Don’t be sad that Alien: Earth season one is over. Be glad that it happened. With the eighth and final episode of the season, creator Noah Hawley officially brought his story to an unexpected and fascinating close. A story that, we hope, will continue in the coming years.
As of publication, a second season has yet to be announced; for now, we’ll just have to speculate on how the events of this episode could play out in the future. So let’s dig in, pop out our eyeball monsters, and discuss the finale of Alien: Earth season one.
The finale episode is called “The Real Monsters,” which is the most fascinating title of the entire season. At the start of the episode, it could mean one thing, but by the end, it could mean something else entirely. So let’s circle back to that at the end.
After last week’s wild episode, everyone has been put on pause. Wendy and the Lost Boys are in a holding cell. The same goes for Joe and Morrow. As for Boy, Kirsh, and the rest of Prodigy, they’re left confused and scared about the state of everything on the island, which is in very, very bad shape. Primarily, that’s because there’s a rogue xenomorph prowling the grounds, and in the episode’s opening, we finally get the promise of the show fulfilled.
It took seven episodes and change, but for a few minutes, we got to see a xenomorph running around Earth, and it played like a 60-second R-rated Jurassic Park. We even got to see it interact with an Earth-specific species, the crab. To be honest, we could watch the xeno walk around the island by itself, killing the occasional soldier, forever, but Wendy has other plans.
In containment, the surviving Lost Boys have a kind of existential discussion about who they are and where they belong. This is in large part because of the graveyard they found, and also how they are quickly discovering that, despite having the minds of kids, they are so much more. Nibs describes them as ghosts, beings who are out of place and time, which is the perfect metaphor for Wendy. She thinks they should be ghosts and make everyone afraid of them, not the other way around.
This begins with her using her powers to keep an eye on everything going on in the building. She manipulates a conversation between Boy and Kirsh about Boy’s negative impulses. She traps soldiers in an elevator to scare them. She plays footage of their human counterparts in Dame Sylvia’s room to make her live with what she and everyone else has done. Wendy is slowly flaunting the total control she has over everything, including the containment rooms. Remotely, she unlocks the one with her brother Joe and Morrow in it, allowing the story to move forward.
Wendy watches as Morrow goes to the creature lab and has it out with Kirsh, who has his back broken in the battle. Just as Morrow is about to win, though, he notices the cages are open. Another of Wendy’s tricks. Meanwhile, with communications down all over the island, Boy goes to visit Wendy and the crew. He acts as if he still has the upper hand… until Wendy unlocks the cell with her mind.
This shocks and terrifies Boy as he realizes he is no longer in control of anything. And that vulnerability gives him the chance to open up about his past. A past where he, as a six-year-old, built a synthetic father who killed his alcoholic actual father. He calls the hybrids “floor models” for what he has planned for the future, but they are so much beyond that. They all team up and tell him to run.
Each hybrid is given a job by Wendy to round up another one of the adults. As she makes the assignments, Curly asks if she can be called by her human name, Jane. It’s the first time she acts like part of the team, previously being very isolated and defiant in her loyalty to Boy.
As Nibs easily grabs Sylvia, and Smee and Slightly intimidate and dominate Kirsh and Morrow, Wendy looks for her brother. He’s been found by Atom Eins, who says that Boy wants to see him. We know this isn’t true, as Boy is currently running for his life, and Joe soon realizes that too. Atom locks him in a room with the eyeball, which pops out of the sheep and goes after Joe. Wendy arrives in the nick of time but is thwarted by Atom, who, we finally realize, has been a synthetic this whole time. Likely, he’s the synthetic Boy made as a child. Wendy picks up on this just in time and takes control of him, saving her brother as the eyeball escapes.
This means that Joe and Wendy can finally discuss his actions on the boat in the previous episode. He apologizes, but she’s still mad at him, feeling betrayed that he would pick his human friends over his sister. They both realize this is a very difficult situation because Joe has loyalty to his species and friends, as well as his family, but his family is no longer part of his species. In fact, Wendy admits she doesn’t quite know what she is. She only knows that she’s powerful and has a loyal ally in the xenomorph. The brother and sister make an uneasy truce out of love, but you can tell this isn’t over.
Meanwhile, Wendy had “someone special” looking for Boy, and, of course, it’s the xenomorph. Which finds him. He thinks he’s doomed, but Wendy has it spare him and instead takes out the soldiers who arrive. Boy’s dominance is no longer. Furthermore, the dominance of humans on this island is no longer. After eight episodes, we finally get a reveal of what the pod creature is as it eats up Siberian (Diêm Camille), one of the two Prodigy soldiers we’ve been following since the first episode. We also get to see the eyeball make it to the dead body of Arthur. An act that finally gives it a voice and a human brain, though that doesn’t pay off here.
And so, finally, as the episode started with the Lost Boys in the cell, the tables have shifted by the episode’s end. Now the adults, Boy, Kirsh, Morrow, Sylvia, and Atom, have been captured, and the hybrid children (plus Joe) are on the outside looking in. Oh, and they have not one but two xenomorphs on their side and at their disposal.
“What do we do now?” one asks. “Now, we rule,” Wendy replies. This delights Boy, who basks in the glory of his creations overtaking their creator, but it terrifies Sylvia and Joe, who see beings they love evolving into something more.
Humans and aliens have always been at odds in the Alien franchise. That’s kind of its DNA. That’s still true to an extent, but now, we have human-looking characters—the hybrids—teaming up with the creatures against the humans. And, like Wendy says, they have the potential to rule. Of course, many things are standing in their immediate way. First and foremost, Weyland-Yutani airships are currently on the way to the island. The other creatures are still around too. But Alien: Earth season one ended with a whole new being on top of the food chain, and it wasn’t the xenomorph.
So who are “The Real Monsters”? Typically, in Alien movies, as per the memorable quote from Ellen Ripley, the real monsters are the humans who will stop at nothing to make a buck. That may have even been the case earlier in this season. Now, though, it’s much more complicated. Are the monsters the hybrid children who want to “rule” the world? Are they the other creatures who, we think, are still independent of that group? Or are the monsters still the humans who exploited children for their own profit?
That one is the most obvious and easy to understand, but there is monstrosity everywhere depending on where your loyalties lie. And we love that about this ending. Let’s hope we get to see what Hawley thinks in season two.
Assorted musings
So, really, no payoff to the weird guy from the first few episodes cleaning the hallways?
Speaking of payoffs, the payoff of the pod creature felt very tacked on, right? We get to see it kill a main character, but the whole scene felt almost like the show forgot it had been teasing this fourth species of creature since the beginning and just needed it to do something. Hopefully, it gets to do more than a Little Shop of Horrors impersonation in upcoming seasons.
Did you ever get the sense that Atom Eins was a synthetic? I didn’t. He was robotic, certainly. And ice cold emotionally. But his loyalty and reasoning always felt pretty human. Now, in retrospect, his reveal as a robot speaks even more to the genius of Boy Kavalier. He made that guy at six years old? Wow.
The most satisfying moments in the entire season came in this episode as we got to see the usually scared and confused hybrids (who aren’t Wendy) come into their own. Curly taking back her own name was great. Nibs exerting pure physical dominance. And when Smee and Slightly said, “It’s our time now,” everything they’d been through felt like a prologue.
Where do we see the role of the xenomorph going in this show? Part of what always made them so fascinating and terrifying was their absolute ferocity. But now, we have two on Earth who are beholden to another type of creature. Do we just want to see them as bodyguards? Will they, or can they, rebel in some way? Almost more than what’s next for the hybrids, I’m anxious to see what this story holds for the xenomorphs, especially with the knowledge that 60 years later, Weyland-Yutani is still after one.
Lastly, thank you so much for taking the time to read and engage with these recaps. As a fan of Alien, it has been a blast to experience and dissect this show week to week. It’s rare we get to see a franchise we love get reimagined in such a surprising and smart way, so thank you to anyone who clicked on any of these articles. Fingers crossed we can do it again soon.