Video game franchise Far Cry is getting the series treatment from Noah Hawley (Alien: Earth) and Rob Mac (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).
According to Variety, the dynamos from the sci-fi and comedy world are adapting Ubisoft’s video game series that centers on survival in an action-packed genre setting. It could be an island where mad scientists are running experiments or extremist militias are rampaging through post-apocalyptic collapsed societies. The blend of action and anthology makes sense for Hawley, and the madcap energy of the narrative definitely befits Mac, who will also star.
So we’re excited about the duo co-creating the live-action series for FX in the network’s tried-and-true anthology format—Hawley’s Fargo as well as American Horror Story come to mind.
“What I love about the Far Cry game franchise is it’s an anthology. Each game is a variation of a theme, the same way each season of Fargo is a variation on a theme,” Hawley told Variety. “To create a big action show that can change from year to year, while always exploring the nature of humanity through this complex and chaotic lens is a dream come true. I’m excited to partner with Rob and bring our shared irreverent, ambitious sensibility to the screen.”
After what Hawley’s done with Alien: Earth, we are so game for this. Far Cry marks Mac’s second collaboration with Ubisoft Film and Television, having previously developed and starred in Mythic Quest for Apple TV. While the details of the show’s plot remain under wraps, Mac hyped, “Getting to work alongside Noah Hawley is a dream realized. Ubisoft has been remarkably generous, entrusting us with one of the most iconic video game worlds ever created. And through it all, my FX family continues to lift me up with their constant belief and support.”
The Xenomorphs are coming back. It took a little longer than expected, but FX just announced that Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth will return for season two.
Fans had been waiting for the announcement since the first season ended a few months back with a heck of a cliffhanger. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) had broken her fellow hybrid brothers and sisters out of their cages and basically taken charge of all the adults at Prodigy. Oh, and she has two pet Xenomorphs at her disposal, too.
As part of the news, FX also announced that Hawley has signed a new overall deal with FX and Disney Television. “It has been our great privilege to work with Noah for more than a decade on some of FX’s best and biggest shows, and we are thrilled to extend our partnership well into the future,” FX Chairman John Landgraf said. “Noah never stops surprising us with truly original stories—and his unique ability to bring them to vibrant life as a director and producer as well as writer makes him extraordinary. We can’t wait to get to work on the next season of Alien: Earth, as well as some equally exciting future projects in advanced development.”
“I’m thrilled that this expanded deal opens the door to new opportunities across all of Disney Entertainment Television,” Hawley added. “FX has always supported bold, character-driven storytelling. From the very beginning with Fargo, they’ve encouraged me to take creative risks and follow the story wherever it leads. I’m grateful to continue exploring the world of Alien: Earth alongside our partners, cast, and crew as we begin the next chapter.”
Filming will begin next year in London. No word on when it might air, but we’d imagine 2027 seems about right.
Are you excited for the show to return? Do you think things will change drastically? What could possibly happen next with these characters? And will this catch up to the events of the first Alien film?
Everyone knows a Xenomorph will mess you up—and Alien: Earth, which takes place before the sinister bosses at Weyland-Yutani re-routed Sigourney Weaver and company to a far-flung planet in search of one in Alien, provided multiple Xenomorphs to fulfill your sci-fi nightmares. However, the FX show didn’t stop there; instead, it introduced an entire lab’s worth of biological horrors culled from deep space, including a creepy eyeball creature that proves “small” doesn’t mean “weak.”
As fans of Alien: Earth well know, the eyeball creature is scary because of its actions; it’ll leap onto, basically, anything with a body—first a cat, and then the sheep we see it occupy for most of the season—and take over its brain. Its ultimate goal, which it achieves in the season one finale, is finding a human host.
But the eyeball creature’s true terror is, as we learn throughout the series, how freaking smart it is. It’s so advanced, it delights Alien: Earth‘s billionaire genius mad scientist, Boy Kavalier, whose greatest joy in life is finding people capable of matching his intellect to converse with.
