Invasion Review: Last Day/Crash/Orion (Season 1 Episodes 1-3)
It turns out to be a good thing that AppleTV+’s new alien space invasion series is literally named Invasion because if it wasn’t, it’s not clear how many viewers would be able to tell.
Obviously, that’s not entirely true. It’s clear even in these initial three plodding, overstuffed episodes that something very bad and clearly extraterrestrial is going on. (To us as viewers, if not to the folks within the story itself.) But Season 1 Episode 1, “Last Day,” Season 1 Episode 2, “Crash,” and Season 1 Episode 3, “Orion,” are each so jam-packed with characters, locations, relationships, and extraneous subplots that there isn’t a tremendous amount of time for alien stuff.
To put it plainly: You will not see an alien in these first three episodes, though there are a few signs of their imminent presence, including a bizarre three-pronged statue situation that looks like nothing so much as the stage set up from U2’s 360 tour. As a space invasion thriller, Invasion is, thus far, sadly lacking in both space aliens and thrills.
Set in a variety of locations ranging from Oklahoma to Afghanistan, Invasion follows over a half dozen main characters, and each episode must subsequently devote time to so many different people that it’s easy to lose the thread of what’s going on within any particular subplot. (In truth, if you get through these first installments and can remember even most of their names, you’ll feel fairly accomplished.)
Smartly, the show decides to try and make us care about all these people before it literally rips their worlds apart, but the problem is that none of their stories are particularly interesting ones. Even the best of Invasion’s characters are paper-thin, with little interiority and only the most basic of motivations.
Perhaps it’s simply that I’ve watched Independence Day too many times, but there’s nothing about this show — yet, at least — that’s even particularly enjoyable, let alone fun. And without any real hint of what precisely is causing all these massive explosions and power outages, it’s hard to see how all these various storylines might or might not cross.
In fact, it often feels like Invasion is several very different TV shows fighting under a blanket.
There’s the X-Files–style mystery where a local Oklahoma sheriff (Sam Neill) becomes obsessed with the strange crop circle that appears in a local field — providing him with what he sees as a new purpose just as he was slated to retire. There’s the weird Lord of the Flies vibes surrounding the bus full of British schoolchildren who crash into a crater created by an alien-related explosion.
There’s the space-based drama where a Japanese engineer (Shioli Kutsuna) is determined to find out what caused the shuttle station explosion that presumably blew apart her astronaut lover on her way to the International Space Station, and the American soldier in Afghanistan (Shamiar Anderson) whose unit is wiped out and who will have to trust himself to the locals in whose country he is an occupying force.
And there’s Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani), who’s just discovered that her husband Ahmed (Firas Nassar) has been cheating on their supposedly perfect Long Island family — one that she gave up her own medical career to raise — with a white, blonde, Instagram influencer.
Theortically, we will one day care about all these people and, one has to assume, their stories will at least start to rhyme if not outright intersect. But after three episodes it’s fairly disappointing that it doesn’t particularly feel like we’re a whole lot closer to any of that happening than we were when they started.
To be fair, the way that Invasion borrows from many genre tropes — the children who appear to be somehow connected to the alien presence hints at Stranger Things, the discovery of what appears to be an alien language feels akin tof Arrival — gives me hope that perhaps it will eventually find a creative and/or inventive way to tie them all together.
But will anyone still be watching — or care — when/if it does? We’ll have to wait and see.
Stray Thoughts and Observations.
- The absolute worst character award has to go to Ahmed, who not only cheated on and appears to openly hate his wife, he called his side chick mid-apocalypse and literally tried tov force himself in a neighbor’s car to get away from Aneesha and the kids. What an [expletive].
- Best character is probably Mitsuki, which is largely thanks to Shioli Kutsuna’s performance, which somehow makes us care about the tragic end of a relationship that got maybe four minutes of total screentime.
- Sam Neill is probably the most familiar actor in this series, yet his story thus far feels the least developed.
- Why do Americans in foreign countries always have to be the most obnoxious person on screen at any given moment?
What did you think of the premiere episodes of Invasion? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The first three episodes of Invasion are available to stream on Apple TV+. Moving forward, new episodes will premiere on the service on Fridays.
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.