WMG / Falling Skies

NOTE: Please put WMG's in the appropriate part of the season, this permits people watching the series on DVD (when it is released that way) to read a few WMG's as they go rather than having to wait until they are entirely caught up first.

Season one, first half

The Skitters are a former slave race that broke out of bondage and appropriated most of their previous masters' technology to become the force they are today.

Why do the Skitters have bipedal mechs? Well, maybe they once were the conquered instead of the conqueror, but they overthrew their masters and stole most of their technology. The Mechs are bipedal because their masters were bipedal, and the harnesses were originally mind-control devices kept to keep the Skitters in line.

• Jossed- the Skitters have harnesses inside their skulls, they're still a slave/subservient race, possibly to the Slenders.

The harnessed children are being used to create mechs.

That's why the mechs are bipedal: they're build around children, who are the control centres. The scrap metal is being collected so that it can be used in the construction of more mechs. The harnesses have some kind of telepathic connection to the skitters, so that the skitters can control the mechs.

• The aliens in charge of the Skitters are bipedal, though, and the Skitters are themselves slaves. It's likely that the mechs were built based around the Slender frames or some other conquered race. Still, this is possible.

Mechs are operated by aliens, but not skitters.

A different alien species conquered the skitters, who are now being used as cannon fodder on Earth.

The aiming problems with mechs are glossed over/ignored by their already-busy R&D by just adding more laser sights

There are several laser sights for one gun on a mech, and they still have trouble hitting moving targets.

Distracted Engineer Skitter: Oh, we'll just put another laser sight on it, maybe that will work this time.

Skitters are incapable of having offspring

That is why their forces on Earth are limited and one of the reasons why they take children. When Hal pretended to be harnessed, the skitter he followed started petting his head before falling asleep, a somewhat parental action.

Collecting scrap metal is practice for shooting humans

From a logical point of view, if you have a mind control device, then you've still got the hardest part to do: Creating the mind control program. The skitters (or their alien overlords) might still be experimenting to see how much they can get away with. Collecting scrap metal is a good field test, as it requires some rather sophisticated behaviors.Independent navigation.Differentiating scrap metal from non scrap metal.Understanding how to dismantle it.Taking it to a central point, in one case as part of a relay.Many of these behaviors (especially hunting, and target profiling) are vital steps towards an autonomous fire control system. EG: What you need to run a hunter/killer 'terminator'.

Obligitory reference to Time Lords, Haruhi, Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, etc, etc, etc.

• Now can we please move on?

The Mechs are a conquered slave race.

Assuming that the Mechs aren't really us being turned into mechs, the whole "Bipedal Locomotion" thing doesn't quite jive with the fact that Skitters have lots of legs. Perhaps they were another race that encountered the Skitters long ago, and were conquered and enslaved?

Neither the Mechs nor the Skitters are conquerors.

Related to two of the above. The Skitters and Mechs are both enslaved by and subordinate to a higher caste of entirely different aliens like the members of The Combine are to the Advisers.

• Confirmed- there is a third race, of an unknown name, that appears to control both.

Tom Mason will defeat the aliens through meticulous analysis of history

As a historian, it makes perfect sense for him to use his unique talents to save the world in a fashion that only Tom Mason could do. Not only would this create a nice poetic theme (that I am too lazy to go into depth) about the importance of history, but this show wouldn't be Spielberg's masterpiece if it didn't didn't call back to Pinky and the Brain.

Season one, second half

The harnesses turn people into Skitters, and Earth is a Skitter farm.

Bear with me for a moment, as this idea is rather convoluted.The Skitters were at one point just your average race of colonial aliens, but something or other caused a rather perpetual war with another race. Feeling desperate, they devised a plan. Because cloning themselves is expensive and inefficient, they made a way to turn other races into them, the harnesses. The harnesses slowly and steadily alter DNA and body structure until whatever they're altering becomes a rather rough facsimile of a Skitter. The skitters found Earth and decided it was the perfect breeding ground for their little project. Every time the Human population gets to high, or the Skitter population gets too low, they come and harvest the fruits of the Earth, kill off civilization, and reintroduce life to the planet. They do their best to keep their images from showing up in mythology and history, but occasionally something gets through, and never enough to give Humanity cause to prepare.

