This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Alien: Earth, “Neverland” and “Mr. October.”
Like the xenomorph itself, Alien: Earth has (chest) burst onto FX and Hulu with the first two episodes of the highly anticipated prequel series. True to form for show creator Noah Hawley, who has previously bent minds with Legion and Fargo, his latest adaptation/extension is full of some wild swings and lingering questions that burn more intensely than alien blood.
In the dual premiere episodes, we start with the Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani research ship carting back an array of dangerous “specimens” from throughout the galaxy. Among them are several xenomorph eggs, so you know how this goes. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) from another franchise, it’s all ohh, ahh, then later there’s the running and screaming.
Things get worse, though, as the Maginot loses control and crashes into New Siam, a city controlled by Prodigy, one of the five corporations that owns and runs Earth. Besides the carnage of the crash, the specimens are loose. Enter a search-and-rescue group run by Prodigy, including Joe (Alex Lawther), aka Hermit, and you have the regular ingredients for an Alien adventure, this time on Earth…where everybody can hear you scream.
But that’s far from the only thing going on in Alien: Earth, and in fact, it’s just a backdrop for the bigger idea. Prodigy’s huge leap is to create Hybrids, which purport to be the next phase in human evolution. By first experimenting on sick children, Prodigy and its trillionaire owner, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), have figured out how to take a human consciousness and put it into a synthetic body. Instead of the eerie, inhuman synths of the Alien series so far, these hybrids are something more.
That includes our main character, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who just so happens to be Joe’s sister. When she finds out her brother is close and in trouble, she and the rest of the “Lost Boys” (other hybrids) head off to rescue him, under the watchful eye of Boy Kavalier’s science synth, Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant).
Now you know the setup. By the end of Episode 2, which finds Joe taken by the xenomorph and Wendy leaping after him, there’s a lot to unpack…so let’s get into it!
What are the five Alien corporations, and have they popped up in the franchise before?
If you’ve ever seen an Alien (or even several Predator) movies, you likely know the name Weyland-Yutani. They’re the all-encompassing corporation that controls every aspect of life in space, but it turns out they’re only one of five corporations that split up the planet once the world’s governments couldn’t pick up the slack.
As we discover in one of the opening scenes of Alien: Earth, Weyland-Yutani owns North and South America, as well as Mars and Saturn. Dynamic owns the Moon, and we discover that Prodigy owns their island “Neverland” research center as well as New Siam. The other two companies are Lynch and Threshold, and as of this writing, we know nothing about them.
We have explainers for the Alien movie endings so you can catch up on lore (that Alien: Earth may well ignore). Here are a few:
Here’s a complete Alien universe timeline to help keep things straight.
Also! Did you know that six short Alien films were released for the 40th anniversary of Alien? Watch them free right here!
There have been other corporations included in various Alien media over the years, but of these five, only Weyland-Yutani has been referenced in the franchise before. That doesn’t mean they contradict other Alien tales; it just makes one wonder what happened to corps like Hyperdyne, which developed various synths and was referenced in Alien: Romulus, or Seegson, another synth manufacturer that’s popped up in various comics and novels.
The fact of the matter is, they all may be around, perhaps as fiefdoms of the five major corps, or maybe under some other arrangement. It’s clear that Earth’s society allows capitalism to grow, as there were four corps until Boy Kavalier went big with Prodigy; we’ll just have to wait and see on that one.
What’s the deal with all the Peter Pan references?
If you watch one thing before Alien: Earth, you should probably watch Alien. If you want to watch a second thing? Maybe Peter Pan. Or read Peter Pan. Or both. Regardless, the series is pretty obvious about how much it’s aping the J.M. Barrie story, to the point that “Marcy” takes on the name Wendy, they call her “Wendy darling” at multiple points, the hybrids are called the Lost Boys and named after those characters (with the exception of Smee), and they live on an island called Neverland. And oh, Boy Kavalier both shows off Peter Pan the movie and reads Peter Pan as a bedtime story, just in case it wasn’t clear.
