Invasion started strong with “Last Day,†expanded its interior world with “Crash,†and then hits a wall of forwarding progress with the deeply uneven “Orion.†A Lord of the Flies retread with Casper and Monty: boring. Trevante haranguing the Afghan man Kuchi (Aziz Çapkurt) who is feeding, healing, and protecting him and accusing Kuchi of serving him “goat pissâ€: exhausting. I am soothed by the efficiency of Mitsuki taking charge of investigating what happened to Murai, and intrigued by Aneesha’s increasingly cutthroat method of defending her family as she sees the terrorist-boogeyman winds gathering around them. But overall, “Orion†didn’t move much forward and felt like one of those transitional episodes that need to exist to get characters from Point A to Point B. Couldn’t it have had more verve, though?
“Orion†returns primarily to the locations introduced in “Crash,†with most of its time spent in Afghanistan and outside London. Let’s start with the former since the episode does. Trevante wakes up buried under sand and with all his fellow soldiers missing, perhaps taken by the alien entity they encountered — which, presumably, had previously taken the unit that Trevante and his crew were originally searching for. (Part of me thought that maybe the invading force was purposefully going after people in positions of power or influence, like the military, astronauts, and those bougie Long Islanders, but then I remembered the nosebleeds suffered by both American and Afghan kids, so I’m not sure there’s a real top-down method of attack here.) What did Trevante just live through? He can’t figure it out, and now he has a broken collarbone sticking through his skin and no water. Communications are down, so he can’t tell anyone about the “unknown aircraft.†And he’s dehydrated enough that he’s imagining the woman he was talking to in “Crash.†So, not a great time to be in the desert!
Until Kuchi comes along, offers Trevante water, and gets a gun pulled on him for his trouble. I don’t know, man; this stuff is just demoralizing to watch after a while. The two can’t communicate because of their language barrier, but Invasion finally translates an Afghan character’s dialogue and allows us to learn that Kuchi looks at the stars because of his mixed feelings about the Orion constellation: He loved it so much that he named his daughter Oranus after it, but she recently became sick and died. “I don’t care what’s up there. I just care about what’s not here,†Kuchi says, and that statement serves as a larger commentary on our human-focused perception of the world, right? And while I can appreciate that one of the Afghan characters finally gets some personality and interiority, going about that with a “This man suffered the death of a child, so, therefore, he is empathetic†characterization is as banal as the shirtless, greased-up American soldiers tossing a football back and forth in “Crash.†Do you think we’ll ever see Kuchi again? I’m leaning toward no.
Outside London, every kid in Casper’s field trip class has survived the fall off the cliff, but their teacher, Mr. Edwards, is looking rough, with glass embedded in his face and some sort of rebar sticking through his body. Jamila is resourceful enough to get a tourniquet on Mr. Edwards, but overall, the kids are in disarray. Jerky Monty essentially becomes a Nu-Joffrey, not just hogging all the food and tricking Casper into admitting his tragic domestic situation but also pressuring Casper into voting for him as leader. But then, later on, newly elected Monty kicks out the fire meant to keep the group warm at night — what’s his endgame?
The mystery of whatever Monty is up to is balanced by the New York and Tokyo storylines, which are more straightforward. After leaving New York City, which is experiencing widespread power loss, Aneesha continues to save Ahmed’s ass by realizing — as she did in “Crash†— that their money and status will not insulate them from the racism of others. Now that the news is calling what’s happening a “coordinated international attack†and the “largest-scale terrorist attack since 9/11,†the Maliks are doubly in danger from whoever/whatever the invading force is and from people willing to call Ahmed “Osama†and attack him in a gas station parking lot. And even after all that Aneesha does — coming to Ahmed’s aid, stealing a car for them to flee in, booking them a hotel room — Ahmed still sneaks out to call Amanda and tell her he loves her. We are all the hotel front desk employee’s unimpressed expression, are we not?
Finally, in Japan, Mitsuki is determined to prove that her communications coding had no negative impact on her lover Murai’s final moments. So she steals her boss’s ID, swipes her way into the communications room, and basically narrates what she’s doing to coworker Kaito, who follows her for solidarity’s sake. And once she pulls up the shuttle’s video feed, she proves to herself and JASA that she did nothing wrong. Instead, she sees what we did in “Last Dayâ€: that one of the astronauts thought he saw something outside the shuttle, that Murai said “there’s nothing there,†and that whatever hit the shuttle then ripped out the side of it, sending all three astronauts into space and killing them instantly. But Mitsuki notices something else, too — that the weird feedback coming from the shuttle sounds like “Wajo,†which is the same word that Luke kept hearing in his head. So yes, as the news reports were saying, this is a coordinated attack coming from somewhere. But internal to Earth? Doesn’t seem like it. The “raining metal†that Mr. Edwards saw is the culprit here, and whatever it wants, at least its messaging is consistent.
We’re Talking Here About Your Future
• I’ve been thinking that the three-pronged jet-black things are the aliens themselves, but if Trevante is to be trusted, are those the aliens’ ships or vessels? And the invisible entities that we saw in the desert and in the cornfields in “Last Day†are the aliens themselves?
• Not sure how to feel about Casper’s classmate in hijab whose only characterization so far has been “crying alone to herself with no one to comfort her.â€
• I wonder what the ethnic background of the Maliks is supposed to be since Invasion has not written any scenes where they speak anything other than English. Some specificity would be nice since this show is leaning so hard on their characters being othered for what they look like and sound like. Aneesha’s “Hi, Baba†when calling her father to check-in, while heartbreaking, doesn’t really narrow it down.
• Luke still hears whatever that voice was in his head, right? Is Aneesha’s medical training going to play a role in figuring out what’s going on with her son?