Invasion Episode 7 Review: Walking Towards A Half Without Gravity Faith And Hope That Deserves A Worthy Ending

Director: Jakob Verbruggen, Amanda Marsalis

Cast: Shamier Anderson, Golshifteh Farahani, Sam Neill, Firas Nassar, Shioli Kutsuna, Billy Barratt

Streaming Platform: Apple Tv+

Ratings: 3/5 (three star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Arriving at the review of the seventh episode of Invasion we cannot help but stop for a moment, like the rhythm of the story that Simon Kinberg and David Weil are continuing to tell us, week after week, on Apple TV+ and reflect on the direction that the series is traveling. We have now entered the last act of the season and Invasion, despite the particularity of the previous episode which could suggest an acceleration towards new narrative developments, chooses to remain true to itself and slow down the pace of the story even once. The result is an episode that is placed in a strange middle way, in being a moment of stasis and in proceeding towards new developments, leaving the viewer on the one hand waiting for next Friday and on the other giving it a not too pleasant sense. of dissatisfaction. It therefore seems natural to ask at what moment the particularity of a work, the element that makes it so unique and different from the rest of the production, can be transformed into its greatest defect, overturning its strength.

Invasion Episode 7 Review and Analysis

The alien threat is expanding. From the continent (America, complete with a message to unified networks from the President) to the metropolises, up to the small villages of the English countryside, the story of death and destruction that the invaders are carrying out expands. As expected, the viewer will not explicitly see any of this, letting the landscapes and settings, as well as the frightened looks, the people in shock and a sense of general desperation, not shouted but proceeding under the track, to tell it. It is the beauty of Invasion that has taken one of the most classic science fiction narratives by depriving it of the show to focus on the emotional, intimate and personal side of the protagonists.

A group, made up of different personalities, divided into various parts of the world (and so far without a strong link between their stories) struggling with survival. After focusing onhome invasion experienced by Annesha in the previous episode, the series returns to become a choral story. It picks up exactly where the credits started last week, moving the various characters, but without reserving big surprises. We perceive a path, a path that everyone is facing, but there is no real narrative strength that can really satisfy the viewer. It is the characteristic figure of Invasion, but by the seventh episode this game doesn’t seem to create the right tension of the first episodes anymore.

The first warning signs had come at the end of last episode, when some twists required a suspension of the viewer’s disbelief greater than expected. We are talking about the moment in which some characters proved to have survived the events, almost for free and outside the registers to which the narration had accustomed us. Even in this episode, although we do not arrive at similar moments, we have the perception of a writing less centered than usual, more resting on itself, as if it had found a formula to be replicated without particular transport. In a moment in history in which the situation is gradually worsening, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to notice how the protagonists, from Aneesha’s family to the military Trevante (where sensationally we witness a conversation that ends right at the most beautiful), they do not seem to participate in what is happening around them. As if they were too distant from the whole context, cold and more reasonable (but of that glacial rationality that does not presuppose a real emotionality), unable to carry on their shoulders that sense of tragedy in progress. In other words, we are often told of an alien invasion, but we never perceive this confusion through the eyes of the protagonists. The clear demonstration is in the story of Caspar and his schoolmates who, finally, return to the city.

One character, however, seems to continue on his way in an undaunted and almost touching way. It is Mitsuki, who desperately searches, through every means, even the least legal, to listen to a message lost in the ether of space, hoping to have proof of the survival of his beloved, gives life to the best moments of the episode. It does not seem accidental that the episode is titled Hope. Mitsuki, despite dealing with science, calculations, computers, technology and the laws of the universe, is steeped in faith. While the world is being destroyed by aliens, his is a character who lives another reality, more spiritual, in which the goal is not so much to understand if the impossible is possible, as simply to find it. There are only three episodes to go until the end of the season and somehow, Mitsuki’s character corresponds to us viewers, eager to find that transport that the series, week after week, is slowly losing. In the meantime, all that remains is to continue to have some faith.

The Final Words

We conclude our review of the seventh episode of Invasion by underlining how the series is proceeding with a coherent story, even if gradually less and less powerful. Far from the writing quality of the first episodes, Invasion, right now that it should aspire to a climax, fails to give the characters the strength of the narrative, letting everything be told but never perceived. The characters continue their journey, but the feeling is that of never proceeding. Some light in the storyline dedicated to Mitsuki, where the alien invasion becomes an excuse for a discourse on faith and hope that deserves a worthy ending.