So why Peter Pan? Because the idea of the book is about growing up, and that’s sort of what the xenomorph does as well: evolving from an egg to a facehugger to a chestburster to the eventual killer alien we all know and fear. The xenomorph is also a metaphor for external factors, usually about how corporations use and dispose of their employees, but here it’s likely about the fear of death. Our hybrids were all kids who were going to die, but now, they technically cannot…but neither can they grow up.
Some slightly more subtle references include the xenomorph being the crocodile (notice the ticking sound Wendy hears when she arrives in New Siam?), and Morrow (Babou Ceesay) being Captain Hook, what with his singularity of purpose to catch the “crocodile” and one weapon hand.
How important is it to watch Ice Age: Continental Drift to understand Alien: Earth?
What in the world is the deal with Joe watching the fourth Ice Age movie, Ice Age: Continental Drift, of all things? Part of it is to set up the “face my fury” exchange when Wendy “talks” to Joe through a robot in Episode 2, but likely this isn’t a deeper reference than that the plot of Ice Age 4 finds our heroes facing down a pirate named Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage). See above re: pirates. For what it’s worth, our characters also investigate a downed “pirate” ship as the main driver for the plot, so there is that. Could one of the creatures on the ship also turn out to be like Scrat, always trying to bury a nut? Eh, that’s a stretch; never mind.
What are the ethics of putting a child in an adult’s body? And are the kids dead?
There’s a lot of magical thinking going on in the first two episodes, where they mostly hand-wave “yeah, we’re just putting their child brains in synth bodies.” But Alien is a science-fiction series, not a fantasy series, and while we don’t need schematics of how Boy Kavalier, Dame Silvia (Essie Davis), and Silvia’s husband Arthur (David Rysdahl) pulled it off, we do have questions that seem conveniently brushed over.
In fact, the show seems to be hinting at a little more going on in Boy Kavalier’s science paradise, as Arthur expresses, or tries to express, concerns more than once. Meanwhile, Dame Silvia tells Wendy (then called Marcy) that the process is “just like falling asleep,” framing it like a fairy tale instead of the scientific process it likely is.
After all, who are the monsters here? The xenomorph? The humans? The hybrids? Or all three?
This is always the issue with science fiction stories in which a brain is transferred to a robot or clone body, or some other form: Is that the person, or is that a robot with the brain patterns of the person? Furthermore, what happened to the kids’ bodies after the transfer? Wendy says she’s not human, she’s something “more”…but is she Marcy?
This is something the show will likely continue to explore over the rest of the season, and the answers might be more disturbing than we think. After all, who are the monsters here? The xenomorph? The humans? The hybrids? Or all three?
What is that weird dude spraying on the wall?
In the first two episodes of the series, we see a weird dude in a large hazmat suit spraying dark areas of the wall in the Neverland ranch (er, uh-oh). It’s vintage Noah Hawley weirdness that’s also somewhat reminiscent of the “Who is the Beekeeper” discourse that pervaded WandaVision, and no one in the show seems to be talking about this guy in any way. What is he up to?
Before people go insane with theories, we can confidently answer this one: He’s spraying for mold. Mold thrives in tropical, warm, wet climates, so those black spots on the wall are likely black mold, and he’s killing it as it pops up.
However, there’s also a likely reason for including this detail at all. It’s yet another killer that’s bubbling below the surface, a rot that’s everywhere in Prodigy’s compound, and not for nothing, but there’s a lot of discussion about whether black mold can impact your mental state; the answer is maybe. Chances are, this is just another indicator that everyone in Neverland is about to go a little nuts.
How does Alien: Earth fit in the Alien chronology?
The simple answer to this question is that Alien: Earth takes place in 2120, two years before the events of the original 1979 Alien film. That also places the show 16 years after Alien: Covenant, and 22 years before Alien: Romulus.
The more complicated answer is about how this connects, if at all, to the events of Alien, given that Weyland-Yutani had a whole spaceship full of aliens that crash-landed on Earth before that movie even happens. If there’s already a xenomorph on the planet, and multiple eggs, and other aliens, why do they need the xenomorph so badly in the rest of the series?
