As the second season nears its end, Invasion continues to meaninglessly meander along the same formulaic plot structure, making it incredibly frustrating to continue just watching the same thing repeated over and over. Basically, there are three sets of events that are repeated in every episode with little variation: Mitsuki is guilt-ridden and discovers something new about aliens, which puts humanity one step forward and immediately two steps back; everyone is convinced Caspar is the chosen one who will terminate the alien invasion for good, yet he never shows up when it is necessary; Aneesha just moves around places while trying to reunite her family and gets into problematic situations either by prejudice of outsiders or machinations of the government. At this point, even pointing out the same shortcomings feels tiresome and repetitive, but the makers don’t seem to bother about the apparent absence of a plotline.
Previously, Nikhil Kapur’s angry meltdown stemming from Dr. Maya purposefully derailing Mitsuki’s attempt to communicate with the alien entity (for Mitsuki’s own good) resulted in him subjecting the entity to torture, which triggered a chaotic turbulence initiated by a number of entities across the world. Trev and Rose were captured at Project Idabel, and Aneesha, along with the Movement members, headed towards the same location to save her daughter Sarah. Caspar’s powers and psychic connection seemed to have waned away during his time being comatose, and his friends started suspecting the aliens were hijacking his mind. In the final moments of the previous episode, Mitsuki destroyed the entity by overcharging it with an EMP to end the cataclysm, only to realize later that it was a portal to the world of aliens, which she just blew into oblivion. The ninth episode, titled Breakthrough, focuses on new revelations that can help humanity achieve victory against the aliens as different segments of the narrative start converging with each other to form a cohesive whole.
Spoilers Ahead
Hidden In Plain Sight: Where Did The Alien Entities Go?
The episode begins with WDC President Benya Mabote expressing her concern about the global cataclysm situation triggered by different entities all across the world, as it seems that the areas that were previously thought to be bereft of active aliens, like Project Idabel and the Amazon Mothership, have fully active entities who were biding their time to launch attacks. She questions Dr. Maya Lopez about Mitsuki’s analysis on the subject, and she politely declines, stating Mitsuki isn’t available to answer her, despite the urgency, agitating the President further. She indirectly blames Mitsuki for destroying the portal to the other side—to the alien world as well.
Maya checks up on Mitsuki, who is seen to be extremely worked up while searching for a communication sign or pattern during the previous cataclysm, as she feels more guilty than ever due to what happened previously. Maya informs her that WDC is unwilling to share information about other suspected entity dwelling sites with them, and although the reason is not specified, it is not difficult to imagine that WDC doesn’t trust them much anymore. Before leaving, Maya once again reminds Mitsuki to take a break and not overexert herself, and after a certain point in time, Mitsuki seems to start hearing the disembodied voice of Hinata while working in the lab, who is calling her outside in the jungle.
Easily the most tiresome segment of the plotline, Mitsuki’s entire arc lost steam at the very beginning of the second season, and the two-dimensional characters surrounding her make the situation even worse as compared to the much more nuanced characterizations in the first season. Let us hope that the finale allows some major changes in this segment, which is needed if the season is looking past its second season.
Did Aneesha Find Sarah At Project Idabel?
Aneesha and Clark are seen to be briefly catching up before finally venturing to find Sarah at the ground zero of the invasion, Project Idabel. Aneesha expresses her gratitude towards Clark, who risked everything at his disposal to ensure that she is reunited with her daughter, and asks him to take care of her son Luke if, by chance, she isn’t able to make it back during the mission. Clark assures her while also stating that he wants her to do the same for his daughter, Ryder, and Aneesha agrees without a qualm. Extending her circle of trust has allowed Sarah to meet people like Clark, who reinstated her belief in goodness in people—something she needed to continue to protect her family. On the other hand, Sarah gets questioned by two kindly scientists, who learn from her that her brother Luke had a special connection with the mysterious alien shard she was carrying, which has been brought to the project site as well.
