Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Invasion S2E5, “A Voice from the Other Side” (written by Donald Joh and directed by Alik Sakharov).
Editor’s Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
As Invasion S2E5 begins, Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) and Luke (Azhy Robertson), along with Clark (Enver Gjokaj) and other members of The Movement, are searching for Sarah (Tara Moayedi), who you’ll recall went missing at the end of S2E3. It was nighttime then but it’s light outside now, so they’ve apparently been walking around in a small amount of space yelling “Sarah!” for quite some time.
They finally give up when a member of The Movement notices some Humvee tire marks, along with footprints made by a boot and a small footprint with stars in it, from Sarah’s shoes. The conclusion is clear: the military took Sarah.
This eventually brings to a head the way that Aneesha has refused to trust Clark. Her secrets are exposed, but Clark saves her by claiming that she’d told him the truth from the beginning, so by the end of the episode, Aneesha is telling him she’s going to try the trusting people thing again, though she might be rusty.
Of course the big secret is that the Maliks have been hiding this alien shard relic that Luke apparently found somewhere (we still don’t know the details), which they discovered in Season 1 could kill the aliens pretty effectively. They were in the custody of the military before, because they want to study the thing for the war effort, but their convoy was attacked by another group, they ran, and Ahmed (Firas Nassar) ended up getting killed.
So, it makes some sense that Aneesha was hesitant to trust Clark/The Movement, even if they don’t seem to be affiliated with these other human beings who attacked their convoy in Season 1. It also makes some sense that she doesn’t trust the military, given that the military in general in the world of Invasion seems pretty unfriendly.
And, to be clear, I think there is something realistic about this, and I like the fact that Invasion doesn’t present the military as the heroes of the story. It passes on the opportunity to make them just as scary as the aliens (which I would enjoy, personally), but presents them in general as rather cold to human concerns.
Still, I have to question Aneesha’s ongoing resistance to giving the military the shard relic. Given that it could be an effective tool in the battle for the existence of humanity (particularly when the new breed of hunter-killer aliens is apparently impervious to fire and other weapons), it kind of seems like the military/government should have it.
I can’t approve of them kidnapping Sarah, of course, but I do think we should question the plan to go rescue Sarah that The Movement and Maliks are undertaking as S2E5 comes to a close. Not only are there aliens in between where they are and the military base they think Sarah has been taken to, I’m not sure what their plan is when they get there. To reunite the Malik family is one thing, but they seem to intend to also steal the artifact back, unless I’m misreading things.
The soldiers in Invasion aren’t the good guys, but is the military really as bad as a justification for this plan would require?
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, Rose (Nedra Marie Taylor) and Trevante (Shamier Anderson) head out to a cornfield after she recognizes a drawing of a scarecrow in one of Caspar’s (Billy Barratt) notebooks. We get shots during this scene which would seem to be from the perspective of a blobby alien in the sky, which parallel shots in the cold open of “A Voice from the Other Side” wherein Martin (Gilly Gilchrist) heads out of his house at night because he hears something that his wife Lisa (Jennifer Steyn) does not hear. Ultimately, both seem to be attacked by the blobby alien from above.
Trev and Rose find Martin sitting on his porch swing, and at first all he says is “wajo.” This isn’t the only time we hear “wajo” in this episode—and indeed there were also children saying “wajo” in last week’s episode at the hospital in Paris—but I have to admit I’ve grown a bit frustrated with this mystery. It’s been there since the very beginning of Season 1, and I speculated about it in my piece on the show’s premiere, but we haven’t gotten any new information to work with since then. I’ll remind you that the word means “castle” in Japanese, or perhaps specifically castles built in Korea by the Japanese, but that’s still all I have here.
Regardless, Martin finally starts engaging in real conversation, though the only way he describes where he has been is “up.” Lisa is still there, along with others, but he got away.
In the Amazon, Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) wants to make the alien feel pain, so she hits it with electromagnetic pulses. Ultimately, this does cause the being to cry out in pain and beg for her to stop (in Japanese), before it settles into the form of a girl who wonders why humanity is in conflict with them (she uses plural pronouns).
Mitsuki retorts that they can’t just let themselves be destroyed, which should make sense, but then the alien blames her for destroying Hinata (Rinko Kikuchi), though it’s also taking on the persona of Hinata to say it heard their song. We get some David Bowie again, and distortions of the sounds of “Space Oddity.”
Mitsuki eventually takes off her glove to commune with the blob, which is probably not a good plan in terms of her well-being. But, regardless, she experiences Caspar calling out to her before Maya (Naian González Norvind) manages to violently yank her from the room. Coming to, she says, “they’re out there,” and the episode ends.
A Voice from the Other Side
My biggest question coming out of Invasion S2E5 is about the relation between the blob aliens that feature in this episode and the attacking aliens we’ve seen in other episodes. I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t exactly aligned. Perhaps there are two competing alien forces at play in this story, instead of just one. Or maybe the answer is more complicated than that.
We’re halfway through the second season of Invasion and still have little idea of what motivates the invading aliens. The blob Mitsuki communicates with seems incredibly sentient, and there are indications of something like a hivemind that has absorbed some human beings and psychically connected with others. The attacking aliens on the ground, on the other hand, seem rather mindless.
We still don’t know what “wajo” is supposed to mean in the context of this show, and we don’t know where the shard relic came from or how it fits into things. At this point I’m guessing that the answers to both of those questions are so straightforward that the writers can’t effectively dole out clues. Instead, they just periodically remind us that the questions exist.
See you next week, when I expect we’ll pick up with the kids in France.
