As the world faces a new dawn in the aftermath of the apparent destruction of the alien threat, things may not be all that they seem.

I’m not sure I expected a true conclusion to Invasion from its final episode, but it feels like it would have been a nice return on ten hours of time invested in this maiden season. Nevertheless, here we are, at the end of things, and what does this ending hold for our principal characters?

For Mitsuki, it’s a bit of a wander with an old artefact which leads her to the unlikeliest of companions to sit out the first stage of this new world ‘after’ the invasion. A monk who is no longer quite a monk and an unconventional communications engineer nursing a broken heart aren’t the obvious combination, and their back and forth about philosophy and the nature of life, the universe and everything is sort of endearing without really adding anything to any of what’s going on here.

In the U.K., Caspar seems to have basically pushed himself over the limit and Jamila is very sad about this while Trevante just seems to decide, in spite of what he witnessed with his own eyes, that it was all just…well not really anything, and wanders off back home. It remains bafflingly unclear exactly what Caspar’s connection to the aliens is/was, how it happened and why. The show doesn’t really seem that keen on giving us any clues either, beyond some dream sequence linking Caspar randomly to A N Other character who may or may not be real and may or may not be speaking to Caspar or someone else.

Speaking of Trevante, he’s off home to patch things up with his wife in one of the most oddly quick arguments I think I’ve ever seen on screen. Whatever the dark tragedy is that caused the original gulf between them (it seems to be hinted at that it was the death of a child but no real idea of when/how), it feels oddly ephemeral (which I suppose in light of an alien invasion it might well do) but we are really no closer to understanding Trevante or his ultimate part in all of this.

As to Aneesha and her children. Well, they sure are sad and wandering alone in the middle of nowhere. That’s about it.

Meanwhile, the world at large celebrates the apparent vanquishing of the alien threat after the U.S. military (who else?) fired a bunch of nuclear missiles (what else?) into it and it’s one long non-stop party which you sense, with all the inevitability of a show searching for a second season, may well be a little premature. The closing shot certainly confirms that as far as the writers are concerned, they aren’t quite done yet, but it’s fairly tragic when a closing shot before the credits is more intriguing than the ten hours of drama which preceded it.

Verdict: Peters out with a whimper of nothingness while desperately flailing to convince the audience that their time is worth investing in more. 4/10

Greg D. Smith