Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Invasion S2E8, “Cosmic Ocean” (written by Aditi Brennan Kapil and directed by Claudia Llosa)
Editor’s Note: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
As Invasion S2E8 opens, Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) is trying to learn the alien’s language, while Maya (Naian González Norvind) is worried about her well-being as per usual. Mitsuki figures out that the other scientists who proceeded her into the chamber are trying to communicate as the aliens do. The way they click their tongues and tap their fingers isn’t random, but I’m still not sure how Mitsuki thinks she’s going to decipher this code without something to serve as a kind of Rosetta Stone.
That point might end up being moot, regardless, as Nikhil (Shane Zaza) doesn’t see the purpose of this project. He wants Mitsuki to go back into the chamber with the alien, and basically tells Maya that he doesn’t care if Mitsuki ends up losing her mind like the others. I do think he has something of a point insofar as the ability to communicate with the alien in its own language doesn’t strike me as a huge advance from being able to communicate with it while it pretends to be Hinata (Rinko Kikuchi), but the bigger takeaway might be in the extent to which Nikhil is a headstrong asshole. We’ve always known that, but these scenes really drive it home.
Maya threatens to resign if he doesn’t heed her advice to let Mitsuki have time to recover before she goes in again, and is at pains to frame her position as matter not just of concern for Mitsuki, but of her judgment with regard to their overall mission. But, Nikhil simply accepts her resignation, even as it’s pretty clear that she’s right.
Before she leaves, Maya disables all of the suits in the facility except for the one biometrically matched to Nikhil, so Mitsuki can’t go back in, at least not until they repair her suit. Maya goads Nikhil to risk his own life if he wants to, which may have been a mistake, since he does, and his attempt to fight the alien sets off seismic activity on a global scale.
It’s not clear whether Nikhil survives this confrontation, and I want to be clear that I will not be sad if he is dead. But, the global earthquakes spur a call from the UN, which leads Mitsuki back into the chamber (without a suit), where she destroys the alien to make it stop. Could she have done this previously? I don’t know.
Regardless, as S2E8 ends, Mitsuki realizes that the alien was actually a portal to the alien world, and regrets having destroyed that connection. And I regret it, too, since this storyline has been the most interesting part of Season 2 so far, and I’m not sure where it can go from here.
The seismic activity that Nikhil sets off is experienced by our friends in the other two storylines we check in on this week, though there isn’t a ton of forward movement in either when it comes down to it.
Trev (Shamier Anderson) gets to the bottom of the hole he was crawling down into at the end of S2E7, but sets off an alarm as he tries to open the hatch that’s down there. It seems like there’s water underneath, but we don’t see much before soldiers surround him and take him into custody. He does manage to spot a room in their facility full of people who have disappeared, so we can piece together that there’s some way they come back through that hole in the ground, but we don’t learn much about what kind of state they’re in.
Rose (Nedra Marie Taylor) responds to seeing Trev captured by trying to sneak to the hole in the ground herself, but she just gets captured, too. I don’t know if this is setting up something where Deputy Wade (Clayton Boyd) comes to the rescue, since Rose went to lengths to make sure he knew about the notebooks, etc. before she went back to the military base, but that would be a little bit surprising since he mostly seems like a doofus.
In France, Jamila (India Brown), Alfie (Cache Vanderpuye), Monty (Paddy Holland), Penny (Ruby Siddle) and Caspar (Billy Barratt) have made their way to the facility in Orléans, where they find the children who used to be in Paris, along with doctors Esmee (Emeline Lambert) and Gabriel (Louis Bernard).
Worries abound as to whether Caspar is really himself. The other kids freak out during the earthquake and start yelling “wajo,” but he does not. (Still no new information as to why people are saying that word.) And Gabriel says that Caspar had a deeper connection than the other kids, as evidenced by the fact that they never managed to wake him up. How did he wake up? No one knows, including him.
This is also disrupting his fledgling romance with Jamila, who’s a bit concerned that Casp doesn’t remember drawing her the portrait that she’s been holding dear. Monty also has a crush on her, apparently, though I can’t imagine her reciprocating it.
Beyond the question of what’s going on with Caspar, we can wonder if the drawing he and the kids were making together will provide any insights, and about who the kids were calling out to if it wasn’t him. Though, Luke (Azhy Robertson) kind of feels like the obvious answer there.
No Maliks this episode, so we’ll have to catch up with them next time.
See you next week.