And now, it can delight you by gawking from your toy shelf in Funko form. (The sheep is a less ghoulish choice than the human host would be, as well as less of a plot spoiler.)
“Sheep With the Eye” is part of Funko’s new Alien: Earth collection, adding on to its existing Alien line and featuring hybrid character Wendy and her BFF, the Super Xenomorph. (Alas, no white-haired Kirsh to go with your Timothy Olyphant Cobb Vanth Pop… at least not yet.)
But the woolly guy, who’s a web exclusive and will set you back $15 here, is clearly the top choice based on gruesome-skewing niche appeal.
Recently Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg touched on how, if at all, the other projects in development while he was making his second installment within the 20th Century Studios wheelhouse affected his work. “There was a lot going on while we were making this movie. Romulus was not yet out, and I hadn’t seen it yet. And Alien Earth, I was aware of happening, but not sure where that was [going to] end up. So we decided to set ourselves well into the future,” he told IGN.
In Badlands, Elle Fanning’s Thia is indeed a Weyland-Yutani synth from the Alien franchise’s evil corporation, but the far-future setting gave Trachtenberg room to play in his own sandbox. “So all the stuff that has happened would have happened before our movie. We’re not trying to squeeze [it] in,” he explained. “[I am] also cognizant of how, in this day and age, with all the media that we have, some of it can feel like homework. And you’re going to have to remind yourself, where in a timeline does this sit between this movie and that movie? And I really do not want that to be the case with Badlands.”
And that’s such a relief if, like myself, you were thinking, “Geez, do I have to watch Alien: Romulus and all of Alien: Earth before Predator: Badlands?” to find out that’s not the case at all. But obviously if you want to do all that, go for it. Just know they’re not movies or shows set up solely with the intention to build bridges to lead up to any sort of crossover event. Just enjoy the darn Xenomorphs wreaking havoc and that Predator on the hunt.
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.
Alien on earth in Alien: Earth – FX
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.
Dame Sylvia has some explaining to do. – FX
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.
As Nibs easily grabs Sylvia, and Smee and Slightly intimidate and dominate Kirsh and Morrow, Wendy looks for her brother. He’s been found by Atom Eins, who says that Boy wants to see him. We know this isn’t true, as Boy is currently running for his life, and Joe soon realizes that too. Atom locks him in a room with the eyeball, which pops out of the sheep and goes after Joe. Wendy arrives in the nick of time but is thwarted by Atom, who, we finally realize, has been a synthetic this whole time. Likely, he’s the synthetic Boy made as a child. Wendy picks up on this just in time and takes control of him, saving her brother as the eyeball escapes.
This means that Joe and Wendy can finally discuss his actions on the boat in the previous episode. He apologizes, but she’s still mad at him, feeling betrayed that he would pick his human friends over his sister. They both realize this is a very difficult situation because Joe has loyalty to his species and friends, as well as his family, but his family is no longer part of his species. In fact, Wendy admits she doesn’t quite know what she is. She only knows that she’s powerful and has a loyal ally in the xenomorph. The brother and sister make an uneasy truce out of love, but you can tell this isn’t over.
Kirsh finally meets his match. – FX
Meanwhile, Wendy had “someone special” looking for Boy, and, of course, it’s the xenomorph. Which finds him. He thinks he’s doomed, but Wendy has it spare him and instead takes out the soldiers who arrive. Boy’s dominance is no longer. Furthermore, the dominance of humans on this island is no longer. After eight episodes, we finally get a reveal of what the pod creature is as it eats up Siberian (Diêm Camille), one of the two Prodigy soldiers we’ve been following since the first episode. We also get to see the eyeball make it to the dead body of Arthur. An act that finally gives it a voice and a human brain, though that doesn’t pay off here.
