REVIEW: ‘Invasion’ Season 2 Episode 7 — “Down the Rabbit Hole”

The alien invasion is getting more dangerous as mysteries start to be solved in the past episodes of Invasion Season 2. While each episode has felt more like a disparate story than a cohesive world, one thing is clear in Invasion Season 2 Episode 7, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” the danger is building. It’s not just the aliens who have new forms and are even more intense hunters, but also the military. For this episode, the season hones in on Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) and Rose (), Jamila and Caspar, and Aneesha Malik’s (Golshifteh Farahani) search for her daughter Sarah Malik (Tara Moayedi) with The Movement.

The things we know about the invasion at this point is that they are taking people, they are keeping those people, and they are most definitely trying to manipulate the world to fit them. At the same time, the military is hiding its own secrets, whether it is experimentation on children or other elements. In fact, throughout Invasion Season 2, we’ve seen the military in the US, Canada, and Europe, and in every instance, they are not helpful, and in others, they have actively sought to harm our lead characters. Invasion Season 2 Episode 7 makes everything even more complicated when we see what the US military is doing with a giant hole in the ground.

For Trevante and Rose, their search for the missing townspeople and those close to Rose takes them to the center of a spiral. After looking through Caspar’s drawings and charting out the abductions, there is a visual of what’s happening, and it’s all planned. This leads them directly into the arms of the military that is using the alien tech for themselves. Up until now, it’s been the aliens against humanity, and the military has only been a “bad guy” in some smaller doses, using protection from the aliens as their reasoning. Now, with them at the literal epicenter of the abduction map, well, they’re looking more and more villainous.

At the same time, Aneesha and her family have known the military’s power and its ability to harm. Still attempting to find Aneesha’s daughter,  The Movement has lost almost two-thirds of all of its people. Nearly decimated and scared, Aneesha has to wind them up with a sort of hope just to find her daughter. Unafraid of the military who have taken her child, Aneesha is able to mobilize The Movement and ultimately move them towards a larger confrontation. One where she may run into Trevante, which, for the first time, will bridge a story.

Putting the cherry on top of the “military is bad actually” sundae are Jamila and Caspar. Finally reunited, Jamila and Caspar reconnect in an emotional way, with a somber vulnerability. While we learn more about the children’s connection to the aliens, Caspar seems to have lost his connection with them, and that means the group has lost their protection at the same time.

All three stories in Invasion Season 2 Episode 7 converge on the same focus but from different angles, making this episode feel the closest to the first season’s cohesion than we’ve seen so far. While the series has toyed with the idea of humanity being as bad as the aliens, at this point in the season, the military humans seem almost worse. While the aliens have become giant monsters that are capable of even more violence than before, there is a manipulation of how the military acts that makes their choices worse. This adds a much-needed complexity to the series and dives deeper into elements we’ve seen briefly so far.

Additionally, relationships grow and develop in Invasion Season 2 Episode 7, and they do so intimately and with care. This is particularly true in the last act of the episode where Jamila and Caspar listen to the mp3 player, the first song they shared playing. It’s wholesome, meaningful, and a little piece of youth returning to Caspar, who has been through so much and lost a large section of his memory.

The one major failing of the series is that the episode director and cinematographer don’t understand how to light night sequences for Black characters, more specifically for Trevante. Instead of seeing his striking features, most of his face is hidden entirely in shadow, while Rose, who has a lighter skin tone, is in full light. It’s a frustrating element and one that repeats itself for both of them in other sequences of the episode.

As it stands, though, Invasion Season 2 Episode 7 feels like a coming together for the narrative as stories intersect and all tackle the same themes. The loss is becoming greater for characters like Aneesha and Trevante, while Caspar and Jamila begin to find something again. While there are strong elements in each of the converging stories, its Aneesha’s that carries the most emotive weight in terms of direct conflict with the military. Making my curiosity for when she makes it to the Oklahoma base where Trevante is all the more intriguing.

Invasion Season 2 is streaming now, exclusively on AppleTV+.