Previously, if people wanted to discover how short their own mortality was in the presence of unknown hostile xenomorphs they traditionally would have had to travel to the fringes of space where deep in the vacuum of nothing screams are left unheard. In Alien: Earth (2025), the latest iteration of the franchise, this time in the form of a TV show, the classic creatures have become locals, and this time even the xenomorphs aren’t alone.
The story takes place in the distant future of 2120, two years before the original Alien (1979). The governments of Earth have fallen and in its place the world is owned and run by five mega corporations, though for the show’s purposes the only ones you need to know are Prodigy and Weyland-Yutani. A deep space Weyland-Yutani research vessel has crashed on Earth directly into a city belonging to Prodigy, carrying very precious cargo. It’s there that a medic, along with his team of soldiers, are sent into the crash site in search of survivors.
This leads to what might be one of the most interesting things the show does for the Alien universe: introduce other aliens. The xenomorphs are fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but they’re known quantities. The egg spawns the face hugger, the face hugger hugs the face, the xenomorph is born from the exploding chest of its victim. It’s a well-known cycle of life, and reliance on the xenomorph as the only creature in the story means that most Alien stories require either the xenomorph to already exist, or for someone to become strangely curious about a horrifying looking egg, while having absolutely no fear walking up to it for a significantly closer look.
In most Alien films the xenomorph acts the part of the monster, hunting from the shadows, hidden within the crawlspaces of the installations it inevitably claims as their home. Sometimes it behaves less like a monster and more like a cliché horror slasher villain, but here the xenomorph acts more like an animal. While the xenomorph is introduced as a hunter that more closely resembles its status as a classic monster, there’s a subplot that shows up halfway that expands on the behavior of the xenomorph with scenes that emphasize the social structure of the creature.
Alien: Earth also introduces blood sucking bugs, mineral eating bugs, a creature that looks like a plant, and most importantly an eyeball with squid legs that practically steals every scene it’s in.
At the same time there’s also an emphasis on a group of synthetics, hybrids to be more specific. Alien films have a long running history with synthetics: entirely robot beings created by the company, typically for nefarious purposes. The most notable expansion of the role of the synthetic came in the Alien: Covenant (2017) storyline, in which its own xenomorph plot was abandoned in favor of a new take on the Data vs. Lore concept.
Noah Hawley, the creator of Alien: Earth, has notably stated that Alien: Earth uses nothing from Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant. Instead, it adds its own discussion on what humanity means to a synthetic human. On a remote island the leader of Prodigy, the young genius Boy Kavalier, a brash multi-trillionaire who hates shoes, has developed a means of transferring a person’s consciousness from their fragile mortal body into a synthetic shell, called a hybrid, thus granting them practical immortality while keeping their mind. His test subjects are children with very low life expectancies (a subject that becomes one of the more important moral discussions of the show). The hybrids have adult bodies, but mentally they’re all children.
The cast is excellent as a whole, with fantastic performances from Babou Ceesay as Morrow, and Timothy Olyphant as the synth Kirsh. The actors and actresses that play the hybrids are noteworthy, especially Sydney Chandler as Wendy, Adarsh Grouav as Slightly, Jonathon Ajayi as Smee, Erana James as Curly, and Lily Newmark as Nibs. They’re absolutely convincing as adults playing children in adult bodies.
In case it’s been a while since you’ve read or seen a Peter Pan related story, the children are all given names from the classic story about children that never grow old. It’s an idea that comes off as on the nose. These are children who will not age, trapped on an island, never to see their loved ones again, all while the boy genius reads to them passages from a Peter Pan novel. It feels like it would have been better as an inspiration rather than a label. The children can represent the lost boys without the audience being told they are the lost boys.
Like Alien: Covenant, Alien: Earth puts itself in a position where the xenomorph storyline is largely the supporting actor. The lost boys are the heart of the narrative, while the xenomorph is often an element of chaos that adds uncertainty to everything else. It’s unfortunate that the end of the show comes off as rushed, with quite a few of its plot threads left unresolved. The lost boys character arc ends in a place that feels appropriate, but a lot of the other characters are largely left in between plot points. It makes for a less than stellar ending to a television show that is a remarkably interesting journey.