12 Best TV Shows Like Invasion

The aliens aren't coming because they're already here. "Invasion" on Apple TV+ wastes no time letting us know that the aliens have arrived, but figuring out their ultimate aims for Earth isn't easy. The show follows multiple characters experiencing the hostile takeover of Earth from their own corners of the planet. Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) is a mom trying to hold her family together. Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) is a soldier on the front lines of the invasion. Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna) is a scientist who might have some of the answers humanity needs.

Like other ambitious sci-fi shows, "Invasion" tells a story on a grand scale. By hopping from character to character, it lets us take a peak at every angle of the war for Earth, and the show uses its many perspectives to give us different flavors of science fiction. There's plenty of alien-fighting action peppered throughout, but "Invasion" takes a cue from some of the best sci-fi series on TV and focuses more on the human drama than the deep space mysteries. This is an easy series to get hooked on, and if it left you wanting more, there are plenty of other shows that can scratch a similar itch.

One of the best things about the first season of "Invasion" is how each character's story sheds a little more light on the overarching alien plot. As viewers, we're desperately trying to figure out what's happening to Earth, but we have to piece together the mystery through the eyes of characters who have very limited perspectives. If that kind of puzzle solving is something you enjoyed during "Invasion," then it's time for you to watch — or revisit — "Lost."

Created by Jeffrey Leiber and J.J. Abrams, "Lost" kicked off its six-season run in 2004. The pilot introduced audiences to the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, a plane that crashed on an apparently uninhabited island. At first the survivors of the crash are just trying to keep themselves alive on the island, but they slowly begin to realize that the island isn't so empty after all. The characters in "Lost" are some of the best on TV, and all of them are ordinary people thrown into the middle of a sci-fi mystery that's bigger than anything they can imagine. Finally understanding the ending of "Lost" might take you a while, but working out the mystery is its own reward. 

The ending of "Invasion" Season 1 sees humanity make a decisive strike back against the aliens, and from there the show's second season really picks up the pace. The sophomore season is still deeply invested in its characters and exploring their personal struggles through the ongoing extraterrestrial catastrophe, but the show starts to feel more like a sci-fi action series as the war against the aliens heats up. For fans of the series who found themselves particularly engaged with the second season, "The 100" could make for a good follow-up.

"The 100" is set far in the future, and Earth in the show's universe looks very different than it does in ours. The planet has been devastated by a nuclear apocalypse, and the only survivors are people who were living in an interconnected series of space stations orbiting the Earth. A century after the apocalypse, the remaining humans are struggling to survive in space and are desperate to find a way to return to the planet. They send 100 young prisoners down to the surface to discover whether or not the planet is habitable once again. The 100 would-be settlers all have their own complicated pasts and relationships that make the mission unstable from the start, and all of them are completely unprepared for the reality of what they encounter on Earth. Equal parts melodrama and post-apocalyptic action, "The 100" is a thrill ride that's guaranteed to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

The aliens in "Invasion" are terrifying not just because of how deadly they can be but also because, for much of the series, we understand so little about their motivations. The series manages to mine a lot of tension out of the mysterious origins and goals of the aliens ravaging Earth, and fans of that variety of tension will probably find themselves right at home in the MGM+ series "From." That show exchanges the sci-fi elements in "Invasion" for dark fantasy, and in the process it creates a truly terrifying experience.

"From" takes place in an unnamed town that fans have come to call Fromville. The town itself seems to exist nowhere at all, and people don't choose to come to it. Instead, drivers from seemingly random places occasionally find their road blocked by a fallen tree, but when they turn back the way they came, they find themselves in Fromville. By day the town is a quiet collection of mostly abandoned buildings, but at night, human-looking monsters roam the land and brutally murder any living person they find. The people trapped in Fromville have to fight for their lives every single day, and their survival likely hinges on discovering the true origin of the town and the monsters that plague it.

"Invasion" is far from the only show that explores what would happen if aliens came to Earth. The aliens in "V" call themselves the Visitors, and they arrive on Earth promising to work alongside humanity to make a better future for everyone. The Visitors have incredible technology to offer the Earth, but there's something sinister hiding behind their humanoid appearance. When the Visitors begin leveraging their influence on Earth to take more control over the planet, a small human resistance has to organize and fight back. 

