Episode 3 of AppleTV+’s science fiction series Invasion Season 3 finally updates us about the last few central characters who had not yet been seen in the new season, as we get to know about Aneesha Malik and her kids. As Trevante Cole and Jamila Huston had been seen setting out on a long journey after escaping the grasp of the WDC at the end of season 3 episode 1, they are now confirmed to have come to Aneesha and her family for help. Meanwhile, Mitsuki Yamato sneaks into the site of the portal in the Atlantic Ocean, accompanied by Nikhil Kapur, as Invasion season 3 episode 3 reveals a major threat to humanity at the very end.
Spoiler Alert
How has Aneesha settled into a new life?
Invasion season 3 episode 3 opens in a neighborhood in the city of Boise, Idaho, where all the neighbors have gathered for a sort of carnival with food, music, and sports. Among these people is Aneesha Malik, who looks quite different from her usually shocked and aggrieved state that we had seen throughout the first two seasons. The fact that things have been calm and peaceful on Earth for the last two years is quite evident from Aneesha’s appearance, as she has not only found a good life away from the center of action, but has also found the romantic love that she’d always missed. She had grown close to Clark Evans, the leader of the rebellious group called the Movement, and had eventually decided to give him a chance to romantically pursue her. At present, Aneesha seems to have married Clark, as they live together as a whole family.
Aneesha’s two children, Luke and Sarah, had also grown close to Clark, and his only daughter, Ryder. In fact, Ryder knows more about Luke’s love life than their parents, as is quite natural at this age, since the boy feels more comfortable sharing these things with his elder sister than his parents. Having once been at the core of the Movement’s activities because of her dad’s involvement, Ryder has grown up to be a very determined and hardworking teenager who wants to have a positive impact on the world at the earliest chance. In a conversation with Aneesha soon after the carnival, Ryder admits that she wants to pursue classes in organic chemistry and biology together in a school year, despite it being very difficult, so that she can make it into medical school at the earliest.
Aneesha has clearly taken up the role of the missing mother very adequately in Ryder’s life, and she is the one the teenager approaches for any advice or encouragement. Therefore, Aneesha suggests that Ryder give herself a bit more time to reach her goals and feels like she should continue pursuing her talents in poetry, keeping a creative balance to the science-driven career that she wants to have. However, the girl insists that she wants to become a doctor and make herself useful to the thousands of people around her. It is very obvious that Ryder has become so goal-oriented because of the fact that she lived through the alien invasion and therefore knows the need to be of use to people around her at all times. Aneesha addresses this as well and suggests that she should relax, make emotional connections, and enjoy her youth a bit more, now that the invasive aliens are no longer in the picture.
As Sarah is about eleven or twelve at present, she still has the innocence of a child, making her want to go to her friend’s house for sleepovers and ask her parents for a turtle to keep as a pet. Sarah is seen the least number of times among the Malik-Evans children, as she is away for a sleepover at her classmate’s house on this particular day. Clark now works as a teacher in the city, having left his past life working against the WDC government and raising questions about their abilities behind to now work at a high school, possibly the same one where the children go. Aneesha, meanwhile, has been working as a doctor at a hospital nearby, finally putting to use the skills she had gathered through her education in medicine, although she had never completed the academic course, as she had been forced to marry.
It is Luke who played the most important role in the family with respect to the aliens, as the boy was seen somehow communicating with and controlling the alien hunter-killers in season 2. Even at present, it is his personal experience that becomes most important, as he is believed to still have a connection with the alien hivemind, similar to what Caspar Morrow used to have. Soon after the carnival, Trevante and Jamila arrive at Aneesha’s house, wanting to speak to the family, considering them to be experts, to discuss the possibility of the aliens returning. Although Luke initially says that he had never been contacted by the aliens through mental visions and messages after the fall of the mothership, this is not actually true.