• This looks to be confirmed, after the "What Hides Beneath", when they did an autopsy of a Skitter and found a harness inside it.
  • Wow, a theory of mine actually possible? I may as well expand on it a little. The tall aliens are at war with something or other, the skitters are their ground troops, something ELSE pilots their aircraft, and there are multiple varieties of harnesses for making various kinds of slaves.
• The final episode of the first season showed Rick wall-crawling like the skitters do, and the girl at the end said that the harnesses were just part of a process. There was also another girl who talked to Rick who showed much more of the transformation process, part of which seems to involve growing an exoskeleton.
  • Alternately, the Skitters are a transformed version of a benign race of many-legged aliens, which the Slenders conquered and equipped with harnesses and exoskeletons to use as cannon fodder in their invasions of other worlds. In future seasons, we might see some of the un-transformed versions fighting back against the Slenders and their slaves, just like the humans are doing.

The harnesses turn people into Skitter-human hybrids, and Earth is a Skitter colonization project.

Mike's son Rick talks like he's an alien now, no longer a human, and the promo for next week seemed to show some sort of new hybrid alien.

• The final episode of season one confirmed that Harnesses are part of a process, and that removing them does not stop the process.

The Skitters are dying, and are taking the children to preserve their race.

This is related to the above theory: something (be it a bioweapon or a virus, or something like that) has left the Skitters all sterile, and they're taking the children to replenish their species. The way this works it that the harnesses change the children into Skitters — it was stated in "Grace" that the harnesses grow into their hosts, and Ricky and Ben's were in them long enough for their spikes to stay permanent. If the harnesses stay in long enough, they begin to change the biology and mentality of their hosts to match that of the Skitters. But they also don't work on adults for some reason, which is why only children are taken.

• Presumably, they work best on younger children, as they aren't fully developed. Because they are still growing, it is easier to change how they grow in order to make them into skitters. Babies would logically work the best, and teenagers the worst. (Excluding adults, as they aren't in a state of proper growth by then.)

The new, tall aliens are actually the end result of harnessing humans.

The skitters are the end result of their own race's harnessing.

The harnesses are the true masters here.

The harnesses are Puppeteer Parasites that are really running things.

Falling Skies is set in the same universe as Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The tall aliens look like the tall aliens from the movie. After the aliens had the peaceful meeting in Wyoming in the 1970's, they backed off and planned their invasion. (And Steven Spielberg is involved with both works, too!)

• So all we're missing is a child looking at the mechs and saying, "Toys!"
• The five planes returned at the beginning of CE3K had been missing since 1945, and they were returned 30 years later in the 1970's. The events of Falling Skies happen 30 years after the 1970's. Looks like that's the travel time to their homeworld.
• The people who were returned at the end of the movie weren't the actual abducted people - they were clones made after they were examined and dissected.
  • The clones acted like normal humans, living among us but transmitted information on new bases and technologies when the aliens returned so they knew right where to strike.
• When the aliens came back to earth the US government welcomed them politely and the aliens struck while their guard was down.
• It could be the race that invaded earth in Falling Skies are not the main, peaceful alien but a splinter group who learned of earth after intercepting intelligence or reading the news of the discovery of another habitable world.

The aliens hate dying.

The aliens show an unwillingness to fight the humans in situations where they might not take the humans by storm. They nuke Boston when Reed uses a couple A T4s and it is implied they nuke any gatherings of humans they deem to be too large. When they engage, they send only a few mechs to fight, thus saving themselves from any real harm.

Rick, when he was still under the affects of the harness, spoke about humans killing each other with disdain, insistent that the aliens would not do such to each other.

The captured skitter goes berzerk when he sees the body of his comrade.

They expected for the rest of humanity to give in and be cowed by the initial assault, because they would have been. That's why they find the resistance to be "interesting" and want to negotiate despite still having an overwhelming advantage.

The new armor piercing rounds might even inspire the skitters to stop fighting the humans outright and to just nuke every major resistance holding.

The entire show was made after Spielberg wanted to turn the Transformers Film Series into a live action TV show

Aliens invade, they want slaves, they kill a bunch of them to establish who they are, they ocupy large cities, they're willing to make deals with humans, and they keep gunships flying about. In the third transformers film, the Decepticons invade, their goal is slavelabour, they kill a bunch to establish who they are, they take over a large city, they make deals with a human and his father, and they have gun ships flying about. Basically what I'm saying is, Spielberg read the skript for DOCT, thought 'hey, this would make a cool show'. He decided to reuse ideas, but for obvious, lawyer related reasons, couldn't use robots. So he got some ideas rolling about radio wave using bug people and tall skinny dudes.

