Noah Hawley has already proven he is more than capable of taking an established universe and creating something wholly unique within it. His Fargo series garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades, and his underrated X-Men series, Legion, is one of the most innovative superhero projects to date.
Now, Hawley is jumping into the world of Alien with Alien: Earth, a new sci-fi series that takes place two years before Ripley’s fated journey on the Nostromo. It expands on the world established by iconic directors like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher. It comes as no surprise that Alien: Earth is an achievement in and of itself, adding texture and nuance to a world that is rarely seen in the actual Alien films.
Alien: Earth takes place primarily on the planet we call home, but in a distant future where tech corporations run the world. This is the most realistic thing about the series — that and humans’ incessant search for eternal life — but it does not shy away from the thing that gave it its name.
So What Is Alien: Earth About?
A Weyland-Yutani ship crash-landing on Earth kicks off the events of Alien: Earth, its presence drawing in two siblings, one of whom believes the other is dead. And she is — sort of. Wendy, played with a steely and inquisitive innocence by Sydney Chandler, is a hybrid synthetic, her young mind transferred to a robotic body as a terminal illness prepares to take her life.
Her brother Hermit (Andor standout Alex Lawther) doesn’t know that she’s alive, nor does he know they both now work for the same tech company, he as a medic and her the de facto leader of a group of other hybrids. Both are drawn to the ship’s crash site in a Prodigy-owned city, kicking off a territory war between the two companies.
Alien has always been about corporate interests butting up against the grunt workers who are just trying to survive against hellish beasts, but Alien: Earth expands on this further in the makeup of its world and the two people at the center of the series. This time, though, it’s not just the Xenomorph that our characters are fighting against or experimenting on.
Unbeknownst to those at Prodigy, the Weyland-Yutani ship is host to various aliens who have hitched a ride to Earth, including a fully grown Xenomorph and several other squirm-inducing aliens. That Alien: Earth makes these other creatures just as terrifying as the Xenomorph is both a testament to Hawley and the show’s writers and the effects team’s work on the series.
The Xenomorph is the real star of the show, and anyone afraid it wouldn’t be featured all that much can rest easy. The acid-bleeding alien is there from the beginning in all its glory, tying the aesthetic of the series to the films in various ways while still expanding on the franchise.
Alien: Earth Is A Gripping Expansion On The Franchise Mythology
The grimy, slippery murkiness of the Alien films can be felt in every frame, but so, too, can this new/old setting of a future Earth. Still, in expanding the story beyond one spaceship or sparsely inhabited planet, some of the movies’ claustrophobic horror is lost, evident in the sometimes choppy pacing of the series.
Alien: Earth transcends these problems by reaching towards its core themes and expanding on them in compelling ways. There are still morally dubious synthetics — Timothy Olyphant and Babou Ceesay compete for the creepiest robot award, though they’ll never best Michael Fassbender’s always-chilling David.
At its core, Alien: Earth is about survival. Multiple species are fighting for their lives in the series: synthetic hybrids clinging to their fading humanity as they get used to their new, adult bodies; humans under the thumb of evil technocrats; a family trying to survive as the world tears them apart; and, finally, aliens trying to adapt and survive in an unfamiliar world.
