Everything to Remember Before Watching ‘Alien: Earth’

One of the best things about the new show, Alien: Earth, is that you do not need to be an Alien superfan to enjoy it. It’s not dependent on the plots of the seven-plus films in the franchise and is only connected to them in a few tangential ways. For now, at least. Nevertheless, there are a few things worth keeping in mind as we get closer to the August 12 debut. Here they are. The overview The Alien franchise began in 1979 with Ridley Scott’s film, Alien. It continued in 1986 with James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens, which was then followed by the 1992 David Fincher sequel Alien 3 and then 1997’s Alien: Resurrection by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Those all take place in chronological order. The franchise continued in a few mostly unrelated crossover Alien vs. Predator films before being reimagined in 2012 by Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise, Prometheus. That was a prequel to everything that came before and was followed by 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Most recently, Fede Alvarez made a movie called Alien: Romulus, which is set between the events of the first two movies. Basically, if you want to have a blast mainlining Alien movies, you can, but almost all of that is superfluous to the new show, save for the following. The Aliens One of the things Alien: Earth does assume you remember about the Alien franchise is the aliens themselves. Though we often just refer to them as “aliens,” the proper in-universe name is “xenomorph.” Where the xenomorphs came from, where they live, and most of the backstory for them are largely left unanswered in the franchise, though Prometheus and Covenant do offer a few clues. What is definitely known is how they are created, and that’s very important. A xenomorph queen lays an egg. That egg has a spider-like creature in it often referred to as a “facehugger.” It’s called that because the egg hatches when it senses a viable host, and the creature hugs the face of the being, implanting the being with an embryo. That embryo then grows inside the being, eventually hatching by bursting out of their chest. This is a baby xenomorph, nicknamed a “chestburster” for obvious reasons. The chestburster then feeds and grows rapidly into the fully grown xenomorph. A xenomorph is a straight killing machine. Fast, nimble, and deadly. It also has a natural defense mechanism in that its blood is acid, so it burns anything that makes it bleed. All of which is very important information to know as you dive into Alien: Earth. The Timeline Alien: Earth is set in 2120, which is three years before the events of the first Alien film. What that means is the crew of the Nostromo, the ship that’s invaded by a xenomorph in the first film, is still in cryosleep on their way home to Earth from a deep-space mining mission. In three years, for some reason, they’ll be woken up by a distress call that just so happens to draw them to a planet filled with xenomorph eggs. Whether or not that has anything to do with the events we see in Alien: Earth is one of the show’s biggest mysteries and certainly a potential future storyline. But that’s a few years away in canon. Once the Nostromo gets the call, though, the events of the movie Alien take place over a few days. Then Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is lost in space for 57 years. Once awake, she learns the planet the Nostromo landed on, LV-426, now has a full colony of people on it, and so begins the plots of the next few movies. We mention all this because, in regard to Alien: Earth, there’s about a 63-year window where it can operate without messing too much with the continuity of the original films. There is an exception, though, which we’ll get to after explaining some more. The Company In Alien, Ripley and her Nostromo crew work for a company called Weyland-Yutani. A company that, we later learn, knowingly sent the ship to LV-426 to pick up a xenomorph so that it could be brought back to Earth to study. A company that deemed the crew members expendable compared to the xenomorph. A company that, in Aliens and Alien 3, tries to do the same in different ways. It just really, really wants a xenomorph to study and, somehow, figure out how to weaponize. Alien: Earth starts on a Weyland-Yutani ship, the USCSS Maginot, which has been in space for 65 years. However, unlike the Nostromo, which was a mining ship, the Maginot has been specifically acquiring alien life forms, including the xenomorph. That ship, for reasons revealed on the show, then crash lands on Earth in a city controlled by a rival company, Prodigy. So, what Alien: Earth is saying is Weyland-Yutani is aware of xenomorphs (among other creatures) well before the events of the films and was *this close* to getting one back to Earth. One exception The Weyland-Yutani mega-corporation was created due to a merger of two companies founded by the Weyland family and the Yutani family. We don’t learn a lot about them in the early films, but in Prometheus, we see that Peter Weyland had grand plans about 30 years before the events of the show. Alien: Earth doesn’t negate any of that, but it doesn’t deal with it either. Instead, we spend a lot of time with the Yutanis, who are—at least in this moment—controlling the company. Basically, even though Prometheus takes place before Alien: Earth and certainly offers some larger context in regard to the xenomorphs and advancement of human technology, it’s not crucial to the plot in any way. It just lives on its own. Watch it if you’d like, think about that it happened, but it doesn’t play a role yet. The Ultimate Aim As mentioned above, basically every Alien story is about people on Earth (mostly Weyland-Yutani employees) hoping to capture and harness the power of the xenomorph. To what end specifically? The movies never get there because the xenos almost always kill everyone first. But it’s important to know that the drive for technological and financial superiority is crucial to the franchise. Whoever controls the xenomorphs could wield incredible power. If they can control them. Androids One other crucial piece of Alien DNA that’s in Alien: Earth is androids. Seemingly every Alien film has a Weyland-Yutani android as part of the plot. They are human-looking robots with white goo for blood who are loyal to their makers to a fault. That continues in Alien: Earth too, but we get to learn much more about them and their evolutions. Alien: Earth debuts with a two-part premiere August 12 on both Hulu and FX and will continue each Tuesday after that. Episodes drop at 8 p.m. ET on Hulu and 8 p.m. ET/PT on FX.