The Harnesses are cyborg implants designed to create super beings for slavery

The Slimmers go to planets with large populations, and start harnessing them. They started with some bug people, and then use them to enslave humans. The harnesses improve the body while also turning them into wall crawling exoscekital lizard people. That's what we know, what we don't know, is the specifics. I'm thinking that, the harness uses its implant parts to inject into the body a series of chemicals to alter the DNA, cells, and anatomy. They cause scales to grow, forming an exoskeliton around the body and the harness that will leave them impossible to remove. They also grant wall crawling abilities, increase their brain's capabilities, and their physical atributes. They then by hijacking the nervesystem, they create a radio transmitter inside the victims body that is conected to their thought process. After a ehile, the Harnessed indavidual starts to crave the experience of the harness, and as such become fiercly loyal to the Slimmers, even after they're no longer being controlled or even Harnessed. The skitters were a race of bug people who lived peacfully, just like humans, until they were taken over and harnessed. Then, to Kick the Dog, they make the Skitters do the exact same thing to another race: Us. This is why the Skitters act so caring for the children, now that they've been taken over, whatever was left of their consciousness causes them to care for the human slave children. The Harnessed children won't turn into Skitters, but they will grow exoskelitons and wall crawling, and even possibly biological radio transmitters.

They could make a radio jammer sugested by someone on a different page with a downed Mech.

If they can take down more mechs without doing too much damage, they can have a look over the mech. Once they do, they could find its radio transmitter that controls it, and use this to make a jamming frequency to take out their comunications with each other, effectivly crippling their forces. Then its only a matter of time before the invaders colapse.

Season two will start off with Tom Mason being found and remembering nothing of his time with the slenders.

He'll learn/figure out more as time goes on. They're not going to give us a Plot Dump right off the bat. We know better.

• I was wrong! And I'm pretty happy about it, too.

Season two, first half

Red Eye is the leader of a rebel group within the Skitters.

Word of God has stated that the Skitter they've nicknamed Red Eye is going to reveal a side to the Skitters that we didn't know about, and will also communicate with Ben and show that things aren't as black and white as they appeared. And since we know that the Skitters were also harnessed by the Overlords, it stands to reason that some are willing to rebel against them.

• This makes sense to me. I don't know how you are going to make attempted genocide and mass enslavement less black and white otherwise.
• As of "Love and Other Acts of Courage", Red Eye is trying to sell himself as such to the 2nd Mass. But there's uncertainty, both to the characters and the audience, as to whether or not he's legitimate or trying to pull off a complex gambit, so it's not official yet.
  • Given the Mech-vs-Mech carnage at the beginning of this episode, either there is a legitimate rebel faction or the Skitters are putting on a pretty significant False Flag Operation. Possibly both, since even if the rebel faction exists, there's no guarantee Red Eye is actually part of it.

Red Eye is Ricky

He's gone all Skitter. Explains a possible familiarity with Ben, too.

• Ricky's face was shown in a preview, so this can't be right.
• Officially Jossed as of "Love and Other Acts of Courage", which had Red Eye communicating through a still mostly human Ricky.

Avery Churchill, the pilot, is working for the Skitters.

She averts detection by flying low... in a bright red plane. Right.

• I actually thought that was a shout out to World War, in which there is a female Soviet fighter pilot who the aliens have trouble dealing with for the same reason. That being, plane made of radar invisible materials.

• From the second she touched down, this troper's bullshit alarm was blaring.
• Maybe her plane is powered by a skitter power plant - that's why she said not to look at her plane and that it's boobytrapped.

Charleston is the neutral zone.

How else would a city be able to have electricity and running water and the like without drawing retaliation? They might not even know they're the neutral zone, and the Overlords are allowing them to send messengers because they want as many humans as possible to go there before it's fenced off or destroyed outright.

• Alternately, the "New Continental Congress", or some of its members do know, and are following Clayton's example in making deals with the aliens. Judging by the commercials, Terry O'Quinn plays a member of the new government, and that seems like the type of role he'd be good at.

The planet Earth is going to be destroyed.

Yeah, Tom, the Skitters are just going to get up and leave humanity to hold a grudge. Once they realize Earth is more trouble than it's worth, it won't even be hard for them to play it safe and reduce Earth to a ball of molten rock.

• I've said much the same on the Headscratchers page. (High five for great minds and all) Here's hoping the third race is in a space cold war and the other side of said war is willing to stick up for us earthlings.