"V," which ran for two seasons on ABC between 2009 and 2011, is actually a remake of the 1980s series of the same name, and both versions are worth your time if you're an "Invasion" fan. The original and the updated version both tell fascinating stories about how the Visitors consolidate power and how a handful of humans try to resist their otherworldly regime. If you want a show that combines the slow burn intrigue of "Invasion" Season 1 with the climatic resistance of Season 2, then settle down to watch either version of "V."

Why should aliens be the only ones who get to enjoy the excitement of space travel? "The Expanse" takes place in a future where advanced propulsion systems have allowed humanity to spread throughout the solar system. Earth and Mars have long since formed separate governments, and both of them are fiercely competitive over the resources of the asteroid belt, much to the annoyance of the native Belters who live there. When contact with an alien substance leads to the deaths of thousands in the Belt, the powder keg of the Solar System explodes into all-out chaos.

"The Expanse" has a little bit of everything that sci-fi fans love. There's intriguing real-world scientific concepts, highbrow political intrigue, and loads of military and alien action. All six seasons of "The Expanse" provide viewers with captivating tales and non-stop thrill rides. Anyone who wants an action-packed story that doesn't sacrifice character drama and high political stakes should check out "The Expanse," and anyone who falls in love with the show can keep the adventure going with James S.A. Corey's books — the show is actually an adaptation of the first six books in a nine-book series.

Speaking of excellent sci-fi series based on books, fans of "Invasion" should definitely give Netflix's "3 Body Problem" some consideration. "3 Body Problem" is based on a novel written by Liu Cixin, and, much like "Invasion," the series follows multiple characters and gives us a ground-level look at humanity's first contact with an alien civilization. However, unlike "Invasion," most of the characters in "3 Body Problem" are scientists or investigators who are directly caught up in the heart of the action, giving viewers a real insight into what's going on.

The other major difference between the two series is that, in "3 Body Problem," the aliens haven't actually gotten to Earth yet. Don't think that makes them any less intimidating, though. Their journey towards the solar system is linked to a mysterious series of suicides occurring across Earth and a VR game that has some scientists desperately trying to save a virtual world. Discovering the links between those deaths, the game, and the unknown alien species hurtling toward Earth is a matter of life and death for some of the greatest scientific minds on the planet.

The first episode of "Invasion" sets up the impending alien cataclysm with a couple of unsettling mysteries. We see crop circles and disappearances in Oklahoma, and we witness a room full of school children start bleeding profusely from their noses for unexplainable reasons. "The Strain" (an FX series created by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro) kicks off its apocalyptic plot with an equally creepy occurrence: an airplane lands in New York, but everyone on board is dead.

Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) is a CDC scientist who's brought in to investigate the plane, and what he discovers defies comprehension. The passengers were all killed by a virus that seemingly turns people into vampires. Soon, Dr. Goodweather and his team are fighting a vampiric outbreak in New York and struggling to find a way to stop the virus and save the entire planet from being overrun with the undead. Like "Invasion," "The Strain" begins showing us the on-the-ground experience of people encountering this mystical catastrophe, and the scope of the vampiric invasion only grows as the show's plot thickens. With four pulse-pounding seasons, "The Strain" is sure to keep you entertained after you've finished marathoning the latest season of "Invasion."

By now you've probably realized that TV writers have found a lot of different ways to end the world, but no matter how many times we see the apocalypse, good writers can still make it interesting. "12 Monkeys" was a Syfy network series that ran for four seasons starting in 2015, and it's actually a retelling of a 1995 movie of the same name directed by Terry Gilliam. If you're a fan of "Invasion," you're bound to love it.

The show roughly adapts the plot of the original movie, which centers on an evil organization called the Army of the 12 Monkeys. In 2017, the Army released a toxic virus that killed seven billion people. In the year 2043, the last vestiges of humanity have come up with a radical idea to save the world: time travel. Scientists send a man back to 2015, but in order to stop the virus, he needs to uncover the identities of the people leading the army and the real meaning behind their evil plot. If your favorite part of "Invasion" is watching characters piece together the mystery of the aliens to save the planet, then you'll easily be hooked by the split timeline mysteries in "12 Monkeys."

