Alien: Earth's New Creatures Prove One Thing About The Xenomorph

This post contains major spoilers for FX's "Alien: Earth."

Noah Hawley's "Alien: Earth" etches a troubling portrait for humanity. This prequel to Ridley Scott's "Alien" (whose events are set two years after that of the series) proposes that mankind is not only driven by corporate greed, but an obsessive need to achieve immortality. The first two episodes of "Alien: Earth" establish this unnerving impulse by explaining the existence of cyborgs and synthetics alongside humans, and how up-and-coming corpo Prodigy has pioneered hybrids to achieve this goal. 

While the "Alien" franchise has always dissected the shifting definitions of what makes us human, its core focus has always been the "other," i.e, the perfect organisms that are antithetical to all that humanity stands for. After setting up a pretty convoluted foundation for the show's worldbuilding, "Alien: Earth" offers us a quick glimpse of these extraterrestrial creatures, along with the fresh hell they bring to our world.

Any "Alien" story is incomplete without some Weyland-Yutani-engineered nonsense, so when the company ship "Maginot" crashes into a Prodigy-owned residential tower on Earth, we immediately expect chaos to unfold. The ship is overrun with hostile alien specimens (who were being taken to Earth for research purposes) that kill everyone aboard except Morrow (Babou Ceesay), a cyborg with zero regard for human lives, as he's more concerned with recapturing the creatures for Weyland-Yutani. After the crash, the Prodigy tower gets invaded by these creatures, but the search and rescue team dispatched by Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) seems grossly unprepared to deal with such high-level threats. Enter The Lost Boys, the fresh team of hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness) Kavalier has put together, who eventually arrive at the scene to try and minimize casualties.

A massive Xenomorph is seen leading these vicious, gory attacks on rescue personnel and civilians alike, along with a couple of critters that look ... a tad generic. Let's take a closer look at the creatures in "Alien: Earth" and the impression they manage to make so far.

Now, most of these creatures haven't been namedropped or specified so far, but we can distinguish them well enough based on their appearance. There's the huge, shiny Xenomorph, a Facehugger, a tentacled creature with several eyeballs, a blood-gorged spider (?) that becomes bigger after chomping on flesh, and a rather monstrous-looking Venus flytrap-coded alien. These monsters wreak havoc inside the building, violently killing a cat (upsetting) along with a group of really callous rich people who refuse to evacuate even after being told to do so (not upsetting). Although these blood-soaked sequences inject much-needed kineticism into the story, the thrill mostly comes from the Xenomorph sequences, even though the tension is nowhere near what we've been accustomed to experiencing on the big screen.

Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and Hermit (Alex Lawther) seem to be the emotional anchor of the series, as they're set up as the reunited sibling duo who must reckon with their drastically altered relationship. Whenever the Xenomorph is seen chasing Hermit, the tension rises, which is why episode 2 ends with the creature dragging him away, and Wendy deciding to give chase in order to save him. Outside of this emotionally-charged context, the deaths caused by the monsters do not have much sentimental heft, except for a vague sense of foreboding that clouds the future of every species on Earth. Even the spider-thing doesn't quite fill us with visceral fear, as it is a standard monster design devoid of the awe we feel when we witness the lifecycle of the Xenomorph for the first time in "Alien."

Thankfully, the series seems to be setting up more Xenomorphs, as Wendy and co. find a room full of the species' eggs. Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) also warns the hybrids that eggs need to be secured, as the monsters will be unstoppable once they decide to breed, possibly leading to newer subspecies.

We've seen various kinds of Xenomorphs throughout the "Alien" franchise, including the intriguingly designed Deacon at the end of "Prometheus" and the dog-like Runner in "Alien 3." While the variations are distinct enough, these subspecies either represent the Xenomorph at a different stage, are an offshoot of the Xenomorph, or a hybrid species created/mutated under unique circumstances (such as the frighteningly effective Human-Xenomorph (pathogen) offspring in "Alien: Romulus"). The most commonly used Xenomorph type is the Drone, which has also been featured in "Alien: Isolation," where it stalks and corners players if they decide to stay in one area for too long. 

There's a reason why the Xenomorph is the go-to Big Bad in any "Alien" story: most of its species variations/mutations induce abject terror, capturing the essence of what a perfect organism should look and act like. It is also, dare I say, iconic, thanks to the creative efforts of legendary artist H. R. Giger and special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi, who successfully brought such a terrifying concept to life. 

It is also worth noting that a lone Xenomorph (or multiple!) inside a craft floating in space lends immediacy to this inherent horror, underlined by the fact that no one can actually hear you scream. Moreover, when ordinary crew members (who are not trained fighters) are pitted against such an apex predator, the odds feel genuinely stacked in favor of such a territorial beast. This is also the reason why victory feels so much sweeter, as such cathartic moments are always laced with hope.

"Alien: Earth" seems to have something grand planned for its Xenomorph(s), along with the other hybrid alien species that are very eager to eat sentient beings on Earth. Other ethical dilemmas are currently circling the show, including the question of an adult humanoid robot body housing the consciousness of former terminally ill children (and consciousness transfers never bode well, as seen in the survival horror, "Soma"). It remains to be seen whether "Alien: Earth" can balance these thematic undercurrents with its creature feature aspects, and how everything will tie in together to form a world poised to destroy and betray itself for nothing.

The first two episodes of "Alien: Earth" are currently streaming on FX.