Aneesha wonders if, like Camp Pierce, here too, they have to come empty-handed, and Luke, who is able to sense the shard’s presence, assures her that Sarah’s still there. As one-half of the Movement’s members reach Oklahoma, they take control of an army vehicle and use it as a decoy to enter the site, while the other half of the members create distractions at a different location to make the infiltration possible. Taking the guise of the soldiers, the movement infiltrated the camp area and incapacitated a number of soldiers on the spot. Clark and Aneesha are able to take the IDs of some of the soldiers, which they use to enter the covert areas of the site, like the prison where Rose and Trev are locked in. Realizing that the duo are not part of the military and that Aneesha is looking for Sarah, whom he had seen arriving at the site just a day ago, Trev offers to help Aneesha in exchange for their release. Initially a bit hesitant, Aneesha agrees to do so after realizing that Trev has indeed seen her daughter and sees them being held captive by the army as a positive sign of their allegiance. As she breaks the duo free, the group of four soon finds themselves getting attacked by the WDC soldiers. Aneesha isn’t a combatant, and the only training she’d received had been with the Movement forces, which is why, despite her valiant efforts, she isn’t able to put a dent in the soldiers’ defense. Realizing that, Trev asks her to hand him the gun and trust in his intentions. As an ex-Navy Seal, he is the best bet Aneesha and Clark have to even counter the WDC soldiers.
Once again, after a few moments of hesitation, Aneesha chooses to trust Trev and hands him over her AR, and as he keeps the soldiers busy, she enters the medical wing of the site alone to find Sarah. In the end, Aneesha is reunited with her daughter, but the duo gets surrounded by a bunch of WDC soldiers in the process. On the other hand, Rose, Trev, and Clark find out about the chamber where formerly abducted townsfolk are kept in medical support, and all of them are catatonic. Rose is horrified to find Billy, her husband, among them; hopefully, the next episode sheds light on the possibility of restoring the hapless victims to normalcy. It will also be interesting to learn whether Sheriff Jim Bell Tyson was one of the catatonic survivors as well, or did he really die during the pilot episode of the series?
What Did Mitsuki And Caspar See On The Other Side?
At the facility where Caspar and co. are present at Orléans, where the alien connection-sharing children are present as well, Caspar is put under medically induced seizure under the observation of Dr. Esmee once again to find answers about a possible way to stop the invasion. As he returns to normalcy, he reveals seeing a light in his dazed state and trying to approach it, which resulted in the aliens attacking him. Considering the location of significant importance, Caspar wants to return to the state once again, but it seems Jamila is afraid for his life, as the last time he went under, he remained comatose for almost half a year. She wants to go with Caspar by sharing the psychic space, as it was Jamila who found Caspar’s signal in the first place, and now she considers acting as Caspar’s tether to the real world. The children’s group and Caspar have also formed a map of the psychical space they envisioned and are trying to find a clue from that as well. Regarding Jamila’s decision, Caspar and Monty have a heated argument. Doubted by his friends for a situation that was out of his control, Caspar was already pressured, and the added pressure of responsibility made him act up. He calls out Monty, stating his unreciprocated feelings for Jamila are making him lash out at Caspar. After a while, the duo reconcile, and Monty pleads with him not to let Jamila enter the psychical space with him for her own safety, and Caspar ensures she doesn’t by deliberately creating a rift between him and Jamila.
On the other hand, in Project Amazon, following Hinata’s voice, Mitsuki goes inside the jungle, where she is able to sense the entity’s disembodied presence around a particular area, which is shown to be bioluminescent. Realizing Maya’s notion of natural interconnectivity, Mitsuki uses the lying tree roots affected by the entity as neural links, which allows her to visit a strange, alien location surrounded by large maze-like bioconstructs. At the same time, Caspar goes under as well, and both he and Mitsuki are shown at the same alien location. Mitsuki recognizes Caspar as she has previously seen him through the portal by entering the alien entity, and Caspar recognizes the Bowie song Mitsuki had played previously while considering the entity to be Hinata. Both of them recognize the place to be the alien hive mind, as a central gigantic neural construct is shown right at the phantasmagorical location, which is supposedly the psychical system that commands all the alien entities. Maya finds Mitsuki in the jungle, and as she wakes up, so does Caspar on the other side of the world; both of them state that the location they visited was the mothership—the one that launched the second invasion.
With just one episode to go, it doesn’t seem like the series is aiming for a conclusion in the finale of the second season. Mitsuki and Caspar’s discovery will help the WDC rearrange their plans, perhaps leading an attack through the psychical space by using all the people who shared a psychical connection with the aliens, but the certainty of success is not ensured.