And so, finally, as the episode started with the Lost Boys in the cell, the tables have shifted by the episode’s end. Now the adults, Boy, Kirsh, Morrow, Sylvia, and Atom, have been captured, and the hybrid children (plus Joe) are on the outside looking in. Oh, and they have not one but two xenomorphs on their side and at their disposal.
“What do we do now?” one asks. “Now, we rule,” Wendy replies. This delights Boy, who basks in the glory of his creations overtaking their creator, but it terrifies Sylvia and Joe, who see beings they love evolving into something more.
Humans and aliens have always been at odds in the Alien franchise. That’s kind of its DNA. That’s still true to an extent, but now, we have human-looking characters—the hybrids—teaming up with the creatures against the humans. And, like Wendy says, they have the potential to rule. Of course, many things are standing in their immediate way. First and foremost, Weyland-Yutani airships are currently on the way to the island. The other creatures are still around too. But Alien: Earth season one ended with a whole new being on top of the food chain, and it wasn’t the xenomorph.
Brother and sister continue to be at odds. – FX
So who are “The Real Monsters”? Typically, in Alien movies, as per the memorable quote from Ellen Ripley, the real monsters are the humans who will stop at nothing to make a buck. That may have even been the case earlier in this season. Now, though, it’s much more complicated. Are the monsters the hybrid children who want to “rule” the world? Are they the other creatures who, we think, are still independent of that group? Or are the monsters still the humans who exploited children for their own profit?
That one is the most obvious and easy to understand, but there is monstrosity everywhere depending on where your loyalties lie. And we love that about this ending. Let’s hope we get to see what Hawley thinks in season two.
Assorted musings
So, really, no payoff to the weird guy from the first few episodes cleaning the hallways?
Speaking of payoffs, the payoff of the pod creature felt very tacked on, right? We get to see it kill a main character, but the whole scene felt almost like the show forgot it had been teasing this fourth species of creature since the beginning and just needed it to do something. Hopefully, it gets to do more than a Little Shop of Horrors impersonation in upcoming seasons.
Did you ever get the sense that Atom Eins was a synthetic? I didn’t. He was robotic, certainly. And ice cold emotionally. But his loyalty and reasoning always felt pretty human. Now, in retrospect, his reveal as a robot speaks even more to the genius of Boy Kavalier. He made that guy at six years old? Wow.
The most satisfying moments in the entire season came in this episode as we got to see the usually scared and confused hybrids (who aren’t Wendy) come into their own. Curly taking back her own name was great. Nibs exerting pure physical dominance. And when Smee and Slightly said, “It’s our time now,” everything they’d been through felt like a prologue.
Where do we see the role of the xenomorph going in this show? Part of what always made them so fascinating and terrifying was their absolute ferocity. But now, we have two on Earth who are beholden to another type of creature. Do we just want to see them as bodyguards? Will they, or can they, rebel in some way? Almost more than what’s next for the hybrids, I’m anxious to see what this story holds for the xenomorphs, especially with the knowledge that 60 years later, Weyland-Yutani is still after one.
Lastly, thank you so much for taking the time to read and engage with these recaps. As a fan of Alien, it has been a blast to experience and dissect this show week to week. It’s rare we get to see a franchise we love get reimagined in such a surprising and smart way, so thank you to anyone who clicked on any of these articles. Fingers crossed we can do it again soon.
The penultimate episode of Alien: Earth season one is now out in the world, and after a few episodes of setup, things took off like a rocket ship. There was payoff after payoff, showdown after showdown, and, yes, lots and lots of creepy, gory Alien action. It may have been the best episode of the season so far, and that’s saying something, so let’s dive into what happened, what it means, and why we loved it.
The seventh episode of Alien: Earth is called “Emergence,” which is the perfect title for an episode where so much happens. Truly, it could refer to almost anything and everything—the emergence of another xeno, the hybrids rebelling, the genius of the eyeball, or even Kirsh’s plan. But ultimately, maybe the most important thing to emerge was the rift between Wendy and Joe, which hit a boiling point by episode’s end.
