The Apple TV+ original, Invasion makes us privy to a world under attack by extraterrestrial forces about whom human beings have little or no knowledge at all. They don’t know who these aliens are, what their purpose is in waging an attack on Earth, or if it is possible to tackle them and send them back from where they came. The series moves at a slow pace, and it differs from other shows of a similar genre in that its focus is more on the external and internal conflicts faced by its characters than the sci-fi elements. In the entire first season, the makers held back on a lot of crucial information, which at times made the narrative feel a bit wayward and lost. But still, the show somehow manages to keep you hooked throughout, probably because it dares to take an authentic approach and brings some intriguing characters who drive the conflict ahead while constantly striving to deal with their own selves, conquer their own inhibitions, and understand the situation in which they are stuck in a better manner. So let’s find out what happened in Invasion season 1.
Spoiler Alert
Was Mitsuki Able To Contact Hinata Murai?
Mitsuki Yamato hadn’t told anybody that she was in a relationship with Hinata Murai, as she knew that society wouldn’t accept them. Mitsuki saw Hinata when she was leaving her space shuttle and never could have imagined that it would be the last time she saw her. Mitsuki was at home when she was informed about the emergency, and in a state of paranoia, she reached the JAVA headquarters to understand exactly what had happened. The space shuttle had exploded for some unknown reason, and Mitsuki and other scientists were not able to decipher for the longest time if it was due to some technical issue or if the spacecraft had collided with something in space.
Mitsuki knew that Hinata was still alive, and she wanted to find a way to communicate with her. The most shocking revelation is made when the Japanese scientists realize that an unknown entity had probably taken over the spaceship, and somehow everything that had been happening in the rest of the world was a direct implication of that. Firstly, the theory about aliens taking over the spacecraft seemed bizarre, but slowly, devoid of any other rational explanation, even those who were in denial for the longest time had to accept the fact. No matter what Mitsuki and others sent, there was no response from the aliens holding the space shuttle.
Once Mitsuki had opened the signals, the linguists took charge of things to try to understand the language that the aliens spoke. But Mitsuki told her superiors in Invasion Episode 8 that she didn’t think that they would be able to achieve anything through those measures. Mitsuki said that she believed that the aliens didn’t have a language, and even after using something known as a neutral net, she wanted to be able to ascertain any kind of pattern. Mitsuki speculated that the aliens were evidently smarter than an average human being because the way they had taken aggressive measures to keep all channels of communication blocked was no normal feat.
Mitsuki played a bet, and she transmitted all the files, i.e., videos of Hinata, in the format that she believed aliens would be able to decipher. But surprisingly, it worked (at least that’s what Mitsuki believed at first), and Mitsuki was relieved to hear Hinata’s voice from the other end. But this happiness was short-lived, as the other experts present there deciphered, after evaluation, that it was an automated voice and the aliens had probably copied it from the files that Mitsuki had sent. Once the location of the space shuttle was confirmed, a decision was taken to launch a missile and blow the entire thing down. Mitsuki tried her level best to not let that happen, but she was told that even if they did get conclusive proof about Hinata, they would have to go ahead with the plan because they couldn’t risk the lives of billions of people for one person. For Mitsuki, the battle had now become personal, and she hoped that she would get a chance to take revenge on the otherworldly creatures who took away all the happiness from her life.
How Was Aneesha Able To Save Her Children?
Aneesha realized quite early in Invasion Season 1 that her husband was having an affair with another woman. To make matters worse, she even got to know that the other woman was pregnant with his baby. Ahmed had made it very clear that the alien invasion had not happened, he would have left Aneesha for that other woman, and Aneesha was obviously shattered when she heard those piercing words come out of his mouth. Aneesha had given her everything in the relationship, and she didn’t know what she had done, which made Ahmed despise her so much. Aneesha felt wrecked emotionally, but she knew that it was not the time to be overpowered by one’s own feelings. She knew that to survive, she had to be very tactical in her approach. She was ready to go to any extent to save her children, and when the aliens attacked her family, she stood there like a lioness protecting her cubs and killed the alien using the mysterious artifact that Luke had found earlier. That artifact came to be known as the alien claw, and nobody exactly knew how it functioned.
Much later in the Invasion, when Aneesha and her family are in the camp, the doctors present there become aware of the alien claw. They were confused about whether it was only the claw that was stopping the aliens or if Luke also had to do something with it. We had seen earlier that Malik had some sort of immunity against the invasion, and the neighbors were astonished to see that not even a scratch had come to their homes while theirs was entirely destroyed. Even back in school, Luke’s nose didn’t bleed, and the doctors seemed to have no explanation as to why it had happened to others or to him.
