Invasion Season 3 is back, and the last episode was all about the return of Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson), Jamila Huston’s (India Brown) grief over Caspar Morrow’s (Billy Barratt) death, and establishing that the United States Government and WDC’s Skywatch are, of course, at odds with anyone pervcieved ot be connected ot the alien invaders. Invasion Season 3 Episode 2, “The Message,” opens in a small idyllic Japanese countryside, calm music, and Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna).
Having turned her back on the WDC blacksite she was working for while trying to rescue her girlfriend, she lives an isolated life. While the quiet is for her, because of what she understands about the aliens, it’s also to protect her from becoming an experiment because of the connection she forged with the aliens, something she calls The Signal.
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Mitsuki is friends with a father and daughter (Adira Eigeldinger). While the opening of the episode highlights her peaceful life, it’s shattered as the familiar ringing caused by the alien-connection headaches takes hold. To find out what it means, Mitski writes it down, and with one question too large to answer, she returns to the grid, triggering her former employers’ race to locate her and take her in.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 switches focus to Mitsuki Yamato and Shioli Kutsuna is a force.
The person leading the charge and acting as the connective tissue between this episode and the last is Agent Hollander (Eric Lange). But his henchman is Nikhil Kapur (Shane Zaza), Mitsuki’s old colleague. When the two see each other, it’s clear how different their expeirences have changed their paths.
Yamato is taken aback by his aggressive change, the bravado, and the steadfast denial that he faced any negative consequences from his connection to the aliens. He was there too, but only she is the one that the WDC is looking to put on a slab.
While the United States has been without any alien activities for two years since the mothership crash, Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 highlights that isn’t the reality for other places in the world. While the series is focused on what has always been its strongest point, Mitsuki’s personal investment in solving the invasion, finding her girlfriend, and her past, “The Message” is also about setting the stage for what is to come.
When Mitsuki heads to an old friend, Ume (Yukari Komatsu), in the city, she’s met with a sick young man. Having encountered Hunter Killers in a mine, his arm is scratched, and like our protagonists so far, he can’t get them out of his head. This one scene establishes the new baseline for people becoming tethered to the aliens.
While the past seasons have focused on the action of connection and the why, they have been limited by the “how.” Sometimes you touch an artifact from the aliens and are connected while it’s in your possession. Other times, it stays with you. And others, like with Mitsuki, you touch a giant tear in reality and get sucked into the alien’s world. Now, the connection is like a pathogen, contaminating the people that the aliens scratch.
But Mitsuki is no longer the only Japanese character in the series. Enter alien hunters, well, WDC bounty hunters to be exact, with how quickly they shift focus to tracking Mitsuki at the WDC’s request. Agent Kaede Temura (June Fukumura) is the leader and her aggressively cold demeanor lets her wager Mitsuki’s family as leverge to get her to reveal her position.
Still, our heroine is nothing but one step ahead after she learns that the WDC and the hunters from Skywatch are on her tail. Our lead infiltrates their base of operations in a hotel room, throws them off her scent, and uncovers the truth: aliens are very much not a thing of the past; they’re being hunted as quickly as they can be.
“The Message” is a stark change of pace but that’s what makes it so entertaining.
Although not the focus of the opening episode, Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 flips the switch on pacing and genre. While Episode 1 and “The Message” are both science fiction, the subgenre that creators Simon Kinberg and David Weil play with as the episodes evolve to act as vignettes for the ensemble cast is the seaon’s strong point so far.
Trevante’s section of the story is somber and dramatic. It handles what our characters lost when the aliens came and what they sacrificed only to be needed as martyrs, not people. For Mitsuki, though, Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 has all the markings of a spy thriller, and despite the lack of action, the pacing and tension put the focus on running, only to fight back.
In the episode’s most considerable surprise, Mitsuki has been tracked down to an alien signature. As she climbs down the elevator shaft to the Hunter-Killer, she falls. Now easy prey for the human hunters on her trail, the camera pans in on blood.
Pulling slowly out to show the Skywatch operatives murdered, blood splattered around them, and on the walls. Like previous seasons, Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 is smartly not concerned with the violence of the aliens, so much as the carnage in their wake. But Mitsuki? She’s unharmed. But more importantly, she feels, The Signal.
It’s clear that her reclusive life wasn’t just to stay away from her former employers, but to get away from the aliens, too, or at least until she finds a way to understand what’s happening to her. But with this new revelation, she isn’t concerned with running away anymore, so much as she is about figuring things out.
The episode ends with Mitsuki heading to the former United States, a title that has yet to be explained by the story. Entering a party, we realize that she’s in California to take Nikhil up on his offer to trust him and escape, or rather, go back to the clutches of WDC. But Nikhil’s hubris is remarkable.
Human hubris continues to rise as the real threat to surviving the invasion that is clearly not over.
This Nikhil is nothing like who we saw in Invasion Season 2. For the third season of Invasion, the aliens are projecting triumph over the humans. To him, they are cowering in Alaska or dead and dying. But as he drinks his alcohol in his penthouse, it is clear to the audience that he’s only speaking loudly to convince himself as much as to convince his former friend.
Like Mitsuki, he was impacted by his connection to the aliens. And while he outwardly portrayed that it didn’t matter to him, and only made him stronger, the audience can see that newfound bravado shaking. And so they’re teaming up again, he’s helping her, and Mitsuki is done running away. Now, she’s running toward The Signal.
It’s challenging to rate Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 , against Episode 1. They’re vastly different takes on the future, and both are setting the stage for the season with a vision that is not yet clear. Instead, these two episodes have focused on characters, reintroducing them to the audience and trying to build something more out of that connection.
Characters have always been the reason to keep watching this Apple TV+ series. Even when the story has felt disconnected, it’s been the people who keep you coming back week after week. And that isn’t any different in Invasion Season 3 Episode 2. “” is an excellent look at highlighting who Mitsuki has become, while also showcasing where the invasion is, and where it isn’t.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 is a near perfect episode, if only because of how well shot, acted, and paced it is. This is just a thrilling episode of television, and we also get our first look at what Apple TV+’s production budget has put into the aliens this season. Yeah, it’s big.
All of it makes you excited for what will happen next in the series without having that depreciate the value of what you are watching in the moment. There are still more characters to see, but opening with Mitsuki and Trevnate was Invasion Season 3’s strongest choice when it comes to world building and keepign its audience engaged.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 2 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday in August and into October, 2025.