Before that though, a lot happened, so let’s run through it story by story. We’ll start with Slightly, who, last week, was finally successful in getting a Facehugger to do its thing on a human. Arthur, the newly fired scientist, was the unfortunate victim. Slightly’s best friend, Smee, senses something is wrong and bursts into Slightly’s room to see what he’s hiding. He’s shocked and scared at Arthur’s lifeless body but, being the good friend he is, agrees to help Slightly complete his mission. Under one condition: Slightly has to promise that Arthur will be fine once the Facehugger comes off. Reader, he will not be fine.
As they sneak out, they run into Kirsh, who they, and we, think is going to bust them. In a pretty surprising moment, though, Kirsh does the opposite, helping the two hybrids sneak Arthur out of the facility. Why does he do this? Does he secretly work for Weyland-Yutani? We don’t know. What we do know is that once outside, Arthur wakes up. The Facehugger dies, and he is very confused about how he got outside and why he’s there. Smee and Slightly make up a story about gas and an evacuation, so, in his stupor, Arthur goes along with it.
These guys are getting into all kinds of trouble this week—FX.
Soon after, though, Arthur’s memories start to come back, and he stops the boys. He goes into full Dad mode, telling them he knows they’re lying and that whatever it is, they can figure it out together. Reluctantly, they submit, and that’s when it happens. Pop. Pop. Scream. Scream. Arthur falls, and a little baby xenomorph pops out of his chest. Smee is furious that Arthur is clearly not okay, and Slightly is furious that they lost the creature he believes to be the only thing that can save his family.
They bring Arthur’s body to the rendezvous point where Morrow and a team of soldiers await. Morrow is angry but knows time is of the essence and deploys his team across the island. They head to a nearby bunker where Kirsh and an army of Prodigy soldiers are waiting. Kirsh and his team have captured the baby xeno that escaped and proceed to lock up Morrow and his men. Basically, like four episodes of story all get wrapped up pretty quickly, though we are still unaware of why Kirsh helped the boys and then scolded them after. Or if Slightly’s family is okay. We’re guessing they are, though.
Before he does all that though, Kirsh has to update Boy on everything that has happened over the last few hours… mainly the $6 billion hybrid that was somehow killed by an alien fly. Apparently, they don’t actually know if they can fix him because they never thought there would be a need to. But Boy is less worried about that when he sees that it was the eyeball, still inside the sheep, that orchestrated the entire scene. He’s endlessly fascinated by the creature and orders that it be moved to another location.
Wendy arrives in the lab to see what’s happened and is shocked to see that Isaac has been killed. She didn’t think that was even possible, and her fears about her safety (and the safety of all her fellow Lost Boys) are turned up to 11. As she tries to leave, a few guards stop her, so Wendy sends a few clicks to her friend, the xenomorph. The creature bashes up against the glass to let them know Wendy can leave, and she does. Boy and Kirsh are stunned at her actions and realize they need to keep an eye on her and the rest of the hybrids. Which is when they realize all the trackers have been turned off. Uh oh.
These guys are about to find out who really has the power—FX.
Of course, we know it was Arthur who turned those off to help Joe escape the island with Wendy. When he finally gets to her, she has already seen Isaac’s body and knows that she has to escape. But she wants to bring as many of her Lost Boys as possible. That brings her to Nibs’ room, where she’s being comforted by Curly after the trauma of having her memory wiped. Nibs agrees to come, but Curly doesn’t want to. Wendy makes her promise not to tell on them, which we don’t think she does, even though later she does cry to Dame Sylvia about something. Before they leave, Wendy does one last thing. She unlocks the now fully grown xenomorph in the lab, and it proceeds to feast on everyone in there. “What did you do?” Joe asks, not able to see what took place.
Wendy, Joe, and Nibs head outside, and among the first things they see are graves. Graves of their old selves. This throws all three of them for a loop, with Joe getting sad, Nibs being confused, and Wendy adamant that those bodies aren’t them anymore. It seems like a pretty transformative, crucial moment, but they press on.
