Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Invasion S3E7, “Outpost 17” (written by Aditi Brenna Kapil and directed by Brad Anderson)
Invasion S3E7 picks up with the group on the helicopter we last saw at the end of S3E5. They are trying to make it to a base just outside of the Dead Zone, but are unable to make contact. As they approach, the engine goes out, but the chopper is able to crash land on the runway outside of what we learn is Outpost 17.
No one is around, and as the group enters the outpost, they discover that everyone inside is dead. They seem to have killed each other, as one has a knife sticking out of the back of his skull, and so on. Thus, we get a version of that trope where something has driven a group of human beings homicidally crazy, which might feel fresher to me if it hadn’t just been deployed in the most recent season of Doctor Who. What’s more troubling, though, is how quickly Trevante (Shamier Anderson) and the others decide the threat must be gone now, since they aren’t killing each other immediately. They proceed to barricade themselves in the outpost.
Trevante sees a survivor outside, but when confronted this man quickly stabs himself in the neck with a knife. He has a body camera, though, which Trev takes back into the outpost. Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) spends a lot of the episode analyzing the footage found on it, and ultimately discovers the shadow of an alien, along with a noise that causes the homicidal madness.
Meanwhile, Nikhil (Shane Zaza) and Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) hatch a plan to build a new bomb, using shard fragments and neural darts, in order to give the alien hivemind the biggest stroke ever. But, to deliver the payload, they’ll have to make it to the mothership, and Infinitas has lined the route with mines.
Jamila (India Brown) notices that Langston (Ashton Sanders) keeps looking out of the window of his cell, and that there is a radio antenna on an adjacent building. It turns out the Carolann (Alvina August) has been in that building, but when pursued she takes the radio and blows herself up on one of the aforementioned mines.
Marilyn (Erika Alexander) et al. had been on the way to Outpost 17 to rescue Langston, but after Carolann dies they decide to rendezvous with Carmichael (Fran Kranz) instead. Their primary intention is to keep the others from getting to the mothership, because they view the aliens as gods who’ve come to give them a concrete heaven.
As the episode ends, Mitsuki, feeling spurned, grabs the new bomb and heads out from the base on her own. She sees the new kind of alien in the woods, and I’m sure she thinks it’s beautiful, because it is.
As we enter the homestretch of Invasion Season 3, the stakes feel a bit messy. Trev and Jamila definitely want to destroy the aliens. Aneesha and Clark (Enver Gjokaj) are onboard with that, but mostly just want to go home to their kids. The Infinitas group, in contrast, views the aliens as saviors, which could be compelling, but we’ve seen these aliens kill a lot of people. The most plausible thing would be if these aliens were taking prevalent ideas about heaven and using them as a trick to carry out their invasion, but some of the Mitsuki scenes in Season 2 did give a feeling of transcendence.
Mitsuki should be the one caught in the middle of the question about the aliens’ intentions, but the series is gesturing at this more than it is making us feel some sort of tension. I hope that might be corrected in the episodes to come.
The title card at the end of the opening credits this week says “Infiltration” instead of “Invasion,” which suggests a shift in the narrative that hasn’t been fully earned yet. I take the implication to be that Plan A was an invasion with hunter-killers, while Plan B is to use this new kind of alien to do what they did to Outpost 17 to humanity at large. I’m just left to wonder why that wasn’t Plan A, I guess. Seems like a good plan.
See you next week.
