Invasion Review: The King is Dead (Season 1 Episode 4)

Let’s just get this out of the way: There are still no aliens in Invasion Season 1 Episode 4, “The King is Dead.”

In fact, we don’t even get an update on all of the show’s major characters, which feels odd when the show is still in the early days of its narrative journey. (Or is it? The season is halfway done next week.) 

Instead of aliens or anything remotely resembling answers, we just see a variety of characters in varying degrees of turmoil. This makes a certain amount of sense because no one has any real idea what’s happening, but it’s also not terribly interesting to watch. 

After all, we still barely know these people, and I’m not sure that this episode does much to fix that problem. The show’s most recognizable star — Sam Neill’s Sheriff John Bell Tyson — doesn’t appear in this hour at all, leaving viewers to wonder if he’s even still alive, let alone what precisely stabbed him in that crop circle last week.

Over in the U.K., the hot British school teacher has passed away overnight in the wreckage of the crashed bus, and the kids are already at each other’s throats after a mere 12 hours. (Seriously, the designated group bullies try to stone a kid. It hasn’t even been a day!)

Though they somehow successfully manage to scale the (ridiculously) deep crater left behind by what appears to be a largely vaporized, possibly Russian satellite, the group still has no idea where they are, what has happened, or in what direction some safety might lie. Anxious Caspar appears to have been elevated to the group leader, which I want to believe cannot possibly end as badly as I fear it will. 

Mitsuki is still the most emotionally resonant character for me — her grief over Hinata’s death feels so genuine and legitimate, in a way that many of the other character’s actions don’t, and though their relationship had three minutes of screentime, I still somehow really believe in it and its importance to her.

After being basically thrown out of JASA for accessing video footage of the shuttle explosion (a.k.a. her girlfriend’s last moments), she decides to visit Hinata’s father — both to pay her respects and to feel somehow closer to the woman she lost.

And though this entire thing feels like it ought to be filler, their scenes are actually the strongest of the hour, as he admits that he not only always knew his daughter was a lesbian but was actually angry about her decision to marry a man and hide her true self from the world. 

Plus, he apparently shares Mitsuki’s belief that something out of the ordinary happened to his daughter, which gives her a useful partner in the story going forward.

Elsewhere, despite the fact that Ahmed literally tried to flee with strangers rather than help his family last week — a fact that the show weirdly doesn’t address again — the Maliks are still trying to get out of Long Island, as several counties are under a mandatory evacuation order.

Neither Ahmed nor Aneesha seems terribly curious about what’s actually caused this event in the wider world because their own personal world is imploding so dramatically. Ahmed keeps trying to contact the woman he was moments away from leaving his wife for. Snooping through his phone, Aneesha discovers said side chick is pregnant and her husband had yet to mention that fact.

The kids can tell mommy and daddy are fighting, however, and fear they may be headed for divorce. If only we could be so lucky kids. (Ahmed remains the worst and some part of me truly just wants Aneesha to kick him out for good.) 

Invasion does do a decent job hinting at the wide range of global destruction this…extraterrestrial whatever it is has wrought. Major explosions and unexplained damage have occurred around the world — as we see both in the many individual stories we’re following and what we can gather from snippets on background news broadcasts.

It makes sense that the world would be somewhat paralyzed, unsure of what precisely was happening and whether these deadly events were accidents, terrorist attacks, or incursions blessed by hostile governments. But, because the show is so invested in showing us the fallout to an event we haven’t even really witnessed, without giving us any real idea of what the reasons or stakes are…it means that Invasion often feels paralyzed too.

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• Wasn’t there an entire mini-subplot last week about how Ahmed and Aneesha owned a Tesla? Did I hallucinate that? When did they get a completely different car?
• I did like the kids’ ingenuity in spelling out S.O.S. with rocks inside the crater they were trapped in, though I feel it…strains credulity a little bit that a whole of that size could have been created with zero people showing up to check it out, even if was just rubbernecking locals trying to see what caused the big boom the previous evening.
• Speaking of straining credulity the idea that the Malik son was able to vanish so thoroughly in the forest that quickly…. well. 
• I’ve watched entirely too many horror movies because I don’t trust this nice family that invites the Maliks to stay the night at all. 

What did you think of this episode of Invasion? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Invasion stream Fridays on AppleTV+. 

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