Jean is pregnant.

The reason Jean decided to stay with Diego instead of going with her dad was because she's pregnant with Diego's child.

Humans and the Overloads are related.

The writers will take a page from the alien conspiracy books and reveal that humans were genetically engineered by the same race that created the Overloads. Why else would aliens who evolve millions of light-years away just happen to walk up right, use two legs, and bear an uncanny resemblance to humans? And just like humans, Overlords ruined their world's ecology and are now plundering other planets, enslaving natives to mine for more resources.

Pope will work for the Skitters

His brother is dead, his berserkers have deserted him, the 2nd Mass wants him gone and the only guy who follows him is black [who he clearly hates]. He's sick of humanity. The Skitters approach him, sympathize with him, convince him that they are not so different. They tell him to rejoin the 2nd Mass and find more information about Charleston. They'll probably order him to kill Red Eye, which he will most happily oblige. In return, they'll grant him immunity and he gets to Hunt the Most Dangerous Prey. Of course, the only human he really wants to kill is Tom. Wouldn't be surprised if he double crosses them, because Anthony has become a close friend and Morality Pet. Even Evil Has Standards.

Season two, second half

Speculation on Karen's return and the fallout that ensues.

With (per the latest previews) Karen's imminent return, and the major development of Hal/Maggie in "Love and Other Acts of Courage", it seems we're headed for a love triangle of some kind. Or are we? Maggie seemed pretty upset with Karen in the latest trailer, but is that jealousy or simple suspicion? Also, previous trailers seem to imply Ben/Karen.

Tom's wife is in Charleston.

If Weaver's daughter can come out of the blue and Karen can return from Harness Hell, then there's no telling which presumably dead chars can pop up. My bet: Tom's wife is in Charleston and is possibly shacking up with someone new. Awkwardness abounds when she and Tom reunite.

• Doubtful. Yeah, we never saw her body, but Tom's backstory says he did. That said, it wouldn't at all be surprising for Jeanne and her group to make their own way to Charleston.
  • Jossed in season 3, when Ben talks about Tom finding his wife's body at the very beginning of the invasion.

The Overlords are on their own.

They had a fleet helping out at the beginning of the invasion, but now that the Earth is subjugated the extra troops/ships have gone home. This is why they aren't using as many bombs and ships anymore.

The Overlords are low on resources

They shot their wad in taking over the earth. Now they don't have as much to work with and weren't expecting resistance at this stage.

• This is why the 2nd Mass are able to cross such large distances with little hassle from ground forces.

The small spider creatures used at the hospital are indigenous to the skitter home world.

Multiple legs, skitter about, can climb walls. Maybe they were more docile and engineered by the overlords to be vicious.

The small spiders are the skitters in their infant form.

We know little to nothing of the skitters' life cycle.

• Holy Fridge Horror if that's true.
• Aren't Skitters just harnessed aliens? Don't the harnesses transform them into Skitters?
  • Actually, that's been a common fan assumption but has not been implied nor proven. Some harnessed kids take on a skitter tone to their skin, but as we saw with Karen when she came back it's not permanent. They found a harness in the Skitter they did an autopsy on in season one, but as Red Eye pointed out the Skitters are harnessed themselves and are the children of a previously subjugated alien world. So the harnesses do not transform anyone into Skitters that we've seen yet - it may still transform into something we haven't seen yet though. But for the record, as of episode 9 of season 2, harnesses do not turn kids into Skitters.

Mr. New Alien and his buddies are the police force.

The Overlords were indeed bad. The police have arrived, thanks to the 2nd Mass destroying the new weapon intended to keep them away. Now, unfortunately, Earth is stuck in the middle of a land claim dispute.

The new alien is attempt to bring in a cheaper-to-have-on-screen Rubber-Forehead Alien for the show.

New alien is human shaped (and possibly human sized, we aren't given a comparison). Skitters and Overlords require much CGI and puppeteers.

• Adding to this is word that Doug Jones is coming in to play the alien in season 3. Doug Jones has played heavily latexed characters rather often: He's been Abe Sapien, The Pale Man, and The Silver Surfer.
  • Confirmed by Doug himself on his FB page recently.

The new alien is - finally - the end result of harnessing humans.

"What is the end result of harnessing humans?" has been an ongoing question for fans.

The new alien are another faction/species of the rebellion.

