'War of the Worlds' Episode 3: Aliens shoot all humans in sight including kids, cementing their ruthlessness
The article contains spoilers for 'War of the Worlds' Season 1 Episode 3
When it comes to showing merciless alien invaders, 'War of the Worlds' is possibly the best in the genre. The show's gripping narrative has plenty of horrors to offer anyway, but Episode 3 really ups the ante in terms of onscreen violence.
Right from the very first episode of the show, we knew that these aliens aren't here for conquest, they want to kill every single human being. This isn't so much a 'War of the Worlds' as it is an 'Extermination of the World' and Episode 3 underscores that fact with scenes of graphic violence.
In the episode, we see the invaders gunning down everyone they come across, children included. It's the sort of brutality that shows generally shy away from but 'War of the Worlds' boldly goes forward with it and the thing is, it sort of makes sense.
The first thing the aliens did as soon as they landed on Earth was sending out a blast of electromagnetic waves that fried the brains of most living things on the planet. Clearly, they don't have any mercy and if they were considerate about the ages of their victims, that would have been far too unrealistic.
Seeing children shot down might be hard to stomach for the average viewer and it should be. The point of all this violence isn't to excite people who are watching, it's meant to cement the idea that these invaders are inhuman in every sense of the word and if nothing else, that is one fact the episode definitely managed to sear into our brains.
We still don't know why the aliens are on Earth or what their actual agenda is. But after this episode, we know not to expect anything except death and cruelty from them.
'War of the Worlds' airs on Sundays at 9 pm ET on EPIX.