📺 Noah Hawley has accomplished something impressive with Alien: Earth — he’s taken one of cinema’s most beloved sci-fi horror properties and transformed it into television that feels both faithful to its origins and refreshingly innovative. After it aired, this new addition to the Alien universe got the seal of approval from the legendary Ridley Scott — who directed the original 1979 film — even after the (divisive) season finale. Scott praised how the showrunner has “embraced these trademark Alien elements while bringing something new for the fans.”

Taking place in 2120, shortly before the original film’s events, the series unfolds in a dystopian future where mega-corporations control the universe, battling for dominance through three competing immortality technologies: cyborgs, synths, and hybrids. When a research spacecraft crashes to Earth with dangerous extraterrestrial cargo, it intersects with Prodigy Corporation’s radical experiment: the inaugural human-synthetic hybrids, created by transferring children’s minds into fully-grown synthetic forms.

What is surprising (and refreshing) about Alien: Earth is its choice to look beyond the titular xenomorph. While the series expects viewers to understand the franchise’s basics, it concentrates on exploring consciousness and identity when human minds inhabit artificial bodies. Sydney Chandler gives a compelling performance as Wendy, the initial hybrid, whose innocence combined with emerging abilities creates a genuinely fresh protagonist for the series. The hybrids maintain their youthful behaviour patterns, which makes them simultaneously charming and disturbing.

Hawley gathers a remarkable cast, with Timothy Olyphant delivering dry, almost bored menace as the synthetic Kirsh, and Samuel Blenkin creating a disturbingly authentic tech entrepreneur antagonist in Boy Kavalier, with just the right amount of irritating brilliance. Babou Ceesay’s survival-focused cyborg Morrow particularly stands out, all cold pragmatism, making choices you might hate but can’t quite argue with.

That said, things do get bumpy. The pacing throughout the season is inconsistent, the narrative sometimes becoming so opaque it’s difficult to follow, missing the clear storytelling drive that might guide viewers through its more confusing stretches. The divisive season finale is the weakest link of a gripping season. After eight episodes of building tension and raising questions, very little actually resolves. Major storylines just… stop, clearly waiting for a potential second season.

But despite these issues, you’ll keep watching. The show raises genuinely thought-provoking questions about consciousness and identity, all that fit well within the Alien universe. What does it mean to be human if your mind is running on artificial hardware? Who’s a more terrifying monster — the alien that kills because it’s hungry, or the corporation that experiments on dying children? These aren’t just rhetorical flourishes — the show actually explores them through its characters and plot.

Alien: Earth doesn’t always know how to balance its philosophical ambitions with its horror roots, but there’s real vision here, and Hawley clearly has ideas about where it should go. It’s messy in places, but it’s the kind of mess that comes from trying something genuinely different with familiar material. If you’re willing to sit with some ambiguity and trust that the show has a plan — even when it’s not obvious what that will be — Alien: Earth offers something rare: a franchise expansion that actually expands, rather than just repeating what worked before.

WHERE TO WATCH- Alien: Earth is streaming on Disney+. You can catch the trailer on YouTube (runtime: 2:23).

Tags: