As we approach the halfway point of the season, Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 is following up on one hell of an ending from the last episode. With alien vines violently protruding from the portal, one of the last things we saw when Episode 3 ended was the world being thrown back into chaos. Now, in “The Mission,” we’re learning more about the situation as it unfolds and ultimately more about Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna).
Having been taken in by the WDC, Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) and Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) have been split up. Trvante is at the SkyWatch Headquarters, and Aneesha is at an FBI field office in Boise. But both of them have made the people waiting for them. Invasion Season 3, Episode 4 opens similarly to how the last episode closed, in Aneesha’s house, where her family is worried for her, and Jamila Huston (India Brown) looks to both give them help and ask for some too.
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While this opening is simple and doesn’t take too much time, it does a lot to paint a picture of what Aneesha’s family is like now, and Clark Evans’s (Enver Gjokaj) place in it. They’re a family, and their promise to stay together means so much more when you take into account what both parts of this blended family have been through in the past seasons.
Aneesha has made a very bad mistake, and now her family is in danger.
Clark is a father as much as he is a husband, and despite his worry, he’s there for his kids, and yes, that includes his biological daughter and Luke (Azhy Robertson) and Sarah (Tara Moayedi). For her part, Jamila offers to help Clark, and he’s the first adult to take it.
As the two try their best to reach the field office where Aneesha is being held, the matriarch is being interrogated. The Movement has now become Infinitas, and the largest issue is that, although she thought her daily life didn’t involve prolonged knowledge of them, someone in her home has been discussing them in forums and searching for information. That’s when it clicks, and you can see Aneesha’s frustration show on her face. Not because she’s being questioned, it’s because she’s realizing that Clark lied.
As the family drama unfolds on one end, Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 is also working to develop the world that we’re about to see as it falls back into the invasion that it thought it escaped. As SkyWatch holds Trevante, Mitsuki, and Nikhil Kapur (Shane Zaza) are being flown to the headquarters, and Mitsuki is pissed.
Mitsuki’s moment of anger reverberates throughout Invasion Season 3 Episode 4.
When Mitsuki gets off of the helicopter and sees Agent Jack Hollander (Eric Lange), she can’t help but lose it. She assaults him, punching him and bleeding his mouth, screaming that she will kill him. Shioli Kutsuma’s is acting in this moment is visceral. Yamato isn’t just feeling anger, she’s feeling rage, and the expression and distress in her voice as Kutsuma delivers the frantic and furious lines, you feel it. But more importantly, Nikhil knew what they did to her, and he still brought her back.
The anger Mitsuki feels at being back is met with nothing but shameless pride in having stopped the aliens for two years. I mean, sure, they’re back, but they had peace for a little while, right? As Hollander explains the situation to Trevante, Mitsuki, and Nikhil, the gravity of the situation begins to come into focus. The aline vines aren’t just spreading, but hardlining themselves to the mothership and providing the space for Hunter Killers (HK) to emerge and rip through cities.
When asked if they can destroy he vines, Hollander and General Bryant say no, even a nuke can’t destroy them—just the surrounding city. If it wasn’t clear that SkyWatch is willing to sacrifice anything to stop the aliens, it is now. And as the episode continues, the cruelty of defense also becomes clearer on a personal level.
Hollander is easy to hate, so is SkyWatch, but there is no other choice.
But before that, Hollander explains what the next steps are in this situation: enter the deadzone. When Nikhil questions the plan because, well, the deadzone is named the “deadzone” for a reason, Hollander assures him that they’ve received messages from the people they have sent in. But just messages, no returns. When Nikhil points out that this is a suicide mission, Hollander responds that “victory requires sacrifice.”
It’s here that Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 focuses on Trevante. While his isolated and vulnerable state has been clear since the very first episode, his demeanor here is unflinching as he says that, whether it’s sacrifice or suicide, he will go through with the request. Trevante is done with life, done with the aliens, and his apathy for survival is hard to see. He’s a lead character, a hero, who has lost the will to be more than just a tool.