During their conversation, Trevante showed Aneesha and Luke the EEG recorded moments before Caspar’s death, and the unusual-looking spike in it confounded Aneesha. She clearly stated that the graph made it quite evident that Caspar had not died from a heart attack or brain failure, but due to some inexplicable reason that must not have been known to the authorities either. More importantly, Luke later reveals that he had seen a similar pattern as the spike in the graph during a vision that he had been shown by the aliens mere minutes before Trevante returned to Earth. The boy had even drawn the pattern in his diary to make a note of it, and it is confirmed that Caspar’s EEG is definitely linked with the return of the aliens somehow.
Why does Trevante leave Jamila behind?
A touch of drama has always been present in Invasion, and season 3 is no different, with enough emphasis on the emotional state of Trevante Cole already in the first 3 episodes. Trevante does not want to get anyone else embroiled in the mess that he cannot help but create because of the extremely unsettling premonitions that he keeps getting of another alien invasion. He admits that nobody with a normal life and other more stable pursuits should get involved in his investigation. Despite coming to Aneesha for help, he does not really want her to get involved either, especially after seeing her living a happy life with her new husband and family.
But it is Jamila who faces Trevante’s emotional outbursts the most, especially with regard to him being a lone wolf in trying to figure out the mystery of the alien invasion. Earlier, he had refused to let the girl come with him, because he felt that he would always go out of his way to keep her safe, which might interfere with his work, and the situation does not change even now. The ex-soldier is still clearly shaken and disturbed by the fact that Caspar has died, and especially that he probably could have done more for the boy. Although there is no suggestion at all as to how Trevante could have prevented Caspar’s death, he keeps believing that he had let down the boy, and Jack Hollander’s insinuations earlier, in Invasion, season 3, episode 1, did not help either. Therefore, he does not want to let Jamila accompany him, no matter what, to prevent indirectly causing the deaths of any more children.
Jamila keeps sternly stating that she is no longer a child, which is true, especially since she too, like Ryder, has had to emotionally mature and get used to a lot more loss and pain than teenagers should. It is Jamila who had taken the tough decision to leave her settled life in pursuit of the truth, and so she feels disheartened when Trevante tries to push her away. She witnesses the man have PTSD attacks almost every night, indirectly getting affected by his rage-fueled destruction of the walls and furniture. But whenever Jamila tries to help him out, by even simply trying to talk, Trevante refuses to let her help.
Thus, when the time comes for Trevante to head to a different town in order to continue with the investigation, he once again refuses to take Jamila along. As the teenager expresses her discontent, Trevante seems to be convinced by her words and asks her to pack her things in order to leave at the earliest. But as Jamila enters her room to pack, Trevante locks her up and leaves, ensuring there is no chance for the girl to tag along. This, in turn, ensures that Jamila now teams up with Clark, Ryder, Luke, and Sarah at the end of the episode, and she will possibly grow closer to this set of characters throughout the season.
Who is Infinitas?
Infinitas is a new persona and a faction, introduced in Invasion season 3 episode 3, who can be considered an offshoot of the previous Movement group, with a similar anti-government stance. After the destruction of the mothership, the Movement had lost most of its members, as there were no aliens left to war with, and therefore, no reason to be associated with an anti-establishment group. Just like Clark Evans himself, most of the members had returned to the cities and started living ordinary lives, taking up usual jobs. In fact, it is Clark himself who first mentions Infinitas, as he reveals to Aneesha that despite leaving his anti-government beliefs behind, he cannot help but feel intrigued by the mystery surrounding the alien invasion even to this day. Therefore, he often reads up on the matter on online forums and secretive message boards, which is where he first came across Infinitas.
Since Infinitas is basically just an online forum that regularly posts information about the alien invasion, often leaking government information and data to the public, it is unclear to Clark whether it is run by a single person or if it’s a larger group. This is why Infinitas is used to refer to both the man believed to be running the faction and the faction itself. The Infinitas forum allows normal people to talk about their recent experiences with aliens, especially around the area of the crashed mothership, which is strictly restricted by the government. This suggests that the aliens have not completely disappeared, as claimed by the WDC, which is why it tries to suppress any information about people possibly spotting alien activities.
