invasion in Oklahoma and promptly got himself captured while trying to infiltrate restricted territory.
Invasion Episode 3, titled Fireworks, connects a major plot point by moving right back to the pilot episode of the series, and with the threat of invading aliens being tackled after a major discovery, the series finally gains momentum.
Spoilers Ahead
What Did Mitsuki Learn About Signals Transmitted By The Alien Entity?
Due to inexplicable reasons, Mitsuki was the only person to whom the alien entity of the mothership wanted to reach out. Since then, attempts have been made to communicate with the organism, to no avail. Mitsuki’s connection with the alien seems peculiarly strong, and although they do not telepathically communicate, it seems as if they know each other. She also learns that the entity emits a signal of high frequency at random intervals, which the operatives consider to be its dying cries.
Mitsuki has been staying at the threshold (the doorway guarded by the entity) beyond the interaction limit, much to the psychoanalyst Dr. Maya’s dismay. Dr. Maya is concerned about Mitsuki, as she seems to be losing herself in the pursuit of truth, and warns her not to let her guard down while interacting with the entity. As an example of what happens when the boundary is ignored, we meet a former Nobel laureate physicist who lost his mind and is living in a catatonic state. However, Mitsuki isn’t too alarmed and rushes to return to her workstation when she notices the attack vessels still attached, with the mothership activating its cloaking device. Upon questioning the workstation operatives, she gets to know that a particular communication signal was being emitted, and she realizes that it must have triggered the entity to activate the cloaking mechanism.
How Did Trev Manage To Get Caspar’s Artbook?
At Oklahoma County Jail, Officer Rose Callaway is getting restless about a missing person’s case, but the world and her inept superiors don’t seem to care the least. The small town was presumably ground zero for the alien invasion, and in the last few months, over thirty people have gone missing, along with former Sheriff Jim Bell Tyson (in the pilot episode). The military’s arrival has made the town a gigantic facility, but the lives of the townsfolk haven’t improved a bit. Rose is desperate to find answers, but cold shoulders and putrid misogyny are all she gets from her colleagues and the current sheriff.
Savior complex afflicted Trev, who is imprisoned at the same jail, meets Rose and begs her to return Caspar’s art book. Rose is unwilling to do so, and when Trev starts assuming she is afflicted with personal tragedy, she gives him a piece of her mind. Rose has spent her lifetime in this town and is closely associated with the residents; in that sense, every single missing case is a personal tragedy to her. Rose laments the absence of Sheriff Tyson, the first person to go missing, as she considers him to be the only person who might have taken the situation seriously and would have acted accordingly. Seeing the date Sheriff Tyson went missing, Trev notices a connection, and as Rose too goes through Caspar’s art book, she finds all the dates when every one of the residents went missing written inside. No longer considering Trev to be just another looney, Rose is now seriously considering the fact that his claims that he can find a way to stop the alien crisis might be true after all.
Global Offensive:
Aneesha prepares to leave the Movement outpost after her son Luke starts acting more and more rebellious. When the insurgency group leader, Clark, asks her the reason for her being so uptight, she states how her demeanor has stemmed from survival necessity. Viewers know how the family has had to go through hell at the hands of fellow humans just for their cultural and ethnic differences and how Aneesha’s husband Ahmed’s tragic death doesn’t erase his lying, family-abandoning shenanigans—something her super annoying son has no idea about. As planned, Clark takes the Malik family to drop them off at the nearest Coalition facility, but responding to a distress call from a family attacked by aliens, he has to take a detour.
On the other hand, Mitsuki finds out that instead of dying cries, those signals emitted by the entity are actually distress signals directed at the second mothership. She manages to convince Nikhil about her plan to hack the second mothership’s command communication using the entity’s signal frequency and the anti-cloaking mechanism on the existing attack vessels. Since the last four months, the aliens have managed to increase their numbers exponentially thanks to their cloaking technology, and if it can be disrupted even for a short window of time, Earth’s forces can try to balance the battlefield by raining fire upon them.
Nikhil informs the World Coalition Government and manages to convince them about this wild, risky, yet ambitious plan. In the end, the plan eventually succeeds, leading to the discovery of several attack vessels across the world, out of which seven get shot down from the sky. This is a major win for humankind, as existing invading aliens die with the attack as well. As the world rejoices, Rose decides to let Trev go on his way and return his belongings.
What Happened To Sarah At The End?
At the rescue site, Clark and his other Movement comrades get flanked by the aliens, and his teenage daughter Ryder rushes to the spot to aid the unit in their struggle. Luke implores his mother, Aneesha, to help them, and as the assault on the alien attack vessels starts in various corners of the world, he suddenly gets dazed. Like Caspar, Luke, too, shares a connection with the alien hive mind, which will surely be explored later. However, Luke rushes off in a trance state to help the Movement members, and Aneesha notices more aliens pouring in at the site. She frantically runs to the location to save Luke, leaving her daughter Sarah all alone in the car.
Just as the alien attack vessel gets knocked out, the alien attacks on the ground cease to occur as well, and fortunately, the entire Movement team returns unscathed, along with the rescued family, Aneesha and Luke. However, Sarah is nowhere to be seen, and Invasion episode ends with Aneesha’s haunting cries addressed to her daughter, leaving her fate shrouded in uncertainty. Whether the alien crisis is associated with her disappearance as well remains to be seen but given the family’s fate of being at the receiving end of man-made violence, the extraterrestrials might not be the guilty party on this occasion.
Invasion Episode 3 also didn’t focus on the Jamila-Caspar section of the narrative, and after the successful assault on the aliens, a noticeable change in Caspar’s condition is imminent. Also, like the fall of the first mothership, is this attack also the initiation of bigger, freakier adversities to come? The fourth episode will answer both of these questions and then some more, as we look forward to how interconnectivity is handled in the rest of the second season of Invasion.