The answer to that is that we don’t know…yet. While Hawley doesn’t seem particularly concerned with laying a trail of breadcrumbs from Alien: Earth to the events of the theatrical movies, it seems unlikely that the series will end with xenomorphs taking over the planet and Weyland-Yutani saying, “No, we need space xenomorphs.” So whatever happens here in the show, it’s likely there are no more xenomorphs at the end. As for the other alien creatures? TBD, but they are not “the perfect organism,” so get out of here, nobody cares.
One other question you might have? This is never completely established in the movies, but from Alien onwards, the way certain exchanges are phrased, it seems likely that regular workers on ships like the Nostromo are aware of alien life; they’ve just never specifically seen the xenomorph or Space Jockeys before.
If there’s already a xenomorph on the planet, why do they need the xenomorph so badly in the rest of the series?
As a side note, and somewhat more problematic for Alien continuity, Morrow uses an electrical gun and a gross liquid bag thing to temporarily take down and transport the xenomorph. They clearly don’t work that well, but the question arises: Why did Weyland-Yutani never use those to restrain the xenomorphs in future encounters?
What happened to the Maginot? And what does Maginot mean?
We only get to see flashes of what went wrong on the Maginot in the premiere, but it’s the same thing that usually goes wrong: someone probably poked an alien egg, got impregnated by a facehugger, and then a xenomorph killed everyone except Morrow. But it also seems like a lot more went wrong, given the Eye is animating a half-destroyed dead cat, some blood-sucking worm creatures are loose, and there’s a horrible plant-thing hanging in the hallway.
Are there any clues in the name of the ship? It’s likely a reference to the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications set up on the French-German border after World War I. The Maginot Line was meant to repel German forces and was inspired by a line of defense used in WWI, but when WWII arrived, Germany just went around to the French-Belgian border and invaded that way, avoiding the Maginot Line entirely.
It’s pure speculation, but one could intuit that the ship Maginot was meant to bring alien life directly to Weyland-Yutani, but given the xenomorph’s predilection for chaos, it essentially went around the other side and is sowing destruction in Prodigy’s home base instead.
What is the buzzing sound Wendy keeps hearing?
We touched on this earlier, but as soon as Wendy touches down in New Siam, she hears a buzzing/clicking sound. The rest of the hybrids don’t seem to be hearing it, and neither do the humans, Kirsh, or Morrow; at least, we don’t see them being bothered by the noise as Wendy seems to be. The most likely prospect for the source of the buzzing? The xenomorph.
But that raises a lot more questions, like how Wendy can hear the xenomorph. Has she somehow tapped into the hive mind? And why can Wendy hear it when none of the other hybrids can? Wendy also seems to have other abilities, like being able to hack into and control computers with her mind, which the other hybrids have not yet exhibited. That might simply be because she’s been a hybrid longer, or it could be something unique in her makeup. Either way, it’s a big detail that’s clearly going to keep cropping up.
Why do they always have cats in space?
Generally, cats are on ships to take care of pests, and what’s a bigger bug for a cat to kill than a xenomorph? But mostly, everyone just likes Jonesy from the first movie, so there are always cats. It’s a shame about that half-dead cat on the Maginot, though.
Why didn’t the xenomorph kill Joe? And why didn’t it kill Morrow?
Given the xenomorph rips through squads of soldiers and an entire French Revolution-themed party in record time, it’s curious that Joe keeps surviving his encounters with the alien…though we’ll see whether the Episode 2 cliffhanger resolves with Wendy finding his mutilated body in Episode 3 (probably not). Is there something special about Joe that keeps saving him?
As for Morrow, who gets threatened by the xenomorph multiple times while on the Maginot, it’s surprising that the alien takes out the soldiers behind Morrow but leaves him alive. Morrow notes that the xenomorph can sense fear, so was he using his cyborg abilities to suppress his fear response? Perhaps the xenomorph isn’t interested in ripping up non-biological lifeforms. That doesn’t jibe with what we’ve seen previously in the franchise, but it is something that requires further investigation.
Does your big toe look like a thumb?
Wendy convinces Joe she’s his sister by saying, “I still don’t think my big toe looks like my thumb.” But let’s be honest here, it does; sorry, Wendy.
