Despite having begun with an interesting new premise and the possibility of the aliens returning to Earth, the Apple TV+ science fiction drama series, Invasion, has been losing steam with each passing episode. The stakes had been raised higher than ever at the end of episode 6, when Marilyn Tanner and her Infinitas rebel group had been revealed to worship the aliens and be opposed to any human factions necessary in order to bring the aliens back to Earth. With Invasion season 3 episode 7, the series takes the central characters to a new setting and even introduces an intriguing new alien species in the end, but the show still continues to be bogged down by slow pacing and unconvincing writing.
Spoiler Alert
What do Trevante and his team find at the Dead Zone?
Invasion season 3 episode 7 begins aboard the helicopter carrying Trevante, Mitsuki, Aneesha, and Jameela towards the WDC base right outside the Dead Zone, with the pilot unable to establish contact with the army base. They assume that the radio communications are being interfered with by the alien presence in the vicinity, since they are so close to the downed mothership, because of which they can’t reach the base. The soldiers are naturally extremely unhappy about Joel being kept alive, since he had tried to blow the helicopter up by jumping in with a live grenade at the end of episode 5, but Trevante and the others insist on interrogating him later on. The team faces an unexpected turn of events when the helicopter runs out of fuel and literally starts to fall out of the sky, putting all of them in great danger.
It is by sheer luck that the helicopter ends up landing on the road right next to their destination, WDC Outpost 17, and there is surprisingly very little impact of the crash, which is down to simply poor and convenient writing rather than any alien force. This means that the entire team is able to walk out of the aircraft and move to the outpost, which had been originally built by the WDC to contain the effects of the downed mothership. Reaching the place, Trevante and the others realize the reason for the radio silence from the base earlier, and it is not what they had expected at all. The entire base is eerily empty, and soon numerous dead bodies of soldiers are found strewn all over the place, with gory injuries noticeable on them.
The team has an initial suspicion about what might have caused the death of all the soldiers stationed at the base because of the large hole in the wall that used to separate the base from the Dead Zone. It is unclear what has caused this gigantic hole, which has now completely exposed the base to the Dead Zone, and it seems like something must have come from the other side to kill the soldiers. However, as the bodies are further checked, it becomes apparent that the soldiers must have killed each other, for some strange reason, as most of them have been downed by bullets and combat knives. What is equally concerning for the team is that all the communication devices in the base have been destroyed, which means that they cannot send radio signals to other bases to ask for a rescue operation.
The team is essentially stranded at Outpost 17 with no way to contact the outer world, and their only mode of transport, the helicopter, has crashed as well. With the death of their leader, Jack Hollander, back in episode 5, the team also needs a new leader, and it is first Nikhil who suggests that Trevante be given the position. Not only does Trevante Cole have prior experience as a soldier and specifically a squad leader, he also has the supernatural ability to communicate with the aliens, or at least understand them to some degree. While his communication skills (with the aliens) are not as advanced as Mitsuki’s, the fact that he can at the very least communicate gives him an edge over the other soldiers. He soon orders the main building at the base to be barricaded so that anything dangerous can be kept out, while Joel is kept locked up in one of the rooms, with Aneesha and Clark put in with him as well, upon the insistence of the other soldiers.
What can be found from the bodycam footage of the soldier?
The team soon makes a significant discovery when they spot one soldier from the original unit, still alive and seemingly healthy, sneaking around in the base. Trevante and a few others immediately try to speak to the soldier, but the latter is absolutely shocked and terrified at seeing them, and he starts to run away. By the time Trevante catches up to the soldier, he simply keeps asking them to make the pain stop before he manages to grab hold of a knife and stab himself to death. The soldier committing suicide upon being discovered by the new team makes things even more mysterious, but Trevante notices how he had been wearing a bodycam the whole time and immediately gets hold of it. Running through the footage might be enough to uncover what had actually gone down at the base, and so it is taken into the building and handed over to Mitsuki.
The bodycam footage clearly shows that the soldiers at Outpost 17 had killed each other off, as if having lost their minds due to some psychotic rage. Something seemed to have suddenly triggered them into turning ferocious against their own squad mates, and Mitsuki settles on trying to find the cause of this strange behavior. Eventually, after going through the footage numerous times, she is indeed able to find something sinister—as she spots the shadow of something supernatural on one of the tent walls during the whole fiasco. The shape of the shadow makes it evident that some sort of a new alien being had managed to get inside the base and had somehow taken control of the minds of the soldiers, making them kill each other mercilessly.
Some more tinkering with the footage makes Mitsuki realize that the alien being had been transmitting a strange frequency while at the base, which must have caused the switch in the soldiers’ behavior. To test her theory, and mostly to hear the frequency better, in the hopes of decoding it, she turns up the volume of the video, and this is when absolute chaos unfolds. As the frequency immediately travels to the outer rooms of the building, all the soldiers gathered at the place turn violent against one another instantaneously and start attacking each other with the intention of murder. The volume of the video has to be turned down completely to make them return to their normal states, and the soldiers have no recollection of the incident at all.