The first season of "Invasion" clearly takes some inspiration from slow burn mystery shows like "Lost." When the second season picks up the pace and has humanity more actively focusing on resisting the alien invaders, the show starts to feel more reminiscent of a different TV series: "Falling Skies." This five-season show debuted on TNT in 2011, and it wasted no time getting right into the heart of a war between humanity and extraterrestrial invaders.

The story of "Falling Skies" kicks off six months after the start of an alien invasion that humanity was utterly unprepared to handle. The vast majority of humans were killed off in the initial attack, and now giant alien drones patrol the world. The show follows some survivors of the initial attack as they regroup, gather resources, and begin fighting as a militarized resistance against the Earth's new alien masters. Like "Invasion," the show has some mystery elements and the true intentions of the aliens is something that the characters have to piece together for multiple seasons. There's enough alien intrigue to keep super sleuths invested throughout the series, but on the whole, "Falling Skies" is much more interested in giving us action and spectacle than a mystery to solve.

"The War of the Worlds" is arguably the most iconic alien invasion story of all time. Written by H.G. Wells and first published in a novel format in 1898, the story has been adapted countless times with varying degrees of success. The 2005 movie starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning did pretty well with critics, but the 2025 adaptation starring Ice Cube and Eva Longoria might be one of the worst sci-fi remakes of all time. In between those two films, the classic tale was adapted for television, and the show is definitely worth watching if you're an "Invasion" fan.

Debuting in 2019, the series tells its story over the course of three eight-episode seasons, following multiple characters living in Britain and France as they deal with the fallout of an alien invasion. Like some of the other suggestions on this list, "War of the Worlds" is a series that cuts straight to the chase. In the opening episode, humanity realizes that an alien species is heading its way, and the planet is utterly devastated when they arrive. Most of the world is destroyed, and we follow the few humans surviving in the wreckage of civilization, slowly formulating a plan to retake the planet for themselves. "War of the Worlds" is a pure distillation of the alien invasion subgenre, and if "Invasion" left you wanting more, then this series is a perfect solution.

"Silo" is another series from Apple that has some striking similarities to "Invasion." Both shows follow multiple characters at once, and both are willing to put the overarching plot on the backburner to invest in the smaller stories the characters are experiencing. That tendency creates plenty of tension in both shows, and, much like "Invasion," "Silo" presents audiences with a pretty intriguing mystery at the outset.

Based on a series of novels from author Hugh Howey, "Silo" follows the lives of a group of people living in a massive underground bunker. The Silo that these people call home is over 140 levels deep, and it protects them from an outside world that's infected with a deadly virus — or so they think. Discovering the truth of what's outside the Silo and why the people managing this underground society are so secretive is one of the driving forces of the show. Don't expect to get quick answers, though: "Silo" ultimately becomes as much about the ongoing political struggles within the Silo as it is about the mystery of what's really happening outside. This binge-worthy dystopian TV show is a great choice for fans of gritty sci-fi worlds and dark mystery plots.

Some fans of "Invasion" couldn't care less about the aliens. They're invested in the human drama playing out in the show, and what keeps them hooked is seeing regular people dealing with the aftermath of a global catastrophe. For those viewers, HBO's "The Leftovers," based on the Tom Perrotta novel of the same name, could easily become their next favorite series. The show has a very simple, sci-fi adjacent premise. One day, in what later becomes known as the Sudden Departure, 2% of Earth's population simply disappears.

"The Leftovers" isn't particularly interested in what caused the Sudden Departure. Plenty of the characters wonder about the mystery, but the show itself never really investigates it and provides next to no answers. Instead, the series digs into the lives of the people left on Earth and traces how the disaster completely changes the dynamics of religions, countries, and even familial relationships. The show doesn't shy away from the deeply painful emotions that many of its characters are experiencing, and that emotional depth is its real strength. "The Leftovers" has been praised as one of the best TV shows ever made, which makes it easy to recommend to fans of "Invasion."