Alien: Earth could have played things so simply. Take the idea of an Alien movie, place it anywhere on Earth, and go from there. A xenomorph in a skyscraper (Die Hard Alien)! A xenomorph on a boat (Jaws Alien)! A xenomorph on a plane (Top Gun Alien)! Any silly idea like that would’ve been easy to do. And yet, creator Noah Hawley looked at the idea of aliens on Earth and did not just do one thing unexpectedly; he did everything unexpectedly, which is why the show was so polarizing and, in our minds, so great.
The first season of Alien: Earth came to a close last week, and, ultimately, it was less about the titular, acid-blooded creature from space and more about technology, immortality, and humanity. It followed a mega corporation named Prodigy, which had figured out a way to transfer the human consciousness of children into an artificial body. The first hybrid, Wendy, soon realized that she was more than human and more than machine. She was something entirely new to the world and began to exploit that in numerous ways, ultimately teaming up with the xenomorph that made its way to Earth via a crashed spaceship.
Of course, there’s much more to it than that. But if you told someone months ago Alien: Earth would end with a girl in a robot body with the ability to talk to xenomorphs, you’d probably laugh. Just writing that down, it seems incredibly silly. Which is probably why many people saw it that way.
But for the show to exist, thrive, and distinguish itself from all the other shows on TV, Alien: Earth had to be about more than just a creature killing people like the movies. In years past, Ridley Scott began to do that with his newer Alien movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and while last year’s movie, Alien: Romulus, went back to basics a bit, it centered on the relationship of a brother and sister, one of whom just happened to be an android.
Hawley takes those ideas—human relationships, artificial beings, mythology, and killer aliens—and kind of mashes them up in a few ways. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, but never too far away from the ingredients that got you there. It’s what the best, most enduring franchises do well: reinvention. It can’t just be the same thing over and over again. Things have to shift, surprise, and challenge the norm. Alien: Earth did all that and more.
Plus, it’s not like Alien: Earth was ignorant of all things Alien. At each and every turn, it felt and looked like an Alien project, with all the production design, costumes, visual effects, and more. The show was also littered with Easter eggs for the franchise, as well as actual stories and tangents the movies always teased and never got around to. From the beginning of the series, the Alien movies were about a corporation, Weyland-Yutani, wanting to get an alien back to Earth to exploit it. It’s the plot of the first three movies. However, none of those films ever showed us what was happening on Earth during those years, nor did we ever get to see what would actually happen if the company achieved its goal. The way Hawley layered those levels of almost fan fiction into his heady story hit just the right balance.
Then the show got us thinking about other things, too. Yes, there was plenty of cool, scary, gross alien action. But the ideas of how technology could bring immortality, how that might change the world, what that would do to a person’s mind, and so much more were all there to be discussed and considered, too. Very few big, IP-driven shows have those kinds of ideas mulling about, but Alien: Earth had them in spades.
One slightly unfortunate consequence of that was, by the end, the titular creatures were sidelined a bit. At the end of season one, the xenomorphs are less of an unstoppable threat and more of an ally. There still needs to be danger and fear if the show moves ahead, but with this season, Hawley pushed that to the brink with his star creature. And, to balance it, he created other, even scarier creatures to give us that feeling of the original films. The best example is the eyeball octopus, which, by the end of the season, had finally gotten itself a human body to manipulate.
Then there are the big-picture implications of the show, which are almost a cherry on top. For example, we know that very soon in the show’s timeline, someone at Weyland-Yutani will contact the Nostromo and divert it in an attempt to procure another xenomorph, setting off the events of the first film. That strongly suggests that whatever is happening on Earth at this time does not go well for the franchise’s main company. Plus, whatever happens after that, it sure seems like things aren’t much better 60 years later, when Ellen Ripley is found again before the second film. Weyland-Yutani is still after xenomorphs. So what are they up to on Earth?
Alien: Earth takes all those ideas, plots, and characters from the original films and gives them a little extra sizzle. A little extra context. And a lot of fascinating potential. All of which is in addition to the fantastic, dramatic, and surprising story filled with dynamic characters we got for the first eight episodes. We loved season one of Alien: Earth, and maybe you disagree. But there’s no doubt that its unexpected nature was its best asset.
All episodes of Alien: Earth are now streaming on FX and Hulu.