At the end of Invasion, when Aneesha was on the run with her kids, she saw the alien claw reverse the terraforming that the aliens had done on Earth. Aneesha also noticed that after Ahmed died, Luke started behaving in a very strange manner. He was rude to Aneesha, and it did feel like something had possessed him. Maybe the claw was having an effect on him, or maybe he had some unexplainable connection with these otherworldly beings. We had seen earlier that Luke could hear the high-pitched sound made by the aliens, and he was the first one to say that they were uttering a strange word, Wajo, again and again. In Invasion Season 2, we would get to know more about Luke’s situation and how he was connected to the aliens.
Is Casper Dead Or Alive?
Casper Morrow, the timid boy who suffered from epilepsy, was continually harassed and bullied by his classmate Monty Cuttermill. Jamila Huston saw the plight of the poor boy, and she made sure that she stood for him and made him realize that he was not alone. Casper and his classmates were being taken on a class trip when their bus met with an accident and fell off the cliff. Something from space had hit the bus because of the way it had fallen from the cliff. Though the kids were fine, their teacher, Mr. Edwards, had been gravely injured. Casper and Jamila tried their level best to make sure that Mr. Edwards survived, but he eventually succumbed. Monty decided that they would have to stay there until help arrived, and he started bossing around and making Casper’s life a living hell.
Casper never retaliated in any way, even when he was mocked and abused by Monty. Casper was mature far beyond his age, and his life experiences had a huge role to play in it. His abusive father had pushed his mother down the stairs, after which she was wheelchair-ridden, and the doctors had said that she would never be able to walk again in her life. Casper, after putting up with all the harassment for a few days, decided that he had had enough and that he would get out of there. It was miserable as it was, and he didn’t want to die there without making any sort of effort to escape. Casper climbed the cliff, and seeing him, the other kids also realized that it could be done.
Jamila stuck with Casper, and they both met Trevante Cole, who had somehow managed to come back to the United Kingdom from Afghanistan. Trevante’s entire battalion had died in the alien invasion, but he was lucky to have survived it and made it out of there alive. Casper knew that he could feel and see things and that he shared a very strange connection with the aliens. Every time Casper had an epileptic attack, his subconscious mind made him witness some bizarre things. Whatever he saw, he drew on paper, and when Trevante saw one of those sketches, he was shocked, as it was the exact same thing he had seen in Afghanistan. Trevante was in no mood to help the children, but after he saw the sketches, his opinion changed. He realized that Casper was not lying and that they needed a professional to conduct some tests on him so that they would know what was happening to him. Casper proposed that if the doctor could somehow make him have an epilepsy attack, he would probably understand a little better about the connection he had with the aliens. The doctor knew that what they were doing was not safe at all, but at that moment, they didn’t have a lot of choices.
Casper, Trevante, and Jamila came face-to-face with the alien in the hospital itself, and we witnessed how Casper used his psychic abilities to evade the danger. Casper said that the aliens were inside his head, and he was inside theirs. It felt like Casper was going to lose his conscience, but before that happened, at the end of Invasion season 1, he uttered the word stop,” and the aliens stopped moving. We don’t know if it was the claw, the missile strike, or Casper’s physical abilities that made the aliens stop, but the entire encounter had an adverse impact on Casper, and he died in Trevante’s arms.
The biggest twist came at the end when we realized that the aliens had not vanished from the face of the Earth as the people believed. They might have retreated, but they were still pretty much around. Their new target was the Amazon rainforest, and a few explorers witnessed them modifying the atmosphere there. Trevante went back to his wife, and he noticed how a faint outline of a spaceship cloud could be seen from the naked eye, hovering in the sky. The aliens were resurrecting their colonies, and it probably had an impact on Casper, who came back from the dead. But Casper wasn’t in the real world, and it seemed like he had woken up in a parallel realm.
Surprisingly, Casper met Hinata’s father there, who gave him a red box that had the compass with which his daughter was so fascinated in her childhood. At the beginning of Invasion Episode 10, Hinata’s father told Mitsuki how Hinata always wanted to know what it was that pulled the compass needle towards itself. We don’t know if Casper would come back to life in a normal way, but he wasn’t dead for sure. Probably in the second season, he would get to know more about why he had woken in that realm and what was the use of that compass that was given to him by Hinata’s father.
Final Words
As stated earlier, though the aliens had suffered a defeat, they would come back once again in Invasion Season 2 and unleash their horror on humanity. Luke, Casper, Aneesha, Jamila, Trevante, and Mitsuki would have an important role to play in the scheme of things. Where Mitsuki was burning in rage and wanted to find a way to take revenge for her partner’s death, Trevante had promised his wife that he wouldn’t ever leave her. Luke had something sinister going on inside his mind, and Casper was stuck in the parallel realm trying to decipher what it was that he was expected to do. We will get to know in season 2 if, apart from terraforming and taking over the planet Earth, the aliens had any other vendettas as well.