Mitsuki’s original plan, of decoding the frequency, fails as she is unable to understand what the new alien being had been saying, despite her prior expertise with the other alien forms. But more crucially, everyone at the base suspiciously wondered why Mitsuki had not been affected by the sound, as she was indeed the only one who had been subjected to the frequency and yet not shown any sign of manic violence. Nobody seems to consider the fact that she has been wearing the neural dampener that Nikhil had made for her, which is seemingly supposed to cut her off from receiving messages from the alien hivemind. Mitsuki herself does not make any mention of it, which probably suggests that the strange incident does not have any relation with the neural dampener. Thus, all the soldiers suspect Mitsuki to have turned into an alien herself, after her prolonged experience with the invaders, and they blame her for trying to sabotage their mission to survive.
Can the Infinitas radio be used by Aneesha and her friends?
During Joel’s interrogation, he keeps giving cryptic answers about his aunt’s plan, saying that she will soon come to rescue all of them from making the biggest blunder of their lives—attacking the aliens and trying to kill them. But most importantly, Joel keeps glancing out of the window of the room he has been kept hostage in, as if he is aware of the presence of something inside the base that he has not told anyone of. Invasion season 3 episode 7 has each of the central characters helping out in some way or another, and so it is Jamila who figures out the mystery of Joel’s glances outside, although Aneesha and Clark had been the ones to spend the most time with the hostage. She follows Joel’s line of sight and notices an antenna suspiciously sticking out of one of the smaller cabins in the base, despite all the comms at the place being down.
Based on her previous experience of having heard Marilyn speak with scouts in the Dead Zone, Jamila figures out that an Infinitas scout must be hiding inside the cabin and communicating with Marilyn and her team, which is indeed the case. Trevante and the other soldiers immediately rush towards the cabin to arrest the scout and also, more importantly, get hold of the radio she has been using so that they can get in touch with the other WDC bases. But the scout, who happens to be Carolann, first introduced in Invasion season 3, episode 6, manages to run out of the base through the cracked wall, get into the Dead Zone, and blow herself up with one of the many mines planted by Infinitas. She sacrifices her own life to protect her secrets and also to ensure that the radio is blown up so that Trevante and his team cannot contact anyone for help.
What is the next plan for both sides?
Nikhil Kapur is the only one with a resolute plan and thinks only he has the brains to come up with such a plan, until Aneesha reveals her supreme intelligence and her expertise in neurobiology, of course. Together, they come up with a new plan to destroy the core of the mothership, which seems to be controlling the alien hivemind still, since the shard bomb is now destroyed and no longer usable. Nikhil decides to strip all the neural bullets and weapons to their most basic form so that they can all be put back together into a sort of bomb that can be used to attack the hivemind itself. But instead of any usual attack, he wants to create an electromagnetic pulse, which is to be administered on the hunter-killers, to such an extent that the shock from it reaches the hivemind directly and brings it down.
Understanding that Nikhil wants to basically give the hivemind a massive stroke, similar to what we humans experience, Aneesha suggests that the pulse be given a more resolute form, which would keep repeating the attacks by itself until the hivemind is completely destroyed. Since viruses perform this action in human bodies during a stroke, riddling the brain with repeated attacks until its failure, Annesha sets out on creating some kind of an electronic virus, which can be integrated into the pulse and used to totally shut down the alien hivemind once and for all.
On the other side, Marilyn and her team also continue with their struggle to save the aliens and seek help from them in rebuilding society on Earth and also in reuniting with lost relatives and friends. Opposite to Trevante and his team, Marilyn and her unit land inside the Dead Zone and then keep taking updates about Outpost 17 from Carolann, who had been hiding at the place. Once there is no reply from Carolann’s side, Marilyn realizes that she must have been compromised and possibly killed, and so she becomes even more determined in carrying out her plan. As she tells her men towards the end of the episode, Marilyn wants them to prepare for an ambush attack on Trevante and the soldiers, with the intention of killing them and rescuing her nephew, Joel, from their grasp.
Why does Mitsuki decide to set out on the suicidal mission?
While it had been Nikhil who had seemed to develop some deeper feelings (possibly romantic) for Mitsuki so far, Invasion season 3 episode 7 suggests that Mitsuki too had been growing close to him. This is evident from the fact that she actually keeps expecting the man to defend her when others corner her or when she is in a lot of pain. Therefore, as Nikhil does not defend her when the soldiers accuse her of being an alien, simply because Nikhil too had been entranced by the strange frequency, Mitsuki grows sad and angry about it. In a fit of rage, and also driven by a feeling of self-loathing, she sets out on a suicidal mission at the very end of the episode.
Mitsuki ventures into the Dead Zone all alone, without informing anyone about it, both because she feels let down by her friends and also because she is confident that she can find the alien by herself. In fact, she does not have to search for long, as she does catch a glimpse of a new alien beast, with a radiant and transparent body and with tentacles or legs used for movement, which make it look almost like an alien mammal. This new discovery finally makes Invasion exciting, as we are immediately made to wonder whether the creature is vengeful against humans or if they are actually benevolent, just like Infinitas has been trying to claim. However, given the manner in which Invasion season 3 has been moving forward, it would perhaps be best to not keep high hopes, as crucial information might still be held from us in the remaining three episodes of the season.
