Alien mothership awaits in Apple TV+’s Invasion Season 3

The chances are that you are not watching Invasion on Apple TV+. The network has seen better press and greater viewership success with the other two newcomers this year: Silo and Foundation. It did garner a small but dedicated fan following, though, even as a series with very mixed reviews, at least early on. Admittedly, the show had a tough time with its pacing, burning through a lot of time setting the stage for things that really didn’t come together in its first season. Even the die-hards sometimes had a love/hate relationship with the show.

However, this is the first time the show has really played to its strengths. First, from a visual standpoint, the cinematography has always been strong, often gorgeous, in a gritty and atmospheric sense, and even as the first season was too long to properly accommodate its setup for things to come, it is clear that Weil’s and Kinberg’s team is going for big, a little audacious even, in the themes it is tackling, even if the execution has not always been there.

So, Apple TV+ has now unveiled a trailer for the third season, and if it is any indication, it looks like Invasion is coming into its own.

Who Makes Invasion? An Introduction to the Team Behind the Series

Weil is the creator of the series, of course, and he was also executive producer and showrunner (sharing the latter role with actor and writer Benjamin Cavell), and he has built a strong reputation in the world of streaming television. He cut his teeth in many different showrunning positions, but he is probably best known for Hunters, another high-concept, action-driven series with a creative premise.

Kinberg is, of course, known for multiple entries in the X-Men series, playing a key role in the franchise during its most successful period at the box office. He has since branched out into more original properties, particularly as a producer and Oscar-nominated writer of The Martian.

As for the premise, it is certainly an interesting one: it is one of those classic alien invasion stories told unconventionally, seeing an otherworldly threat through the eyes of ordinary people. And this is what Invasion has done from the very beginning, offering a different take on a sci-fi concept, something we have seen often over the last few years. It even added an intriguing linguistic layer to the mix, with the first two seasons bringing in English, Japanese, and Pashto to varying degrees, while also grounding the large scale of an invasion of this nature into a very human story.

What Was Good (and Bad) About Invasion Seasons 1 & 2?

Season 1 in particular was as much about what came to feel like a barely subsiding threat as it was about the characters. For an action show with a premise that is so closely tied to aliens, it was also a show that did not feature much alien activity in the first season. Or, rather, the show’s aliens have primarily existed as a plot device and narrative counterpoint for the interpersonal and often emotional drama that has been the story’s mainstay.

The first season in particular is long, and it moves very slowly, at least initially, setting the stage, as mentioned, for the actual invasion and what comes next. In particular, the “unavoidable” nature of the threat started building in the second half of the first season, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that the majority of the returning cast of characters faced in Season 2.

Season 2 Did “Step Up” in Delivery. Season 3 Looks Like the Next Evolution of Invasion

Season 2 in particular needed to step up in terms of stakes, urgency, and large-scale conflict and overall action. The story in the second season at least addressed this issue, and its relatively brisk pace and significant jumps in terms of story and character development gave the show a new life of sorts.

The world of Invasion had completely changed by the start of Season 2, and it has been a lot about the new realities that the “chosen” survivors had to adjust to. The human race, the living remnant of which is only ever implied to be a small fraction of a percent, is forced to live in tight, safe zones protected from the aliens, known as the “spore pods.” Life is not easy, and it never has been in this series, but the pacing at least was different as the second season kept developing in this area.

Season 3: Invasion Characters Join Forces to Infiltrate the Alien Mothership

The season picks up a couple of years later, but now, the threat has mutated into even scarier forms. As per the official description, the once-fractured viewpoints of the first two seasons are coming together for the first time in Season 3, with all the major characters uniting for a high-stakes mission to get inside the mothership that has arrived from the otherworldly home planet of the aliens.

This is a major sea change for Invasion, so far as the story and cast are concerned. All these disparate storylines across the different countries of the first two seasons will now start converging, with many of the major characters now following the same arc for the first time in the series, being brought together for this epic endeavor.

Not only have the aliens themselves evolved, but they are now at what has been described as the apex form. Their newest mutation is the use of dangerous, rapidly spreading tendrils. The stakes could not be more clear: humanity has been tested to the limit thus far, but it will take every single bit of knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness from the survivors to have any chance of protecting the world.