The first season consists of eight episodes and premiered in France in October 2019. An eight-episode second season premiered in France in May 2021. War of the Worlds was renewed for a third eight-episode season in July 2021, which aired in September 2022.
Premise
The series takes place in contemporary Britain and France, but it serves as a re-imagining of the classic H. G. Wells novel.[1]
In this new take on War of the Worlds, when astronomers detect a transmission from another star, it is definitive proof of intelligent extra-terrestrial life. Earth's population waits for further contact with bated breath, but does not have to wait long. Within days, mankind is all but wiped out, with just pockets of humanity left in an eerily deserted world. As alien ships appear in the sky, the survivors ask a burning question — who are these attackers and why are they hell-bent on our destruction?
Astronomer Catherine Durand investigates a strong signal from exoplanet Ross 128 b which is of intelligent origin. Soon afterwards a large group of meteors hits the centers of all major inhabited areas of Earth. They are indeed metallic spacecraft. Blind teenager Emily can hear strange pulsing sounds, while scientist Bill recognizes the magnetic signal in the pulses (received by equipment from his brain research). He tries to warn his son Dan and goes to find his ex-wife Helen. The magnetic signal increases and quickly kills all humans who are not underground, underwater or in metallic rooms. In London, Sarah Gresham, with her children, Tom and Emily, fortunately drive into an underground parade, while her husband Jonathan is in Paris, where his taxi plunges into the Seine at an opportune moment. Kariem enters England illegally, hiding inside a metal storage cylinder and emerges to find himself alone in a strange environment. Catherine's sister Sophia tries to reach her at the observatory.
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2
Episode 2
Gilles Coulier
Howard Overman
October 28, 2019 (2019-10-28)
In London, Paris and the French Alps, the survivors try to reach their loved ones, walking among the dead and wondering about the motives of the invaders. Helen and Sarah find it hard to grasp this new reality. Tom and Emily struggle to understand their mother's behaviour, especially when she refuses to let them help Kariem, who has been injured in an attack by a shop keeper. Jonathan decides to make his way alone back to England. Neuroscientist Bill finds the alien methods mystifying. Kariem makes some bad decisions based on fear. Catherine despairs in the search for her sister Sophia. In a Grenoble supermarket, Catherine, Colonel Mokrani and a group of French soldiers have a first encounter with lethal, alien quadrupedal bots.
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3
Episode 3
Gilles Coulier
Howard Overman
November 4, 2019 (2019-11-04)
Helen and Bill arrive too late to find Dan at the command center but learn he escaped when a quadruped bot killed most of the personnel. They manage to incapacitate a quadruped and discover that it is a cyborg, with a biological interior. Sarah and her children meet an orderly outside a hospital, Ash. They find Kariem recuperating inside and Ash orders them to get over their previous meeting. Once again, only Emily hears the alien pulses, which temporarily restores her sight. Catherine is in shock when the alien pulses – which she hears on equipment – suddenly play the song that she and her colleagues had once broadcast into space, confirming this song attracted the alien attackers to Earth. Jonathan meets Chloe, who warns him of the quadrupeds; they head north together – bound for London and Amiens, respectively. After Bill finds Dan's body outside, Helen grieves, then asks Bill to find a way to kill the quadrupeds. A pack of quadrupeds approach the hospital and are positioned to enter.
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4
Episode 4
Gilles Coulier
Howard Overman
November 4, 2019 (2019-11-04)
Catherine finds the source of the sounds and Colonel Mokrani and his team go out to investigate. Sarah and her children have a close encounter with a quadruped. Sacha finds a meteor site and hears the noises Emily hears in London. Helen and Bill are determined to find a way to destroy all the quadruped cyborgs. Kariem and Emily bond. Arriving at her childhood home with Jonathan, Chloe finds Sacha and her policeman brother, Noah. Ash and Kariem return to the hospital and are startled to find that the quadruped bots have taken the nursery babies, after killing the other people there.
Helen and Bill meet up with, and join, the Greshams' quintet of survivors. They try to find a way to cope with their situation. Bill finds a student in Tom. Emily feels a strange connection with the alien invaders. Sacha overhears Chloe berating Noah for raping her when she was 15, resulting in Sacha. Emily and Kariem have sex. Further confirmation of what the quadruped cyborgs may be after is revealed when one kills a pregnant woman by removing the fetus. Jonathan is baffled by Sacha's behaviour, seeing him leave his "uncle" Noah to be killed. Catherine, Colonel Mokrani and his team discover a destroyed alien ship, containing some organic material ("is that what they look like?"), where some malfunctioning quadrupeds are harmlessly wandering through the wreckage.