The overlords realized their skitters were getting out of control and were bringing in another enslaved race to replace them, but they joined the rebellion instead.

The new alien is a member of a species who are old enemies of the Overlords.

His species' fleet was approaching Earth to fight the Overlords on a new front. The weapon that the 2nd Mass destroyed was a part of a defense grid to prevent other aliens from attacking the Overlords' new planet. After the death of the Overlord, and the destruction of the weapon; the new aliens were able to sneak through the now compromised defenses. He probably knew of the resistance, and was grateful for their assistance in the war. Also, the new alien's arrival fits in with the American Revolution theme. If the Overlords are British, and humans are American colonists, then the new alien's species would act as the French. And like the British and French, the Overlords and the new alien species hate each other and are fighting for dominance in the galaxy/universe.

The new Aliens have humanity's best interest at heart

Or so they will claim as they start to subjugate them and take control of everything. For their own good.

Earth is in a busier part of the galaxy than humans ever thought.

Skitters and Overlords and new guys.. oh, my!. It's a busy area of the galaxy and Earth has only just been noticed. Aliens have been passing by this little boring yellow sun for years and never noticed its significance until very recently.

• And this is why the series is called "Falling Skies" because everyone will be showing up soon.

Pope will be remembered as a hero of the resistance.

Years later, the events of the war against the Overlords will be heavily distorted and romanticized, and Pope will be remembered as a hero of the resistance and as a kind of secular saint.

The probe in Hal at the end of Season 2 has implanted the consciousness of the Big Bad Overlord into Hal.

Thus explaining his expression in the mirror and lack of concern for the Eye Scream.

Falling Skies is an alternate universe in the Stargate-verse

The Stargate program is responsible for bringing making the Earth known to the Overlords. John Pope is fully aware of this - he wasn't in prison, he was Major Paul Davis and he escaped the Stargate program and is living under a fake name. He continues to keep up the ruse because he knows the program is still operating at Cheyenne Mountain, trying to fix the problem.

Season three, first half

Tom Mason will defeat the aliens through meticulous analysis of history

As a historian, it makes perfect sense for him to use his unique talents to save the world in a fashion that only Tom Mason could do. Not only would this create a nice poetic theme (that I am too lazy to go into depth) about the importance of history, but this show wouldn't be Spielberg's masterpiece if it didn't didn't call back to Pinky and the Brain.

The spy who shot Arthur Manchester was Jeanne Weaver.

Look really closely at her hands in the opening sequence, and at the hands of the shooter. They're the same pair of gloves. Its either really good foreshadowing, or really unfortunate costume recycling.

• Agreed, and I didn't even notice the gloves.

• At the very least, it seems unlikely to be Hal. The second part of the plan for the attack on the reactor was not compromised, despite Hal being part of it. Additionally, one would have expected Arthur Manchester to throw out a "You can walk!" if it was Hal standing in his doorway.
  • Hal is shown to be in the maternity room having played Monopoly with his family during the shooting.

There's nothing at all sinister about the Volm.

They're exactly what they claim, exactly as benevolent as they appear and the only reason the alliance will get soured in the end is those damn terrans and their distrustful alien mindsets.

• Now that would be a twist compared to how these things usually go.
• Confirmed, to some extent. They wished to relocate humanity against their will, but it's revealed that they truly only wished to protect them.

Alternatively, Manchester's murderer is Ann, who's being somehow controlled by baby Alexis.

She has a minor, inconspicuous role throughout the first episode, and is the only one of the potential moles not present at the meeting where they plan the attack on the nuclear reactor, which is why she broke in to scan the blueprints. Alexis was somehow affected by Karen's attack on Ann during her pregnancy and is playing for the Overlords.

• At least as far as the murder is concerned, Anne has the same alibi as Hal - she was in the maternity room when Manchester was shot.

The Volm tampered with Ann to create a Star Child in Alexis.

Only Ann was taught by the Volm how to use the harness extracting machine; she explicitly states as much. And she's been using it constantly and tirelessly since about the second month of her pregnancy.

The Volm have put something else into the machine that irradiated Ann's womb, turning Alexis from an ordinary baby into a Star Child, hence the abnormally rapid development. Whether their agenda with Alexis is beneficial (another weapon against the Espheni?) or nefarious remains to be seen.

Alexis's rapid development is an unintended side-effect of the deharnessing machine

The machine definitely looks like it interfaces with the brain. Since being "more advanced" is often tied to "more evolved brain" in Sci-Fi, its likely it caused new connections to form in Ann to allow her to use it, which had the side-effect of also forging new connections in Alexis. The Volm didn't know enough about human pregnancies to account for it.