A little down the road, a group of soldiers stops them with orders to bring them back. It looks like they’re caught when Wendy starts to make some noises. Out comes the released xenomorph for its second destructive bloodbath of the episode. After it’s killed all the soldiers to protect Wendy, Joe, and Nibs, the creature slowly approaches them. Wendy gently touches it, wiping some blood off, before saying something, and it runs away. Nibs is fascinated, Joe is terrified, and he asks what she said to it. “Hide and follow, I think,” she says.
These two are about to get into it—FX.
And follow them it does. They make it to the boat only to, again, be ambushed by soldiers. These, however, are led by Joe’s friends from back in New Siam. The soldiers have orders to bring everyone back, but one in particular starts being mean to Nibs. So she grabs him and rips his freaking jaw off. It sets off a battle where Nibs and Wendy start defending themselves against the soldiers. She’s about to call the xeno when Joe stops her. Nibs soon gets shot, and Joe electrocutes her. Wendy is furious. She can’t believe her brother would hurt one of her friends like that. “What did you do?” she screams, echoing what he asked of her earlier on.
Multiple times in the episode, we saw that Joe was increasingly uncomfortable with Wendy’s relationship to the xenomorph. So, him defending his friends against Nibs makes sense. He doesn’t seem to be on the same page with his sister on a lot of things, which has finally driven a wedge between them. A wedge that is being carefully watched by the xenomorph hiding in the nearby bushes. Wendy unleashed the xenomorph, and Joe does what he believes he must to protect his fellow humans.
Again, so much happened in this episode that it almost felt like a finale itself. Where do things go from here? Well, there are now two xenomorphs on the island, Weyland-Yutani soldiers are there, hybrids can be killed, and don’t forget all the other creatures too! It should be an explosive finale.
Boy, things are going poorly. – FX
Assorted musings
No, I didn’t forget about arguably the episode’s best scene. That being Boy communicating with the sheep, using the digits of Pi to prove its intelligence. It’s a genius scene, and Boy’s excitement at finding something that, like he said in an early episode, can really impress and challenge him, was palpable. But, it’s still in a sheep. A sheep that shits on command. He wants to get the eye into a human who can talk. And he mentions a possible mold guy…
Could that be a reference to the early episodes where we repeatedly saw a guy cleaning the wall? Is he the mold guy? Is he going to get the eyeball? That would be a great payoff if that’s what happens.
Before Wendy, Joe, and Nibs were surrounded by soldiers the first time, they stood next to a large, yellow structure that had been grown over. If you’re an Alien fan, that probably brought two things to mind. One, the chair of the Engineer, which the Nostromo finds in the first film, as well as the power loader that Ripley uses in the second film. The yellow, triangular structure feels almost like a blend of the two. And while clearly it isn’t anything like that, and probably won’t have any significance, it’s one of the best examples yet of this show just getting what Alien is. That thing just felt and looked like “Alien.” Which was probably the point.
Slightly and Smee bring Arthur’s body to Morrow to prove they really tried their hardest to execute his plan. But, when he’s ready to leave, Morrow’s soldiers push Arthur’s body into the water. The camera lingers on him for just a second or two too long. Maybe as a goodbye, or maybe because something else is coming from this character.
Sigourney Weaver recently shared her thoughts on Alien: Earth, the first live-action TV project in the Alien franchise. Weaver gained recognition as an actress with her performance as Ellen Ripley in 1979’s Alien.
She reprised her role in two subsequent movies: Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992). Weaver also voiced the character in the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation. For her outing in Aliens, Weaver even received an Oscar nod for Best Actress in 1987.
Sigourney Weaver is ‘really enjoying’ Alien: Earth
In an interview with PEOPLE, Sigourney Weaver revealed that she is “really enjoying” Noah Hawley’s Alien Earth during an appearance PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock Studio at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
“What I admire about it is the scope is so much more profound than just an Alien movie,” the actress said. “It’s about our world and what’s dominating the world in 100 years, and to me it’s right on.”