The faction becomes important to the situation when Trevante shows Caspar’s EEG graph to Aneesha and Clark, and the latter immediately recognizes the pattern as something he had seen recently on the Infinitas online forum. In a recent post, Infinitas had revealed classified information stolen from the government, in which the graphical representation of a particular frequency that had emanated from all the destroyed alien portal sites had been shown. Crucially, the emanation had taken place roughly about three minutes before Trevante appeared through the portal in the Atlantic Ocean, and the pattern in this graph exactly matches with the one on Caspar’s EEG graph. Although it had been considered some sort of anomaly or coincidence, it is now confirmed that Trevante’s return to Earth, Caspar’s death, and the return of the aliens are all indeed related to one another in some way.
What do Trevante and Aneesha learn from Infinitas?
In order to understand the situation better, Trevante decides to visit an underground meeting in the hopes of making contact with Infinitas and discussing his findings with them. He refuses to take Jamila along with him, leaving her locked in the motel room in Boise, but agrees to be helped by Aneesha, as she joins him after learning about the vision that Luke had seen at the same time when the strange frequency had emanated from the portals. Although they narrowly escape a dangerous situation when a bunch of neo-Nazis at the meeting, which turns out to just be an illegal weapons sale, attack them after recognizing Trevante, the Infinitas representative does spot them and soon leads them to a different location.
As Trevante and Aneesha sit down to speak with a group of people who all seem to be part of Infinitas, they learn that the strange frequency had been recorded earlier as well. In fact, the same frequency had been heard throughout the world years ago, when the hunter-killers had first appeared. Going by this logic, it suggests that the frequency actually signals the coming of the alien beings or the commencement of the aliens attacking humans. This might mean that when the frequency played out just a few days earlier, it marked the beginning of the return of the hunter-gatherers, as seen in the very first episode of season 3. It also means that something bigger and more sinister is coming, which is confirmed at the end of the episode.
But the fact that no large-scale alien attack has yet taken place, combined with the fact that Trevante has just returned from the alien mothership, might even suggest that the man is somehow corrupted by the aliens, and they are using him as a sort of weapon as well. When the Infinitas members play the strange frequency, the screeching noise immediately hurts Trevante, and he has flashes of him back at the mothership, where he actually saw some gigantic beast with numerous tentacles. Before he can tell the others about what he remembers, FBI teams break into the house and arrest everyone, as the WDC had been secretly keeping an eye on Trevante’s movements ever since he escaped the army base.
Did Mitsuki and Nikhil find anything significant?
On the other side, Mitsuki and Nikhil sneak into the WDC army facility in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, housed just above the alien portal that once existed at the place. At the end of the previous episode, Mitsuki had figured out that the aliens were trying to relay a sinister message to her, which read, “They are coming,” and so she wanted to know more about the possibility of more aliens returning. Thus, Nikhil now helps her sneak into the WDC facility, which was the point of origin of the discussion of the aliens possibly being back, as Trevante Cole had returned to Earth at this very spot. Mitsuki’s plan is to get hold of every possible bit of data from the security terminal above the portal to understand if there had been a pattern to it, but she and Nikhil are ultimately caught as well.
The WDC soldiers find out about the intrusion and immediately swarm to the control room to arrest Mitsuki and Nikhil, but the woman once again experiences the sharp pain in her head, only understanding the message clearer this time. She manages to utter the word “run” before enormous tentacles, almost like rapidly growing branches of a tree, shoot out of the portal and thrash the soldiers firing at it. As Nikhil manages to drag Mitsuki to a safe spot, it is confirmed that the aliens are truly back, although the nature of this new beast remains unclear. Could it be that there are two alien species warring over control on Earth, because of which one of them had been trying to warn Mitsuki? We’ll have to wait and watch in the upcoming episodes of Invasion season 3 to understand how the humans are once again in danger.
