RECAP: ‘Invasion’ Season 3 Episode 3 — “Infinitas”

With two episodes under its belt, Invasion Season 3 has established half its characters. Episode 1 detailed Trenvante Cole, and Episode 3 brought audiences back to Mitsuki Yamato. Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 has now brought us to Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani), and what her life looks like two years after Season 2 ended. 

 Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 opens up with a block party. It’s the calmest that we have seen anything this season. While Mitsuki’s small rural life was quiet, it was clear that she was running from something from the moment you realizes where she is. But in “Infinitas,”  this block party sweeps through Aneesha’s now picturesque life, showing her kids, Sarah (Tara Moayedi) and Luke (Azhy Robertson), the new step-daughter, Ryder Evans (Olivia-Mai Barrett), that she’s taken in as her own, and her new husband, Clark Evans (Enver Gjokaj).

The Movement’s militancy is in their rearview mirror, and instead, the kids are in school, Luke is in a band, Ryder is on her way to college, and everyone is just okay. Aneesha and her family have had one of the most challenging roads of any of the characters – by the end of Season 2, Aneesha was cold, angry, and focused on survival. 

Aneesha Malik showcases her vulnerability in Invasion Season 3 Episode 3.

In Invasion Season 3 Episode 3, she’s soft, happy, and hoping to preserve whatever youth is left for the kids. She hasn’t forgotten the past, but she is choosing to bury those days under two years of good memories and a good life. Her kids call Clark “dad,” Ryder calls her “mom,” and they’re a happy family, which they thought was once out of reach. Then Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) and Jamila Huston (India Brown) show up at her front door looking for help and perspective.

Unlike the past seasons, Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 doesn’t waste time connecting the storylines of the characters on screen. With only 10 episodes, balancing a large ensemble cast and crafting episodes that function more like vignettes has been the series’ primary point of struggle. Now, it seems that the series has found its footing for now in a good way. 

Trevante is here for Aneesha’s son because Luke is connected to the aliens, just like Caspar Marrow (Billy Barratt) and even Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna). As a series, this season is all about duality. The bulk of what we’ve seen is how life has continued or reverted to normal since the aliens arrived, but just beneath the surface, the Signal is screaming. For those connected to it, like Mitsuki and Trevante, it’s deafening. Still, Luke asserts that he is no longer connected to them, and Aneesha believes him. 

 While Clark and Aneesha have embraced their life, they haven’t stopped worrying. It’s why Clark can offer Trevante help with some information on the Movement to Aneesha’s disapproval. They aren’t supposed to be connected to any of it anymore, but when you’re scared the sky will fall one more time, you have to stay clued into everything they left, and Clark tells Aneesha as much. 

Clark’s focus on keeping tabs on the Movement and the forums where they discuss leads the group to “Infinitas,” an image that resembles the same frequency Caspar’s cognitive reading displayed, and the audience knows that Mitsuki has been following. But that’s where it ends for Clark; he points Trevante in the right direction, but they pull it back. 

I had been wondering what had happened to the Movement. This wasn’t the answer I expected Invasion Season 3, Episode 3 to give me, and I applaud them for it. Aneesha’s relentless push for her children has shifted from fighting to trying to find peace for them. That is, until Luke tells her that the connection did come back the day that Trevante did. 

Dedicated to protecting her family once again, Aneesha refuses to follow her own directive to her husband. Luke wants to be normal again, and it’s in that moment that his mother makes her decision. Instead of carrying the burden together, she decides to once again settle it herself and heads to the hotel where Jamila and Trevante are staying. 

“Infinitas” forces Aneesha into a difficult choice: stay with her family and ignore the situation, or protect them.

Before Aneesha joins the duo, Jamila and Trevante aren’t okay. Since leaving containment with the WDC, Trevante is suffering from his connection to the aliens. But it’s not just that. The nighttime brings terrors or insomnia propelled by his PTSD from combat, and what his life has been like the last few years, even outside being held in the mothership for two of them.

It’s clear that even though Jamila is with him, Trevante is isolated. His loneliness is causing him to struggle more, but no matter how much Jamila tries to pick up some of the weight and help him through his trauma, she is still a child. Where she wants to help Trevante in a way that she couldn’t help Caspar, Trevante is her elder, and that won’t change. 