Weaver’s latest feature, action horror thriller Dust Bunny, premiered on Monday at TIFF as part of Midnight Madness. The cast also includes Mads Mikkelsen, David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson, and Sophie Sloan. It premieres in US theaters this December.
Reflecting on what Hawley has accomplished with Alien: Earth, Weaver lauded the concept of the “new creatures based on children.” This is likely a reference to the hybrids like Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, who was created by implanting the consciousness of a terminally ill child into a synthetic body.
“All these things are so remarkable and they’re just building and building and building,” Weaver added.
According to Weaver, the new monsters and creatures in Alien: Earth make it hard to believe that she is watching a TV show. “And the monsters that he’s also bringing in are just terrifying. It’s like, we don’t have enough problems with the alien, we need 50 more,” Weaver praised. “I can’t believe I’m watching TV.”
Alien: Earth airs on FX and FX on Hulu weekly on Tuesdays.
Originally reported by Tamal Kundu on SuperHeroHype.
Noah Hawley recently discussed the ending of Alien: Earth Episode 5, “In Space, No One…” The flashback installment staged a kind of stand-alone story that re-created the feel of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, showing how the doomed USCSS Maginot crashed into Earth after its creatures escaped. With sets mirroring the Nostromo, the one-hour episode played like an alternate version of the original movie. Hawley also indirectly suggested that the ending twist was inspired by Elon Musk.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the latest episode, Noah Hawley explained, “This allowed me — in the middle of trying to innovate what [the Alien franchise could be as a series] — to also pick up the gauntlet for classic Alien to say, ‘We could do classic Alien and do it as well as anyone.’” He added, “By the time the xenomorph enters the story, you’re six tragedies deep with these other creatures. Then the xenomorph arrives and it just escalates.”
The Episode 5 ending twist revealed that Boy Kavalier, founder of Prodigy Corporation, sabotaged the Maginot to make it crash in his territory and steal the creatures. Hawley said, “I don’t look at our tech billionaires and think these guys are orchestrating some master plan. I think you have a lot of ADHD billionaires with impulse control issues.” He explained that the “boy genius is not a terribly thoughtful and calculating guy” who believes failure is impossible.
Though Hawley never mentioned a name, his remarks about “people who think they can go to space, re-invent travel, drill in the earth and enter politics” were widely understood as commentary on Elon Musk. He added, “They’re doing all of these at the same time when none of them are necessarily being done well. They’re just all being done a lot.”
Andy Yu’s character Teng spied on a crew member before the xenomorph killed him. Hawley clarified, “It’s always open to interpretation… But yeah, for me, he’s a creepy dude.”
Alien: Earth airs Tuesdays on FX and Hulu.
Originally reported by Anubhav Chaudhry on SuperHeroHype.
Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley recently spoke about how Sydney Chandler’s Wendy communicated with a Xenomorph in Episode 4 and whether she can control these extraterrestrial creatures.
Alien: Earth is the first live-action TV series in the Alien franchise and takes place two years before the events of 1979’s Alien. The series premiered on FX and FX on Hulu on August 12, 2025.
Noah Hawley explains Wendy’s connections to Xenomorphs in Alien: Earth Episode 4
Before Episode 4, Alien: Earth already established that Wendy, a hybrid whose human consciousness has been implanted into a synthetic body, has some connection with the Xenomorphs.
The fourth episode expands on this by showing that she can interact with one of these nightmarish creatures. Hawley recently gave details on how she can do that, revealing that the origin of the character’s new ability can be traced back to 1986’s Aliens.
The screenwriter recalled Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and others encountering the Xenomorph queen in James Cameron’s movie. He added, “Then the queen somehow communicates to these drones to back off and they do. In that moment, you learn so much about these creatures” (via Decider).
