Invasion Season 2 has been a string of good by extremely unconnected stories. Each of the characters’ stories share common themes but at the same time, they don’t manage to connect where it counts, instead making the audience bounce between two, sometimes three, tonally different television series. While this continues in Invasion Season 2 Episode 6, “Pressure Points,” the truth of the series remains: it’s good in the little bites even when it struggles as a whole.
For this episode, audiences are brought back to Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani), the Movement, and their connections to the aliens as they attempt to find Aneesha’s missing daughter. And we catch back up with the sci-fi Goonies led by Jamila (India Brown) on a quest to find Caspar (Billy Barratt) as they visit a memorial wall in Paris, inching closer to those they’ve lost and the hospital where they hope to find answers. But we also get to see a third perspective in one episode, as we catch up with Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) after she made physical contact with the alien in the last episode and suffers physical ramifications.
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In “The Tunnel,” it was established that the aliens have transformed from their little spikey amorphous bodies into more beast-like creatures. In Invasion Season 2 Episode 6, we see something bigger. This episode is as sci-fi horror as it gets. Moving in a caravan through fo with galloping alien beasts taking out car after car, the tension is perfect. And that is just the opening.
Invasion has been an uneven series, but when it finds its genre footing, it excels in capturing suspense and thrill and pushing the story farther through it all. The action in this series is pushing every other element in it fantastically. Aneesha and The Movement are sucked into a scenario out of The Mist and it keeps the series in touch with the scarier aspects of being under attack from aliens.
That said, the same old issue rears its head with each of the three stories. This episode keenly focused on drastically different elements. While Aneesha is attempting to survive an attack that left the Movement in shambles with no certainty of escaping, Jamila and her friends are finally in a Paris safe spot bonding over snacks. Only still, Invasion Season 2 Episode 6 also tries to showcase the consistent deterioration of humans in contact with the aliens, and we see the scope of pain caused by their research with Mitsuki jumping in heart first against what’s good for her body.
Each story in this episode has its own tone, with the only similarity being a cool color filter over the episode in each one. The only connective tissue between each of the stories is that they each expand on methods of communication and connection to the aliens. For Aneesha, her son is hearing voices as a warning system for danger. Mitsuki is desperately trying to go back in the research room at her own risk because she believes that she is connecting again with Hinata. Jamila is connecting to Caspar in her dreams and seemingly the alien collective he’s a part of.
Invasion Season 2 Episode 6 builds on the revelation in the last episode that the alien in the lab is a collection of people. Coupled with what Trevante (Shamier Anderson) learned about abductions, it all seems to be coming together. Mitsuki has seen people in the moving ball of light. Luke (Azhy Robertson) can hear collective voices screaming at him and that connection to the aliens doesn’t only work one way as he saves his mother and Lucy from an attack. And Caspar is not a part of something new. The types of cognitive connections happening across each of the characters create a larger picture of who the aliens are and what they mean to do with humankind.
This thread isn’t strong enough to hold everything together, but it does at least start to show that the characters are on untouching parallel paths. Out of them, though, Mituski stands the strongest, with her ability to see past the aliens’ attempt to exploit her love of Hinata. While Jamila and Aneesha’s stories feel like a horror story, Mitsuki’s is a rousing sci-fi epic that I would watch plucked out and told without interruption.
Invasion Season 2 Episode 6 is closer to cohesion, and each of the stories in “Pressure Points” feels like something impactful. While Mitsuki’s grief-filled sacrifice is the most emotionally resonant part of the episode, the stark shift into horror-informed alien sci-fi is a welcome addition to what’s happening in the series.
Invasion Season 2 is streaming now, exclusively on Apple TV+.
