Humanity’s last best hope rests with a risky operation and the strength of some troubled teens and a brilliant but emotionally fragile scientist.

There are two moments where this finale lost me utterly, and they both involve Trevante. The first involves a ridiculous contrivance, whereby he’s reunited with a familiar face via video conference because in the middle of all the chaos happening at the army base, he overhears them talking in another room. The second involves him apparently escaping a prison cell offscreen. There are in fact many more but these two stick out to me right now. Anyway, do the writers manage to stick a satisfying and conclusive ending to all this?

Nope.

Verd… Wait, what? OK. My editor says he needs more than that. Fine, OK, you asked for it, boss…

First up, I must mention that in discussing this show with a colleague last weekend, I was given an important revelation – ‘It’s one of those shows where scientists are people who can do whatever the plot needs them to’, said Alasdair as we munched on Turkish cuisine, and honestly, nail on head. At this point I can barely recall what kind of scientist Mitsuki is supposed to be – a sort of communications expert on the space program if I recall – but when I say Deus Ex Mitsuki, I am not at all joking. The show literally has her make breakthroughs and discoveries for no other reason than the writers need to move the plot on. Last time out, a wander in the forest told her what she needed. Here, apropos of nothing at all she realises that what she really needs is for someone to act entirely against all reason, logic and their own character development to date in order that she can Do The Thing. Genius.

Over at the Famous Five House in France, Timmy – I mean Caspar – is ready to try to save the world by falling asleep again, as he and Mitsuki try to join forces and open a portal so that some soldiers can Also Do a Thing. Jamila is conflicted, Monty is concerned, everything is basically trapped in resin, narrative wise, but never mind because Caspar has longer hair than last season which seems to be his only character development other than not really suffering whatever the seizures were he was having in season 1, despite not apparently receiving any medicine for them.

Trev manages to walk into his narratively convenient conversational exchange, and then the Actual World President, who to this point has been relying on science so vague it’s basically superstition and prayer, decides that maybe don’t trust the ex Navy Seal with all the training, knowledge, experience and the wholehearted trust of one of her key assets in this fight and dismisses him, to apparently be returned to a cell he’ll somehow magically escape from off screen later. Joyous.

Aneesha has one of those buttock-clenchingly cliched exchanges with the General about how when you’re fighting monsters you need to do bad stuff etc and honestly I’d be less mad about this if they didn’t have this formerly super smart, determined doctor actually fall for it all, but I guess her brain has now gone soft because she’s all gooey for Clark?

Luke is suddenly able to not just inconvenience one alien at once but stop whole hordes of them in their tracks with the power of Staring at them With Constipation Face (and with the assistance of the French Kids who apparently don’t need to help Caspar) which is something maybe the army can make use of as the creatures swarm to try and defend the portal being forcibly opened by Caspar and Mitsuki. Then (shock, horror!) the original arrangements go awry but not to worry, Trev is there at the right place, right time to suddenly be allowed to do the thing he couldn’t possible be trusted to do five minutes ago, at the behest of a General in the actual army – people famous for being flexible on matters of discipline and changing their minds. Yay.

So help me, I dared to hope that maybe they’d still tie all this off with just six minutes left, but true to form, the show not only leaves things dangling for a third season the writers are obviously hoping for, but fails to deliver any sort of satisfaction to its conclusion whatsoever. It literally just… ends. Nothing is resolved. Nothing is any clearer, least of all why I’ve just spent ten hours watching all of this and seeing no real progress in terms of understanding any of it. I make a point of paying close attention to stuff I review and there are honestly bits of dialogue here I watched two or three times and still couldn’t make head nor tail of.

So here we are, the season finished, another ten episodes of nonsense which conclude by not really concluding. I’d like to say I’m surprised but that would be a lie. I honestly don’t enjoy being this harsh on a show, but this one really continues to leave me no choice.

Verdict: Dull, messy, incoherent and ultimately pointless. Not recommended. 2/10

Greg D. Smith