Invasion season 3: Tentacles and teamwork (trailer).

There’s a certain irony to a show called Invasion taking three seasons to properly assemble its cast in the same room—but here we are, and at long last, humanity’s scrambled ensemble is finally forming a proper ragtag crew in Season 3 of Apple TV+’s globe-trotting sci-fi opus.

Created by Simon Kinberg and David Weil, Invasion has always played the long game: a slow-burn alien apocalypse in ten-part instalments, shot through with prestige drama seriousness, international flair, and the occasional alien tendril curling ominously through the plot. It began as a story told through disparate lenses—suburban mum on the run here, ex-Navy SEAL there, Japanese scientist with radio access to the unknown over yonder—and spent its first two seasons weaving those threads tighter. Now, in Season 3, those perspectives finally collide. Think Crash meets Independence Day, only moodier and with fewer flag-waving speeches.

Premiering 22nd August 2025, Season 3 picks up with Earth in a bit of a pickle. The apex aliens—no, not the ones from before, these are worse—have emerged, and they’re doing that classic alien hobby of spreading across the planet like an interstellar black mould. It’s all gone a bit War of the Worlds if the worlds were staffed entirely by emotionally traumatised multilingual protagonists.

This year, our cast (still boasting Golshifteh Farahani, Shioli Kutsuna, Shamier Anderson, India Brown, Shane Zaza, and Enver Gjokaj, with newcomer Erika Alexander joining the party) are sent on a critical mission to infiltrate the alien mothership. Yes, we’re finally going inside the beast. It’s taken two seasons and a lot of brooding, but the mothership is no longer just a distant threat—it’s on the itinerary.

There are relationships to test, betrayals to brew, possibly a death or two that’ll make Twitter upset, and one suspects at least one moment of someone yelling “We have to work together!” while everything goes kaboom. So far, so alien-apocalypse-by-numbers—but Invasion has always been less about the fireworks and more about the fuse. Which is both its blessing and its curse.

Let’s be honest: Invasion hasn’t exactly had a flawless run. The first season was occasionally accused of being less Invasion and more Mild Social Disruption, with the aliens showing up about as frequently as a reliable Thameslink train. But those who stuck with it found something richer underneath—a kind of melancholic, creeping dread, punctuated by strong performances and eerie cinematography that Apple’s considerable war chest can happily fund.

Season 2 improved its pacing and widened its scope, like a Netflix show that finally remembered it had an FX department, while giving us more alien encounters and less moping about in fields. Now, with the team assembled, the stakes interstellar, and the budget apparently still intact, Season 3 is aiming for the kind of sci-fi crescendo it’s been promising since Sam Neill’s fleeting cameo back in the pilot.

And here at SFcrowsnest, we admire a show that takes its time—as long as it eventually delivers the tentacled goods. With any luck, Season 3 might just be Invasion’s moment to move from cult curiosity to full-blown genre gem. Or at the very least, give us a reason to shout “It’s in the ship!” at our screens in justified panic.

Whether you’re here for the emotional trauma, the international intrigue, or the sneaky suspicion that one of these characters isn’t making it out alive, Invasion Season 3 might finally be the moment Apple’s slowest sci-fi burns becomes a proper blaze.