• Or the Volm do, and are trying to enhance human development without asking first.

• Alternatively (and I wrote the WMG originally) there is nothing special about Alexis, but the machine did in fact enhance Ann, and is slowly giving her psychic abilities of some sort. Alexis is just the first might she can read because they are related, and the speech we are hearing and weirdness we are seeing is just her perspective of what she is "reading".

Whatever Pope's assessment is of the Volm will be true

Other "Mole" suspects

Just to get the discussion started...

• Maggie: Has a similar build to the mole, and I could definitely see Karen wanting to mess with her. On a meta level, I'm wondering if her coldness towards killing harnessed kids and the flirting with Lars in the first two episodes is an attempt to start turning audiences against the character.
• Marina Perlata (The Vice President): Arguably the most likely person for Manchester to have a meeting scheduled with.
• Ben: The Esphani can already take control of him easily.
• Ben's "girlfriend": see above.
• Anthony: Yeah, wrong build, wrong skin tone, but it wouldn't be the first time a character was Hired to Hunt Yourself. And Manchester wouldn't be alarmed to see him.
• Karen: Yeah, this one's off the wall (and why would Manchester recognize her?) but as a human she could easily slip in and out of Charleston, as long as she didn't run into anybody from the 2nd Mass.
• Lourdes: Can't think of a reason, but she's the only major character not mentioned yet.
• Pope: Audience favorite. That would be out of nowhere.

The person who killed Manchester isn't the mole

They killed him for personal reasons and bear no ill will towards the town as a whole. This will give the crew TWO people to rout out instead of one.

Anna's baby having paranormal skills isn't The Volm's fault

..But rather, The Overlord's. Think about it, Mason spent a chunk of his time aboard a alien spaceship in between season one and two, and the Overlords have said that he is "Interesting.", who's to say they haven't tampered with Mason's DNA to create a hybrid while he was there? A half-overlord-half-human, son a respected human figure, he could easily be used to convince the humans to give themselves in for the Overlords, working as The Mole, The Quisling and as a Dark Messiah of sorts. It would fit with the (deceased) Overlord's The Chessmaster shtick.

The Season 3 finale will introduce us to the "Supreme Espheni"

...the leader of the Espheni.

Marina (Tom's Vice President) is the mole.

It's Marina who we should be throwing suspicion on - why is she doing this research on what the Volm weapon is when Tom Happens to not be around? How did she get the pictures of the weapon? Why is she uninterested in the DNA results of the other children? I think we have our mole. Tropes Are Tools: What better way to hide the mole than by having the mole be the one to misdirect the audience onto suspecting the Volm?

Season three, second half

The Volm are terraforming Earth.

The device they build is stated to be too powerful for what it supposedly does. Cochise states he is fighting to see a flower from his homeworld again. There is little hope to do so, unless they use Earth. It has been speculated before Alexis may be the result of Volm tampering and if that is true, it may be to create a human capable of living long-term on a Volm-settled Earth in a misguided thanks to humanity. Terraforming by an invading force certainly is about the only scenario the show has not pulled on us so far.

• But Cochese and the other Volm don't seem to have a problem with the environment on Earth. Why bother terraforming if it's not needed for them. Recall that Cochese said that the Volm have "strategies" for dealing with the Espheni and most likely it's to hit them as hard as possible with as much as possible so that there's no chance of resistance or a follow-up fight.

The Volm planned on eradicating the humans

There is no way they could have already cleared out Brazil for humans, with the grid having just come down. The humans would have simply been dumped en masse in the middle of the Atlantic where no one would have any hope of making it to shore. Human problem solved.

• They didn't say it was already cleared out, they could have chosen it because there was minimal Skitter presence there that would be easy to take out from the air.
• More likely that the Espheni didn't hit the jungles, or they targeted Sao Paolo and Brasilia and left the rest alone. After all, some humans did survive and given that those two cities are so large....

Season five

Tom is kissing Alien!Rebecca's elbow

The alien impersonating Rebecca makes sure it's a non-gross part of their body in the place of the mouth Tom kisses.

Enos was the Sheriff of a town in Maine....

Falling Skies is an alternate Universe to Under the Dome. Enos says he's from Maine, so he's obviously Duke Perkins where the dome never came down - instead the Espheni invaded!