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.
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