According to Hawley, that scene denotes that the Xenomorph society is a matriarchal hive that can “clearly communicate on some level.” He indicated that Wendy can tap into this communication because she is a hybrid.
“Nothing is accidental to a kid, right? You know, everything feels meaningful,” Hawley explained. “There’s a moment in the fourth hour where she’s like, ‘They chose me.’ Right? Which is not true. Right? They didn’t choose her. She just can hear them because of whatever hardware or software issue that she has.”
Despite this, Hawley noted that Wendy can empathize with the Xenomorphs because she is mentally a child and compared her to his daughter, who became a vegetarian when she was nine years old.
Alien: Earth airs on FX and FX on Hulu weekly on Tuesdays.
Originally reported by Anubhav Chaudhry on SuperHeroHype.
The Xenomorphs have reached Earth, which seems like a bad thing, but Boy Kavalier sure seems excited to have the Maginot specimens. Photo: Patrick Brown/FX
There are many adjectives you could use to describe the Alien franchise. Scary? Absolutely. Thoughtful? At times. Satirical? It can be. But for me, the word that always comes to mind is wet. There’s scarcely any set in an Alien movie — even in outer space! — that doesn’t look like it was sprayed down with a hose just before the director called “Action!” And the goo! Dear God, the goo. Dripping from ceilings, oozing from biomasses, coating the Xenomorphs’ many mouths. Sometimes, these films look downright viscous.
“Metamorphosis,” Alien: Earth’s third episode, finally brings this TV series’ first big adventure to a close, as Prodigy’s Lost Boys head back to Neverland Island with a transport full of dangerous alien specimens. But before that can happen, Wendy has to wade into the muck one more time, to rescue her brother and to neutralize an escaped Xenomorph. She finds Hermit glued to a wall in a chilled, meat-filled shipping container, guarded by the monster, which bares its sopping wet teeth at her in a display of dominance.
Wendy fancies herself a superhero, so she first stabs the beast — unleashing streams of acidic blood — and later snags one of its mouths with a meat hook to yank it off of Hermit. The Xenomorph then drags Wendy behind a retractable door, and by the time Hermit opens it, he finds the creature decapitated and an unconscious Wendy leaking white fluid. Simply put: There’s goo everywhere.
Despite the Wendy woes, as far as Boy Kavalier is concerned, the Maginot mission was a success. His team gathered useful data about how the Lost Boys operate in the field; plus, in his words, “a trillion dollars of R&D just landed in our laps” in the form of Weyland-Yutani’s menagerie of murder-aliens. Kavalier’s puckish smile indicates how thrilled he is.
But while gawking greedily at the big picture, the boy genius is overlooking some messy details, mostly involving his disgruntled android army. Kirsh in particular is looking more and more like a free agent, inclined to follow his own fascinations rather than to listen to his Prodigy boss. For now, he’s doing what Kavalier wants, studying the Maginot specimens. But judging by the way Kirsh stares intently at the aliens, he’d probably be up for doing this job anyway, whether or not Kavalier asked. (Maybe I’m prejudging Kirsh, since the synthetics take the side of the human-killing monsters in nearly every single Alien movie.)
The situation with the Lost Boys is more complicated, given the disconnect between their powerful adult-size robot bodies and their immature human minds. Nibs (Lily Newmark) — who, pre-transformation, asked Wendy, “When do we get to go home?” — seems rattled by the reality of where she is and what she’s become. In the previous episode, she talked about how she hated taking baths in her child’s body but now misses them. In this episode, she peppers her fellow female-presenting Lost Boy, Curly (Erana James), with questions about the organization. Why the Peter Pan names? Why are they “Lost Boys” when they’re not all boys? Most important: How come Wendy gets to be Wendy?
