Invasion Season 2

 

This Portal Coil

Invasion
Season 2
10 episodes October 2023
USA Apple

Warning: Some spoilerage.

I really wasn’t sure if I could get back to Invasion for a second series. I’d loved the first season, which was partly responsible for winning me back to modern TV during the pandemic but, by the end of the last episode (you can find my review of that first year here) I felt the ending was kind of a cop out. The aliens had been seemingly defeated only to leave one of the stars, Casper (played by Billy Barrat) in a coma and a sudden surprise mothership floating in the Earth’s atmosphere. That all seemed like an afterthought to me... a kind of tack on ending to keep the story going for a second season.

But, here we are and I returned and I found that, wow, there was actually enough material left in the original story set up to keep me watching for the next ten episodes.

This one has exactly the same MO as the first one with four different groups of characters. We have... 1. The kids who go after the sleeping Casper when he is taken to France... including India Brown as Jamila and the villain turned ‘good all along’ Paddy Holland as Monty (in a performance that really shows that this lad should go far if he sticks with the acting bug). 2. Golshifteh Farahani as Aneesha Malik, still on the run with the magical alien shard, protecting her children and running into a bunch of characters in a group called ‘The Movement’, headed up by Enver Gjokaj as Clark (who you may remember from Agent Carter, reviewed here and his further exploration of his character there in the last series of Agents Of SHIELD... reviewed here). 3. Mitsuki, played by Shioli Kutsuna, who lost her girlfriend to the aliens in the first episode and who is now called in to help the government further penetrate their mysteries, including an amazing new character called Maya, played by the equally watchable Naian González Norvind. 4. And finally, we have ex-Navy Seal Trevante, played by Shamier Anderson, who links up with new character Rose, played by Nedra Marie Taylor... tying the story right back in to the first episode of series one and Sam Neill’s character. He gets a mention and a head shot here and there is potential for him to actually return to the show in the future, if whatever reason that kept him from only being in the opening episode is somehow resolved.

And, yeah, it’s good stuff. The story is spun along, the acting is wonderful, the music is great, the action sequences are riveting and there’s even a new version of the aliens - nicknamed hunter/killers - who are impervious to fire, unlike the aliens in the first series. It’s compelling stuff and had me hooked again right from the start.

However, I can’t help but think that the show is being kept spinning instead of coming to a natural conclusion. In the last episode, Trevante manages to cross over through a portal opened by Mitsuki and joins the mind image of Caspar to bring the battle to the aliens and then, well, I guess we wait until season three, however far away that is. I’m going to forget all the story again while I wait for the company behind all this to get its act together, I suspect.

So a great series with pretty good special effects too but, it seems to me like it’s being strung out for the sake of being longer... which seems to be the way of all modern American TV these days (I hope the new ‘Disneyfied’ series of Doctor Who doesn’t go down a similar route... is it too much to ask?). So, honestly, getting a bit tired of the cliffhanger nature of series finales and the ‘will they/won’t they’ carry on with another season... which seems to be less than fifty/fifty these days. I’m thinking that not starting to watch anything until the show is finished for good might be the best way to deal with modern TV at the present. There’s no certainty you’re ever going to get a finished story. But, yeah, I like the show a lot and I’ll be there for their next one, assuming they get that far ahead with it before the plug is pulled (and before some of the child actors grow up to be too old to play their characters within the context of the story). Invasion is good show and I hope it manages to keep itself going.