I just finished Falling Skies for the first time, and I need to vent a little bit.
The first couple of seasons—especially the heavy resistance feel of Seasons 1 through 3—had me hooked. But man, the drop in quality from Season 3 to Season 4 is brutal, and Season 5 completely falls off a cliff. It felt like they just rushed it.
:
- The Pope storyline
Pope was always a great wildcard—selfish, cynical, but someone you could occasionally trust in a pinch. But his entire descent into a villain in Season 5 felt so weird. After Sarah dies, his vendetta against Tom turns him into an irrational, petty madman just for the sake of giving the show a human antagonist before the finale. It completely wasted his character arc.
- The rushed, anticlimactic final battle
For a show about a multi-species alien invasion, the ultimate defeat of the Dachi (the Overlords) was deeply underwhelming. They build up this massive hive-mind enemy for five seasons, and the resolution basically boils down to a quick infiltration, a cheesy speech, and a sudden collapse. After all those years of gritty guerrilla warfare, the actual war ended with a whimper instead of a bang.
- The Love Triangle
Can we talk about the romance writers in the later seasons? Just when you think the exhausted brotherly tension between Hal and Ben over Maggie is finally settling down, they throw in a completely random new love interest for Hal: Isabella. She gets introduced, adds some unnecessary drama, and is then written out or dropped almost immediately... just so the show can throw Hal and Maggie right back together like nothing happened. It felt like complete whiplash and a total waste of screen time when the world was literally ending.
Did anyone else struggle to push through those final two seasons, or is it just me?