Curly offers quasi-reassuring, Prodigy-affirming answers to most of these questions. But the Wendy query perhaps gets under Curly’s artificial skin a little. Back at Neverland, she makes a point of reminding Kavalier that his darling Wendy “got broken” on her first real mission, and that Wendy is obsessed with “her stupid brother” while Curly is taking advantage of her super-powered electronic brain to learn new things. Sure, Wendy was the first Lost Boy, but according to Curly, her “dad always threw the first pancake in the trash.”
Here’s what stood out to me about Curly’s big scene: Even as she’s provoking Kavalier, saying things like, “I think I could be you one day … more than you,” she’s also suppressing a juvenile snicker at the thought that her new synthetic body means “no more pooping.” She’s still a kid, in other words, just like the rest of the Lost Boys, even if her precocity sets her apart from the likes of Slightly and Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), who sound very much like boys as they compare notes on “these space bugs that drink, like, all your blood.”
Still, it’s Slightly who may end up being the biggest internal threat to Prodigy. Before the team leaves the Maginot wreckage, Slightly and Smee run into the Weyland-Yutani cyborg Morrow, who is so curious about the obviously synthetic Lost Boys’ reference to their “parents” that he stealthily plants a tiny communication device in Slightly’s neck. Nothing much comes of it in this episode, although Morrow does make use of the gadget once, appearing as a voice in Slightly’s head to introduce the idea that the much older and more experienced cyborg could be a friend to this confused and terrified youngster.
Anyway, let’s get back to the goo, since this episode ends with a sequence that’s both lousy with slime and aimed straight at the primordial ooze in the viewing audience’s brains. With minimal dialogue and some clever cross-cutting, these climatic scenes show Wendy arising from an extended slumber and making her way toward the Neverland underground lab, as though summoned. Meanwhile, inside the lab, Kirsh and Curly are carving up a Xenomorph egg, removing a face-hugger parasite from the goop inside. They then carve up that parasite, removing a wriggly wormlike creature, which they then drop into a tank with what appears to be one of Hermit’s lungs.
What’s happening here isn’t exactly clear, nor is it necessarily intended to be. This whole concluding sequence is meant to look and sound like some weirdo mad scientist stuff, between the androids’ cyberpunk goggles and the squishy noises the wriggling creatures make. It’s supposed to penetrate our subconscious and creep us the hell out.
But if you want a major takeaway from this ending, consider this: In the previous episode, Wendy alone seemed to hear the aliens within the Maginot; and this week she becomes physically pained as Kirsh is wielding his scalpel against the Xenomorph bio-matter. We’ve been thinking of her as a “hybrid” of a synthetic being and a human. But could there be something extraterrestrial, too, snaking through her bio-mechanical guts?
• Lots of striking images in this episode, but my favorite practical effect is the glowing dots flowing through thick wires into Morrow’s cyborg brain, as he’s uploading data.
• Kirsh chases Morrow away when the cyborg is hassling the Lost Boys on the Maginot, but not before some snippy banter between the two. Kirsh refers to the ship as “a ball that got hit over the fence into the neighbor’s yard” (with Prodigy being the neighbor). And when Morrow sniffs that he doesn’t talk to “errand boys,” Kirsh counters with, “Which country are you king of again?” I tell you, there’s a reason why you hire Timothy Olyphant for a role like this. No one better combines “steely” and “pissy.”
• Boy Kavalier is at his most Wonka-like when he’s telling Curly that prodigies are geniuses because they’re children, with “access to a world of infinite imagination.”
• Morrow has been away from Earth for a long time, so while he’s limping through New Siam, stealing food, he takes a moment to check in with Weyland-Yutani’s current CEO (Sandra Yi Sencindiver), the granddaughter of his original boss. He also reads up on Prodigy, which didn’t exist when he left home 65 years ago. (He finds a headline about how the “Triumvirate” has become “The Five.”)
• Inspired needle drop: Funkadelic’s seminal acid-rock instrumental “Maggot Brain,” playing as the Prodigy team packs up in New Siam and heads back to Neverland. The song itself is a moody masterpiece, but also … maggot brain? Just those words alone fit this show so well.
