“Invasion” is a TV series about an alien invasion, and it spends most of its runtime trying to convince you that the aliens are the least of your problems. The show, created by Alex Garland, premiered on Apple TV+ in 2021 and ran for two seasons. It follows two parallel stories: one in the United States, led by Shamier Anderson as Kaylee, and one in England, led by Graham Wardlow as Leo. The premise is simple: aliens arrive, humans fight back, and everyone gets sad about it.
What separates “Invasion” from other alien-invasion movies is its refusal to make the aliens the enemy. The show suggests that the invaders are simply doing what humans have done for centuries: conquering, subjugating, and moving forward. The humans, meanwhile, are the ones who are monstrous. This is a clever idea, and it could have made for a sharp, unsettling watch. Instead, “Invasion” becomes a slow, repetitive slog, a show that spends far too long on its own cleverness and not enough on its characters.
Trailer, via Apple TV.
The Premise
The premise is genuinely smart. The aliens don’t speak, don’t communicate, and don’t seem to have a plan beyond taking over. They are a force of nature, a tide that rolls over everything in its path. The humans, by contrast, are all too human. They fight, they betray, they kill, and they love. The show wants you to see the aliens as victims of circumstance, while the humans are the ones who are truly evil.
It’s a bold move, and it works in small doses. But “Invasion” doesn’t know when to stop. The show keeps returning to the same themes, the same conversations, the same moral questions, until they lose their force. The aliens are never explained, which is the point. But the show also never lets you get comfortable with its central metaphor. It keeps hitting you over the head with it, until the metaphor stops feeling like insight and starts feeling like a hammer.
Kaylee and Leo
The show splits its time between Kaylee and Leo, and it moves back and forth between the two timelines. Kaylee is a soldier who finds herself fighting against the invaders, while Leo is a father who tries to protect his family. The split works well in theory. It allows the show to explore the invasion from two different angles, one military and one civilian. But in practice, the two stories rarely connect. They are parallel tracks that occasionally cross, but mostly they run separately.
The problem is that both stories are told in the same way. Kaylee’s scenes are grim, tense, and full of gunfire. Leo’s scenes are grim, tense, and full of domestic tragedy. The show never commits to either tone fully. It keeps switching between the two, which makes the pacing uneven and the emotional weight thin. The result is a show that feels like two separate series that happen to share a title.
The Supporting Cast
The cast is talented across the board. Shamier Anderson brings a quiet intensity to Kaylee, and Graham Wardlow gives Leo a weary, desperate warmth. But the show doesn’t spend enough time with either character to let them become fully realized people. They are archetypes, not individuals. Kaylee is the brave soldier, Leo is the loving father, and that’s all we ever learn about them.
The supporting cast fares even worse. The show introduces a handful of side characters, and then kills them off without warning. One moment they’re there, the next they’re dead, and the show moves on. This is meant to be a commentary on the futility of war, but it comes across as callous. The characters exist only to serve the plot, and when the plot no longer needs them, they disappear.
The Tone
The tone of “Invasion” is uniformly grim. There are no jokes, no light moments, no relief. The show is relentlessly bleak, and it expects you to sit through that bleakness for twelve episodes. The idea is that the invasion is so terrible that it can’t be treated lightly. But the show’s refusal to lighten the mood means that the bleakness loses its power. After a while, the constant doom starts to feel hollow.
The show also has a habit of cutting away from the action just when things are getting interesting. A firefight will start, and then the camera will pull back to show a wide shot of the battlefield. The tension builds, and then it dissipates. This happens repeatedly, and it frustrates the viewer. The show seems to want you to focus on the wider picture, but it never gives you that picture. You’re left with fragments, not a whole.
The Music
The score is minimalistic, which suits the show’s tone. It’s sparse, atmospheric, and often quiet. But it also lacks variety. The same few motifs are used throughout the series, which makes the music feel repetitive alongside the visuals. The sound design is better. The show uses silence effectively, letting the sound of gunfire, explosions, and screaming fill the gaps. But the score never rises to meet the action.
The Writing
The writing is the biggest problem with “Invasion.” The show is full of clever ideas, but it doesn’t know how to execute them. The dialogue is often clunky, the pacing is uneven, and the structure is confusing. The show jumps around in time, showing events from multiple perspectives, but it never explains why. You’re left guessing what happened, and the guessing isn’t fun.
The show also has a habit of explaining things that don’t need explaining. The aliens reveal their motives in the final episode, and the delivery feels like a lecture. The information is interesting, but it’s presented in a way that breaks the spell. The show has spent ten episodes building mystery, and then it ruins it in one speech. That’s a structural failure.
“We are the children of Earth.”
The Aftermath
The second season of “Invasion” picks up after the invasion has ended. The aliens have retreated, but the world has changed. The survivors are living in a new society, one shaped by the trauma of the attack. The show explores the aftermath, the rebuilding, and the psychological scars. It’s a bold choice, and it could have worked. But the show is still trapped in the same patterns. The characters are still archetypes, the pacing is still uneven, and the tone is still relentlessly grim.
The season ends on a note of hope, which is a surprise. After twelve episodes of despair, the show finally offers a glimmer of light. But the glimmer is faint, and it’s not earned. The show hasn’t given you enough reason to believe in it. The ending feels like a concession, not a conclusion.
The Verdict
“Invasion” is a show with a good idea and a bad execution. It’s smart in theory, but dull in practice. The aliens are terrifying, but the humans are more terrifying. The show knows this, but it can’t resist telling you again and again. The result is a show that’s intellectually stimulating but emotionally inert.
The show’s best moments come when it trusts the audience to think for themselves. The worst moments come when it feels the need to explain everything. The difference is stark, and it shows the show’s fundamental weakness. It’s a show that’s smarter than its audience, but not in a way that helps anyone.
The score is 5.1 out of 10.
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