Invasion Season 2 Episode 3 Review: Fireworks

Finally! Humanity made a little headway!

Thanks to some out-of-the-box thinking by Mitsuki, the people of Earth were able to strike back against the alien invaders on Invasion Season 2 Episode 3.

It only took a season and a third to get to this point.

Of course, it was Mitsuki who came up with a breakthrough idea.

She’s been the most focused of the characters that the series is centered upon.

Mitsuki has been driven by guilt because of her inadvertent role in the death of her astronaut lover, Hirata.

As a result, she’s been laser-focused in her study of the alien presence on the downed ship.

As the female analyst noted, Mitsuki has made the most progress of any of the scientists who have gotten up close and personal with the alien.

Maybe Mitsuki’s being on the edge of instability has also protected her from the mental breakdowns that those other scientists had suffered.

Still, Maya Castillo was correct to worry about Mitsuki’s mental health. She had seen other equally confident scientists end up losing their minds.

Maya also got her to analyze her motivation for her drive to understand the aliens better. Sure, Mitsuki felt guilty. But she also thought that a bit of payback would be the cure for what ails her.

Her suspicious mind has enabled her to make intuitive leaps, which the other, more well-known scientists failed to do.

An example was her figuring out that the signal the alien was sending off with regularity was actually a distress call.

What her fellow analysts wrote off as an anomaly, Mitsuki recognized as an opportunity. She developed an audacious plan to hack into the alien mother ship using the distress signal.

Then she went further, proposing uploading a program that would cause the transport ships’ cloaking mechanism to fail.

Fortunately, her boss, Nikhil, was as much an out-of-the-box thinker as Mitsuki. Comparing such an idea to Stalingrad during World War II, he understood how Mitsuki’s idea, if successfully executed, could cause spirits to rebound worldwide.

It was good to see Nikhil return. Introduced in Invasion Season 2 Episode 1, Nikhil was a breath of fresh air, relishing the challenge of defeating the invaders instead of moping about all that had been lost.

WDC President Benya Motabe, although skeptical, went along with Mitsuki’s plan because, beyond tying up her nuclear missile operators for a half-hour, really had nothing to lose with a defense that was going nowhere.

Benya was also willing to take ownership of the idea, urging people to “look to the sky” in a global address, with no idea if any payoff would be coming. Luckily, Mitsuki’s strategy bore fruit in a big way, with seven transports shot down, only one over a populated area.

The counterattack was so successful that even Mitsuki allowed herself a moment of celebration, hugging Maya. But this too shall pass because what’s the next move militarily?

Is this the turning point that Nikhil was hoping for? Or was it just a brief respite for battered humanity?

The shootdown indeed came at the right time for Clark and his Movement troops, who had been locked in a literal firefight with an alien swarm. But did the ship being shot down cause the aliens to start dying, or was it something else?

While Aneesha kept trying to run away, we did learn more about the Movement, as Ryder explained to Luke that they leave no one behind.

The rebellious Luke picked the wrong time and place to become smitten with Ryder, who’s as headstrong as her father, Clark.

Still, why is Aneesha sniping at Clark, who has done nothing but help them? When will it become evident to her that her strategy of hiding and running isn’t working?

Might Trevante be on the next battlefront in Oklahoma? At least he managed to find himself an ally. Rose was right to be skeptical of Trevante. After all, she had been dealing with nutjobs hunting aliens for months.

But she was equally annoyed by her coworkers in the police department, whose response to her initiative about the missing townfolk was not to “worry your pretty little head about it.”

The way the military treated the locals also rubbed her the wrong way.

It did take Trevante a while to determine how to win over Rose.

He could see how much she cared for the town and its missing people. But he still had to convince her he wasn’t just another loon seeking to battle aliens.

Trevante finally got through to Rose with a big burst of honesty, explaining what he had lost and why he was still pursuing his mission.

Also, all that time immersed in Casper’s notebook paid off as he could see the connection (however tenuous) between the town’s former sheriff and the alien invasion. (You just knew Sam Neill’s character would be used more than that one scene on Invasion Season 1 Episode 1.)

Once Trevante got his hands on the notebook again, he was able to sell Rose on his mission. But whatever did he promise her to secure his freedom? And where was he headed next? Back to the base or the secret lab at the town library?

What will Earth’s one victory mean?

Where did Sarah go?

What will Trevante do next?

Comment below.

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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.