But Mitsuki is in the room too, and while she’s silent, her facial expressions speak volumes. After the debrief, we spend time with Mitsuki Yamato as she walks around the facility. She winds up in a room she can’t forget. The audience sees flashbacks of the torture Yamato experienced, face down, with the back of her neck being cut open, and conscious for it all. The flashbacks are brief, but the atmosphere they set is harrowing.
Mitsuki has changed as a character, and it’s clear the torture the WDC put her through is why.
For Mitsuki, all of it is trauma, and for the viewer, it shows us that WDC doesn’t have humanity when it comes to “security.” Invasion is a series about killer aliens taking over the Earth, but in this moment, the alien abduction imagery isn’t lost on me.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 continues by following Mitsuki throughout the rest of the room. There, she pulls open a hidden room, a vault-like cage for confinement of subjects. And here, the walls have been clawed at, with what looks like dried blood highlighting every mark. We don’t know if Mitsuki was held in there, not entirely. But when Nikhil walks in, her rage fades to pain.
Again, she stands in front of her friend and asks how he could just let them take her. How Nikhil could know the torture they would put her through, and do nothing to stop it. And yet, once again, Nikhil may show empathy, but he doesn’t show shame. Detaining and experimenting on Mitsuki allowed the WDC and Nikhil to create the neural dampener. The dampener that Nikhil offers Mitsuki offers her the chance to cut off the aliens, to stop the signal that keeps invading her mind. But it means nothing.
Mitsuki is put face to face with her trauma, Shioli Kutsuna delivers a stunning performance.
If anything, the neural dampener was used to cut the HKs off from the Hive, to weaken them. In Mitsuki, while Nikhil frames using a neural dampener as a way to feel herself again, she knows it will cut her off, too. But she’s not worried about being removed from the aliens; she’s worried about losing anything about herself, especially when the WDC has taken so much from her.
Everything about Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 is about setting up the mission—whether that’s for Infinitas or SkyWatch. But in doing that, “The Mission” is about control and the need for everyone to find it in some way. Whether it’s control over the HK, autonomy for themselves, it’s all about either grabbing it or relinquishing it, and sometimes, the illusion of it.
As the mission to enter the Deadzone begins to come into play, Aneesha is now being kept in a room with Verna Mae Potter (Erika Alexander). They discuss their circumstances, the WDC, and Infinitas, but not enough to incriminate anyone. But their holding is just an entry point to understand the players on the field. The real emotional meat of this section of the show comes from Jamila and Clark as they wait to see Aneesha.
Clark’s identity as a father is core to understand who he is.
Jamila and Clark are in the field office waiting room, and they begin discussing their individual situations. Jamila is “helping” here, but she stresses about how no one seems to think that she can, and more specifically, that everyone views her as a child. A primary issue in Episode 3, Clark’s fatherly demeanor is clear, and he explains that well, she is a child. To which Jamila responds, just what she did when Trevante told her that, she hasn’t been a child since the invasion began.
It’s what Clark says next that pulls it all into perspective for her, even if she is frustrated by it. He explains that yes, she isn’t a child in terms of what she has been through. She has had to grow up quickly, but that doesn’t mean that the people around her don’t view her that way. And more importantly, because she is a child, Aneesha, and Trevante by extension, want to protect her due to what they’ve been through.
But Clark doesn’t just speak plainly with Jamila about her age, he also makes it clear that after today, Aneesha and he are done. They are going home, living their life, and not getting involved with the WDC again. They’re going to protect their family and make sure they don’t put them in danger again.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 puts Verna and Infinitas into the center of Aneesha’s story.
Jamila, though, doesn’t have anyone. Trevante, for the most part, is the last piece that connects her to Caspar. Her mother isn’t in her life, and no one else needs her. Jamila may be annoyed, but you can see it click into place for her. When she gets up to walk it off, she winds up talking with Verna’s nephew. Not arrested in the raid, he talks about what it’s like to worry about the last person in your life, how worried he is that his aunt is inside because she is all the family that he has left.
