Alien: Earth Forgets How Its Own World Works In The Season 1 Finale

"Alien: Earth" season 1 has come to an end, and it sticks the landing on practically every level. We get some a great synth vs. cyborg showdown between series standouts Morrow (Babou Ceesay) and Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), a growing Xenomorph squad loyal to Wendy (Sydney Chandler), hybrids taking over the Prodigy Neverland facility, an escaped eyeball monster, and an impending standoff with a massive deployment of Weyland-Yutani soldiers.

It all points to an exciting season 2, but there is one thing about the season 1 finale that I just can't square with the rest of it. And sadly, yes, I'm complaining once again about the worst character on "Alien: Earth," Boy Kavalier.

The so-called "boy genius" is the Peter Pan of the show's extended fairy tale metaphor — a corporate overlord who wears pajamas to work, walks around in bare feet, and treats everyone around him with the disdain of a self-declared, well, prodigy. All season, I've waited for a bit more nuance to push me to like this character, or at the very least, a proper explanation of how someone so young — less than half the age of the Maginot voyage that brought back the Xenomorph to Earth — managed to build an empire that runs roughly one fifth of the planet.

The answer we finally get in the season finale isn't just disappointing, it flies in the face of the very rules the show has established around its cyberpunk world. Boy Kavalier built Prodigy by ... being born with a big brain and having a can-do attitude. Yup, that's right: In the world where everyone is born into indentured servitude, where all capital belongs to the corporations, and where individual business ventures take 65 years, the ol' bootstrap strategy apparently still works if you're a goofy lil' goober.

At the end of the season, Boy Kavalier regales the hybrids with the story of his ascension — how at the age of six, he built his first synth, who he then ordered to kill his cruel, factory worker father. Already, we're in fantasyland territory. Sheer intelligence must be matched with education for something as technically advanced as building an artificial human, yet Kavalier managed the feat while barely old enough to attend school? In a working-class household where his father toiled away in a corporate factory every day? If that's the case, where did he acquire the resources to build an entire synth, let alone the knowhow? How did he hide such a project, or even carry the pieces, while still a child?

It doesn't make any sense, but the next stage of his explanation is even more ludicrous. He says that after leaving with his new synth dad, he used the android as a front to begin building his empire, obfuscating the fact that all the strings were actually being pulled by a prepubescent child. Again, though, we smash headfirst into the problem of cyberpunk. This is a world where every material resource has been privatized by a handful of corporations. Never mind the fact that we haven't seen Kavalier do a single bit of proper science himself all season, and that all of Prodigy's experiments are being led instead by Kirsh, Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), or Arthur (David Rysdahl). 

The idea that a toddler could day-trade their way to owning a fifth of Earth is more than absurd, it's an insult to the intelligence of every viewer and a slap in the face to the very politics upon which the show has built itself.

The only way I can reconcile Kavalier's story with the reality that "Alien: Earth" has shown us time and time again is with the idea that he must be lying. He's a naturally untrustworthy person virtually blasted off his own pretentious Kool-Aid. He believes himself to be both the smartest person in the world and destined to rule the human race, by his own words. Narcissism to that degree is the natural breeding ground for a serial liar. It's far more likely, by the rules of the world that have been established on the show, that he got his money and corporate position elsewhere.

The problem, though, is that the show gives us no textual reason to believe his story is untrue. We don't see him caught in a lie elsewhere in the season, or hear details about a conflicting origin story. He's ancillary enough to the main story of "Alien: Earth" that a season 2 "twist" revealing his deception would have little impact, other than making viewers ask why the show bothered lying to them in the first place. For that reason, I'm forced to believe for the time being that this is, in fact, the true story of Boy Kavalier.

As I said at the start, pretty much every other piece of the "Alien: Earth" finale makes me excited for the next installment. It's just a shame that from start to finish, the main villain hasn't been able to keep up with the quality of the rest of the show.