Apple TV+’s Invasion is back – and the aliens are deadlier than ever

Invasion is not a show that most people are likely to have been watching, given that Apple TV+ has thrown a lot of resources and hype behind two other shows: Silo and Foundation. But those of us who have been tuning in to this alien invasion drama have formed a sort of cult following, with many viewers, even the ones who love the show, confessing they have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s not helped by the sometimes mixed reviews and the early-season muddling of the fact that it’s a slow burn, but the first season is drawing to a close and starting to nail down what the story it wants to tell.

The cinematography has been one of the show’s strengths from the beginning, for instance, and the team behind it has aspired to be edgy and out-of-the-box, even if the storytelling falters at times or feels like the execution is falling short of its intentions. So now that Apple TV+ has released the trailer for the third season of Invasion, it’s finally possible to say with some confidence that we may be getting the best of Invasion yet.

Co-created by David Weil (Hunters) and Simon Kinberg, Invasion is led by a creator with a proven track record of supervising large-scale film projects. Kinberg was executive producer and writer on the latest Martian (2015) and has numerous Oscar nods for his work there, in addition to his writing and producing credit on all the major X-Men movies of the past two decades. The basic concept is an original one, at least insofar as it’s an alien invasion story that’s focused on the perspectives of regular people in different regions of the world. The use of English, Japanese, and Pashto is integral to the story, making the global nature of the alien attack more immediate and intensely relatable.

In the first season, the story was focused on the beginnings of the alien invasion and the ways it started to spread through various forms of viral attack. But the aliens themselves, at least in their humanoid incarnations, felt less like the direct antagonists than the circumstances the characters were stuck in and the emotional and interpersonal conflicts that the drama relied on. Invasion is not for the viewer who wants an action-heavy alien invasion. Rather, it’s a character drama that weaves science fiction into an already-engaging narrative of how these people’s lives interconnect and overlap.

By the end of the first season, though, the full alien invasion was not just anticipated, it was underway. The second season, however, took a different tack and ramped up the action and intensity. We already had a feel for what the world had become and how the various characters were surviving or not in this new reality. Humanity has been reduced to small camps in safe zones, and their very survival can be a matter of life or death, with dire choices to make. The pacing of the show had been considered slow, but it does gain momentum at this point and opens the door for the even greater change of the third season.

Invasion Season 3 Shows Characters Converging on a Dangerous Mission

The trailer and official description for Season 3 of Invasion promise to change the dynamic of the show once again, and to the delight of many fans, who have been waiting to see more of the aliens and the various sci-fi elements and set pieces of this new, transformed world. It has been two years, and the threat has, well, evolved. We see glimpses of the aliens at what they call their “apex” form, with bio-mechanical tendrils that slither across the planet and bring a renewed terror. For once, the people whose story we’ve been following, and who are still the heart and soul of this series, will finally come together. The individual perspectives of previous seasons will coalesce as the main characters, whom we have been following across several continents and countries, now find themselves on a high-stakes mission that will bring them all into contact and into a dangerous mission to board the alien mothership.

This will be a major turning point for Invasion, which, thus far, has worked with fairly disparate storylines that bring us from one character to another without showing how they may know or recognize each other. The plot and emotional stakes are ratcheted up considerably in the new season, where the extraterrestrial enemy is visibly stronger and more deadly, and more formidable in its organization.

On top of this, the various characters and groups of survivors must band together in a way that will force alliances to be made, while testing loyalties and friendship that may have already been frayed by the fight to survive up to this point. It’s a fitting challenge for the survivors that viewers have been coming to know over the past two seasons, to see how they will interact and where their priorities may lie when they’re faced with this level of challenge to themselves and humanity at large. The moment they start preparing to take on the mother ship, we can bet that new conflicts and fractures will arise, putting even stronger demands on each character.

The third season of Invasion will premiere on August 22, 2025, on Apple TV+.