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Episode 6
Richard Clark
Howard Overman
November 11, 2019 (2019-11-11)
Emily's sight recovers as she hears the noise, then she calmly stares at a quadruped cyborg until it turns and walks away. Bill is intrigued by her connection to the cyborgs, others question it. Sacha discovers he has a connection to the cyborgs too – which cause him to briefly see a girl (Emily) he does not know. Jonathan, joined by Chloe and Sacha on the journey to the Channel and England, finds Sacha's behaviour very hard to understand, including Sacha's sudden interest in Emily, when he sees Jonathan's family photo. In London, the group of survivors make their way to the university lab where Bill and Tom try to gain information on the quadrupeds. They find the aliens know more about humans than they imagined possible. Emily clashes with her mother. Helen and Sarah take a gamble and end up in a precarious situation. Tom's birthday needs celebrating and everybody reconciles. Catherine and Mokrani's team return to the observatory, where they are surprised to find Sophia but none of the other soldiers.
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Episode 7
Richard Clark
Howard Overman
November 18, 2019 (2019-11-18)
Sophia managed to survive when she hid inside a mountain service tunnel before the deadly alien signal was transmitted. She then found a young English boy, Theo, who she takes responsibility for. They spend some time with other survivors, before walking to Catherine's mountaintop observatory. Bill tries to get information from Emily but she is sympathetic to the aliens, rationalizing that humans killing in war is similar to the aliens killing humans. Chloe discovers that Sacha stole Jonathan's picture, convincing her that he is twisted enough to have facilitated Noah's death. Sacha attacks Jonathan, then runs into the forest. Emily has two more friendly encounters with a quadruped cyborg, not telling anyone about the first instance, then Helen is killed by the cyborg in the second instance. At the start of Emily's second encounter, Sacha has a friendly cyborg encounter in France; both teenagers have visions of each other at the same moment. Sophia, who has had no choice but to kick her addictions, convinces Catherine that the world may end, so she should have no choice but to act on her feelings for Colonel Mokrani. Catherine develops a theory that the high-frequency alien noise connects all the cyborgs, similar to birds having innate connections. She wonders if her low frequency science array caused the nearby alien crash.
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Episode 8
Richard Clark
Howard Overman
November 18, 2019 (2019-11-18)
Catherine, Sophia and Mokrani's troops move down the mountain to the ski resort to look for the other survivors. Along the way, they discover that the missing troops at the observatory have been killed by the cyborgs. Ash further doubts Emily's motives and confronts her mother, while Bill wrestles with his new reality. Jonathan learns the truth about Sacha's father from Chloe. Emily encounters another cyborg and Sacha does too at the same moment. They both experience an intimate vision together. Emily believes she must meet up and communicate with the aliens. Kariem allows her to go, but only on the condition that he goes with her. Sacha decides to follow Jonathan and Chloe to England, secretly hoping to meet his daughter, Emily. The cyborgs launch an attack at the ski resort and Sophia is hit. Catherine puts her frequency jamming theory to the test. Emily enters a massive cylindrical-shaped alien ship located on the river Thames. Inside, she finds the newborn babies and an alien that looks very human in form.
The Alien shows Emily a vision of a woman on a destroyed and polluted planet, and the alien ship takes off. Six months later more people have arrived at the university and have formed a resistance. Bill is working on a bioweapon based on dead humanoid aliens. Outside Grenoble, Micah is pursued and shot by a group of people but makes it to the Observatory, where he is revealed to be a humanoid alien. Micah is looking for Bill as 'the cause of their suffering'. Jonathan, Chloe and Sascha make it back to London and find a Resistance group in Vauxhall. Three resistance groups make assaults on alien ships that have landed since the attack, and find them deserted - apart from a returned Emily. On leaving they are all ambushed by more humanoid aliens bearing Emily's tattoo. Emily can only remember flashes of memories of her time on the ship, of the same woman she saw in her original vision who asks her to kill Bill.
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2
Episode 10
Richard Clark
Howard Overman
May 17, 2021 (2021-05-17)
Catherine gives the antibiotic to Micah, against orders – he awakens and explains the formulas in the notebooks are the key to moving objects through space and time. Aliens track Micah to the observatory and infiltrate. In the fighting, Theo and Col. Makrani are killed, and his own brother murders Micah. Bill Ward is developing a bioweapon that blocks insulin production with fatal results, and after taking hair samples, discovers that Emily's DNA is almost identical to that of the aliens. Jonathan, Chloe, and Sacha meet up with survivors in London, and Jonathan is reunited with his family, but ultimately chooses to be with Chloe. Sacha and Emily recognize each other from the visions. Later Emily tries to stab Bill in his sleep but is pulled off by Kariem. Bill chooses to try out the bioweapon on Emily. Catherine and Sophia escaped the observatory with Nathan, trying to find Bill Ward's identity.
