Created by Oscar-winning producer and writer Simon Kinberg ("X-Men" Movies, "Deadpool," "The Martian") and David Weil ("Hunters"), Apple TV+'s sensational sci-fi series "Invasion" marches to the beat of a different drum.
With its slower character-driven approach ramping up nicely as it leans into its third season beginning on Aug. 22, 2025, "Invasion" is a deeply compelling sci-fi adventure that provides a slightly different flavor of episodic TV experience, while still staying true to the roots of the genre.
"I read 'War of the Worlds' when I was a little kid and always loved the alien invasion genre and never knew how I would do my own version of it,” Kinberg tells Space.com. "Somewhere along the way, I thought if I was going to do an alien invasion show or movie, it was the idea of making it genuinely 'the world,' as opposed to just the U.S. or the U.K. or the way that it's usually done."
Season 3 finds our heroes coming together for a unified effort to cross the Dead Zone, infiltrate the crashed mothership, and confront an evolved form of apex predator. Kinberg shared more of his thoughts on how his storytelling vision began and is unfolding as new alliances form.
"To be able to tell it in a global way, I went to the folks at Apple and told them I had this idea for a show and it's 'War of the Worlds' meets 'Babel,'" he recalls. "It's going to take place all over the world, and people are going to speak their own languages, and there'll be parallel stories all reacting to the fact that there's a global invasion happening. And eventually they will converge, which is what happens this season. But we'll be telling different stories of different people, and they were down for it. The simplicity of the inception was just that, and then we started building the characters."
As Kinberg explains, Season 3 kicks right off with startling revelations two years after the end of Season 2.
"The world has gone back to peace. The mission to the mothership that Trevante and Caspar went on has seemingly been successful, and they topple the mothership and seemingly those guys died. The world has moved on. Our main characters, some of them have settled in to being married, some have settled into new relationships, going to school and college. Then Trevante surprises the world by coming back from that mothership mission and it begins the unravelling mystery of what happened up there, wondering what the aliens are planning next. Then that explodes at a certain point and we’re back in the ride of the invasion."
Veteran VFX master Erik Henry ("The Abyss," "Black Sails," "Alien: Resurrection") and his incredible crew have again provided "Invasion" with a wealth of mesmerizing extraterrestrial imagery, and Season 3 is a solid testament to their ingenuity, imagination, and patience.
"Erik Henry, our visual effects supervisor, is a straight-up genius, and I've worked with a lot of visual effects supervisors, among the best," Kinberg notes. "He's won Emmys, he's been on some of the best shows over the last ten or twenty years. He's a really collaborative gu,y and this season we had our biggest challenge in terms of building these apex aliens, these sentient aliens that are different than anything we've seen previously.
"We had a completely different challenge to the CG build of these 3D creatures. He and I went through hundreds of artists, thousands of sketches, and iterations. And we kept going all the way down to the final flicker of a light on a tendril, the day we had to lock picture on things. He's a real gamer and has an incredible imagination, and is really tireless. Some people can lose stamina, but Erik is there for every single detail of the hundreds or thousands of versions that these things go through."
Kinberg has been involved in a multitude of high-profile projects over the years, including writing duties for "X-Men: Days of Future Past," "X-Men: Apocalypse," and "Sherlock Holmes", as well as producing "Logan," "Dark Phoenix," and Edgar Wright's upcoming "The Running Man" remake. Oh, and he's currently writing the next "Star Wars" trilogy for Lucasfilm!
"I feel so genuinely blessed that I get to do all this stuff," Kinberg admits. "When I was a kid growing up, I knew I wanted to be a writer, and thought I wanted to be a novelist. I loved these kinds of movies. I grew up at a time in the late '70s and early '80s when it was the golden age of pop science fiction movies. I grew up on 'Close Encounters' and 'E.T.' and 'Star Wars.'
"I just love being able to go to set and see actors say the stuff that somehow came out of my brain at some point. It doesn't make a difference if it's original or 'Star Wars' or 'X-Men.' It all has the same kind of genuine thrill to it for me. I'm always nervous going to a set the first day, and I'm always thrilled, good, bad, or otherwise. I've made some stuff I'm really proud of and stuff I regret. Just being in the mix of being able to make this stuff is so special."
With an international cast that includes Golshifteh Farahani, Shioli Kutsuna, Shamier Anderson, India Brown, Shane Zaza, and Enver Gjokaj, the ten-episode "Invasion" Season 3 airs exclusively on Apple TV+ starting on Aug. 22, 2025.
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