On the inside, Aneesha and Verna continue to talk, only for her to get her medicine delivered. After walking away, Verna falls. A rash spreading over her body, Aneesha’s occupation as a doctor takes the front seat as she tries to diagnose and help Verna, who is unresponsive on the floor. Having reunited briefly with Clark, the two of them assist Verna, her nephew, and Jamila join them. Then, the EMT arrives.
As Verna is rushed on a gurney with Aneesha assisting, everyone is together. Only, the ambulance isn’t a real ambulance stocked with supplies, and Verna wasn’t having a heart attack. Verna was having an allergic reaction that she knowingly caused. As Verna comes to, she says, “You weren’t supposed to get mixed up in this part.”
“The Mission” pushes all of its characters into choices, and sets them on paths they can’t double back on.
Still, they all did. As the ambulance takes off and hides in an 18-wheeler, Clark, Aneesha, and Jamilla are all accomplices now. The kids are alone. And now, Verna, the head of Infinitas, they discover, has pulled them deep back into a lift they had tried to leave. While this works out well for Jamila, who didn’t want to give up, for Aneesha and Clark, well, their family life is not going to be the same again.
As Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 comes to a close, the last remaining thread is the mission. Trevante is ready to go in the helicopter immediately. In fact, outside of his own guilt and apathy, “The Mission” isn’t about him. Whether Mitsuki joins or not, that’s the remaining question that Nikhil has, and to his shock, she joins them. Although let’s be honest, there was no real choice for her not to go.
As they get into the helicopter, Hollander doesn’t apologize; he justifies experimenting on Mitsuki. The time she spent being cut open and isolated went to create the neural darts, which allowed SkyWatch to break the connection between the HK they encountered since the mothership went down. Two years of peace came from the experiments.
Trevante’s place in “The Mission” is to show a man who has given up on himself.
But they don’t work now. The neural darts don’t isolate the hive, leaving Mituski to push back. Was torturing her worth it, now that the solution has been made obsolete? To Hollander? Yes. To her? She’s angrier than ever, and yet she still gets on the chopper.
While in the air, the soldiers talk about the state of things, what to expect in the deadzone, and that they need Jesus on their side. Only for one of the soldiers to comment that they don’t need divinity because Trevante Cole is on the mission.
Unfortunately, though, the helicopter isn’t filled with just fans; it’s also filled with detractors, highlighted when one man states that they’re here to clean up Cole’s mess. Connecting it to people calling him the Hurricane, and the mess he leaves in his wake. You can tell that it stings when Trevante hears this, but he doesn’t say anything. Just keeps looking away.
When we meet up with the soldiers again, they’re flying at night, and everyone is silent. Then, they see something big. As the aircraft moves through the clouds, large tendrils are sticking up from the ground. Many of them, and they’re unavoidable. Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 ends with one helicopter going down, and the other left staying on the path. The only problem is that the helicopter is carrying Trevante and Mitsuki.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 ends on yet another cliffhanger.
In Invasion Season 3, Episode 4, many of the characters have headed down roads that they cannot easily double back on. Even more interestingly, the initial sections of the cast are no longer the focus. But it all ends up making sense. Trevante and Mitsuki must confront who they are and what they’ve endured at the hands of SkyWatch and the aliens. They have to confront the past, and for them, that means going to the mothership.
For Aneesha and Jamila, their unintended joining of Infinitas has done two things. For Aneesha and her husband, they’re pulled back into an organization that pretty much fills in the gap left by the Movement. Sure, they just want to be with their family, but they have been met with a future that makes it all the more challenging. For Jamilla, though, Infinitas can be the answer she has been looking for. She can track answers about Caspar’s EKG, but she can also find purpose when everyone else has pushed her away.
As a whole, Invasion Season 3, Episode 4 , doesn’t provide the answers I wanted for everything. It’s slower than I anticipated, with the stark cliffhanger in the last episode. It’s also still shuffling the characters across the chessboard, but not making any significant moves. But with its ending, “The Mission” succeeds. It’s just now, we need todo more than just set up the stakes, we actually need to start moving everyone forward and push them to confront the risk.
Invasion Season 3 Episode 4 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.