Series 3 is a departure from the second. It begins with hallucinations, or memories, experienced by some of the key characters. But we are now in an alternative timeline, possibly in the past from the 'War of the Worlds' scenario, where London is functioning city, with internet, hospitals, coffee shops, phones, all of which feature in the plot. Above Earth hovers a black hole on the edge of the exosphere, presumably responsible for parallel realities. An astronaut crew observes it from the International Space Station. Catherine addresses a group of scientists in the French Alps, telling them that its presence and the visions experienced by people all over Earth confirms that "many worlds and multiple dimensions" exist, in quantum realities. In the reality of this episode, the genetically challenged aliens led by Adina also exist (or have been sent from the future?), and retrieve the book of calculations mentioned above in a violent attack on a London police station, with only Adina making it out. Zoe, who arrived in series 2, works for M15, and investigates this attack. The police are unaware of the timeline in series 1 and 2, but begin to piece things together, including the alien's tattoos. Bill Ward the scientist is in jail for the death of Emily Gresham, and tries unsuccessfully to reconnect with his son, Dan by phone. Zoe investigates support groups for people experiencing hallucinations, and meets Kariem who remembers her from their parallel events, and they talk. Meanwhile Catherine in the French Alps visits her daughter Sophia, who is in an institution because she is strongly affected by memories of the deathly scenarios in series 1 and 2, and struggling mentally. Zoe finally visits Bill Ward in prison in London. He comes clean, explaining that Emily and Sasha (series 2) were abducted in a spaceship and were the originators of the aliens who later became humanity's attackers. That is why he killed Emily, travelling back in time to do so (pursued by Adina and others across time), to stop that timeline. Zoe believes some of this, as Bill explains the aliens still believe their suffering is caused by humanity and Adina's party still want to wipe them out at all costs. They are also seeking DNA from Emily's younger brother, for as-yet unknown reasons.
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2
Episode 18
Indra Siera
Howard Overman
September 5, 2022 (2022-09-05)
19
3
Episode 19
Indra Siera
Howard Overman
September 12, 2022 (2022-09-12)
20
4
Episode 20
Indra Siera
Howard Overman
September 12, 2022 (2022-09-12)
21
5
Episode 21
Indra Siera
Howard Overman
September 19, 2022 (2022-09-19)
22
6
Episode 22
Jonas Alexander Arnby
Howard Overman
September 19, 2022 (2022-09-19)
23
7
Episode 23
Jonas Alexander Arnby
Howard Overman
September 26, 2022 (2022-09-26)
24
8
Episode 24
Jonas Alexander Arnby
Howard Overman
September 26, 2022 (2022-09-26)
Production
Development
War of the Worlds is produced by Fox Networks Group and StudioCanal.[4][5] AGC Television co-finances and co-distributes the series.[1] The series is executive produced by Overman, Julian Murphy and Johnny Capps.[6]Gilles Coulier and Richard Clark each directed four episodes of the first season, with Coulier directing the first four episode and Clark directing the last four.[7] The series was written by Howard Overman.[7]
By October 2019, the creative team had begun work on a second season.[8] Richard Clark returned to direct the first four episodes, with Ben A. Williams directing the final four.[9] In July 2021, War of the Worlds was renewed for a third season, which aired in 2022.[10] Season 3 is directed by Indra Siera and Jonas Alexander Arnby.[11]
Production for the first season took place in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium.[1][12] The series was filmed in Bristol in March 2019,[13] as well as filming in Cardiff, Newport and London.[12][14]
The second season began filming on July 13, 2020,[15] with filming concluding on October 22, 2020.[16]
The song “Into My Arms” by Nick Cave is prominently used In the series.
Release
The first series was released in full on MyCanal in France on October 28, 2019,[1][17] before being broadcast from the same day in weekly batches of two episodes[18][19] and was released in most parts of Europe and Africa weekly between October 30 and December 18, 2019.[20][21] The series premiered in the United States on February 16, 2020, on Epix;[22] in the UK on March 5, 2020;[23] and in Canada on October 7, 2020, on CBC Television.[24][25]Canal+ and Fox Networks Group have the rights to release the series in Europe and Africa. AGC Television distributes the series to the North American market and co-distributes, with StudioCanal, to Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. Fox Networks Group releases the series in Europe.[1][5] The series broadcasts on Fox in more than 50 countries and on Epix in the United States and territories.[7]
The eight-episode second season was released in full on May 17, 2021 in France on MyCanal, before being broadcast from the same day in weekly batches of two episodes, mirroring the release of the first season.[26] The season premiered May 24, 2021 on Fox in South Africa;[9] in the United States on Epix on June 6, 2021;[27] and on October 6, 2021, in Canada on CBC Gem.[28]
The eight-episode third season began broadcast from September 5, 2022, in weekly batches of two episodes.[29] The season premiered in the United States on Epix on September 12, 2022.[30]
Reception
Ben Dowell in The Times gave the first series four out of five stars.[31]The AV Club dubbed it "compelling if derivative".[32] NY Times describes it as a "smart, atmospheric genre series".[33]
^"La guerre des mondes saison 1" [The War of the Worlds Season 1]. L'Obs (in French). Archived from the original on October 30, 2019. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
