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.
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