The dynamic between Trevante and Jamila is an important one. While Jamila has not been a child since the aliens invaded, she still represents everything that Trevante has been unable to save. He couldn’t save his son, he couldn’t save Caspar, and for him, Jamila is still another child he can not lose. The frustration this prompts for Jamila is understandable, but Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 doesn’t follow the path of other narratives, which often overlook youth.

For Aneesha, as much as for Trevante, youth is the only thing they can still protect. They can’t take back the pain of the last few years. They can’t unring the bell of adulthood that survival rang, but they can try to let them experience the rest of their life without losing more of their youth and their peace. The kicker is that for Jamila, it’s been gone, and it’s clear that all of it died with Caspar. 

After forcing Jamila to stay at the hotel, Aneesha and Trevante head to the Movement. They enter a warehouse, and it’s clear that the organization is alive and well, smaller and more scared than militant, but they’re still kicking even if the aliens have “stopped.” As Aneesha tries to gather information, Trevante is recognized, and all hell breaks loose, resulting in a fight sequence and the two fleeing the scene. 

It’s as they’re running that Aneesha has her most vulnerable moment of Invasion Season 3 Episode 3. She’s happy again. When she made her decisions before, during the invasion’s full swing, and while they were trying to survive the hunter-killers, she didn’t have anything to lose. Every step forward was clawing her way to safety. However, her family is now happy, and she is too. And that is terrifying to her.

Trevante still maintains his emotional core and uncertainty in Invasion Season 3 Episode 3. 

Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 establishes what this season is about in a nuanced way. The characters have changed in the two-year time skip, and it has no intention of pushing them back to who they were. But with that comes the fear, the worry, and the uncertainty of where anything will go.

While the audience never loses sight of the fact that the WDC is still chasing Trevante, the government specter hangs over them, not getting in the way of the thoughtful character moments that unfold in each situation. As much as Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 is about learning more about the Signal, it’s really about setting the field and reestablishing who these characters are now—their fears, their goals, and how they fit together. 

After getting the chance to meet with the Movement one more time, Aneesha and Trevante leave their phones and vehicle and trust the driver to take them to the Movement’s leader. When they arrive at a home, it’s clear, now more than ever, that the people in the Movement are just ordinary people. They’re parents driving in a carpool, their mothers protecting their sons, and they’re scared of losing it again. The same way that Aneesha is. 

As they all talk, Trevante and Aneesha share the Signal, and one of the Movement’s people plays it on their computer. Trevante is immediately sent into an episode. The migraine starts, he’s audibly in pain, but then, the final moments in the mothership become clear. While Trevante was gone for two years, to him, it was a moment, and one that he could not see clearly until now. 

In a flashback to the ship, Trevante touches the wall of the mothership, a goo sticking to his hand. Something is moving inside the wall, and the wall’s texture becomes clearly defined, indicating it is a membrane. Then, the wall is pierced by something. It’s a tail, a talon, it’s not clear, but there is something worse in the walls of the mothership, and if this was the moment that Trevante returned, well, it’s out now. 

Before Trevante can put it all together, he’s taken away by the WDC screaming about the alien in the walls. The audience knows what he means, and Trevante knows the danger, but no one else does. As he’s dragged away, the WDC also takes in everyone in the house, and it’s then that Aneesha knows that she has made an irrevocable mistake. She is going to be separated from her family again, and now, she has pulled them into the WDC’s web. 

“Infinitas” is an episode about characters first, and the impending big bad is second.

Throughout the episode, we’ve also gotten moments with Nikhil (Shane Zaza) and Mitsuki as they make their way towards the last remaining portal, where Trevante emerged in Episode 1. Moving in secret, their small moments throughout the episode have tracked their progress, making it clear that they are operating without WDC approval. 

Once they make it into the facility, at the same time that the Movement plays the Signal for Trevante, it starts ringing through the room. Mitsuki starts having an episode. They’re held at gunpoint by the WDC. And then, something comes through the portal, something big. 

Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 ends with chaos, and that’s just what the series needs to build momentum as we come to the midpoint. With “Infinitas,” my concerns from Season 2 have disappeared, and ultimately, the pacing and connection between characters have hit a phenomenal stride. Invasion Season 3, Episode 4 will have to capitalize on the danger, but the stage is set for the season, and it’s exciting to see where it goes. 

Invasion Season 3 Episode 3 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.

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