After years of trying to revive the Alien universe in film, television has become the platform where the franchise has been given a new lease of life. Alien: Earth, created by showrunner Noah Hawley, takes us to the year 2120 - two years before the events of the original Ridley Scott film. This is no longer a cosmic isolation, but a planet Earth where corporations are going to great lengths to control life and death. And it is here that the question first arises: can the "alien" be tamed? Note that only half of the season has been released and this review is made for five episodes, with new episodes appearing every week.
| Name | Alien: Earth |
| Genre | horror, science fiction, thriller |
| Directors | Noah Hawley, Ugla Hauksdottir, Dana Gonzalez |
| Cast | Sidney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babu Seezai, Adarsh Gourav, Erana James, Jonathan Ajayi, Keith Young, Lily Newmark |
| Number of episodes | 8 |
| Year | 2025 |
| Platform | Hulu |
| Link | IMDb |
Alien: Earth opens with the story of Wendy, a girl who, due to a terminal illness, must transfer her consciousness into a synthetic body. This is not only a personal drama, but also the starting point for a new theme of the franchise: what it means to be human in a world where corporations can treat consciousness as a resource. Along with Weyland-Yutani, a new player appears for the first time in the frame – the Prodigy corporation, which experiments with hybrids and consciousness transplantation. Its presence adds layers to the conflict: there is no longer a single all-powerful company, now the world of Alien looks like an arena of corporate warfare, where everyone seeks control over the life, death and even the souls of consumers.
Events quickly go beyond the scope of individual stories. The crash of the Weyland-Yutani ship in New Siam, controlled by the Prodigy corporation, unleashes chaos: xenomorphs find themselves among the civilian population, and earthlings for the first time feel their threat not somewhere in space, but at home. This radically expands the lore - Alien: Earth shows not the closed corridors of colonial ships, but an open world where horror can infect entire megacities. And here the main intrigue is not only how to survive, but also in what new form the "alien" will take if they try to study it and even use it as a biological weapon.
The atmosphere of the first episodes balances the classic horror in the style of Ridley Scott's first film and the new vision of the showrunner of the project, Noah Hawley. Everything here works to create a sense of inevitability: the cold laboratories of Prodigy, the stuffy corridors of a wrecked ship, the panoramas of a futuristic city. Sound and silence alternate in such a way that even a simple breath or a drop of water can cause panic. But it is important that this fear gradually expands, because it is no longer just about survival in the face of an alien monster, but also about a person's collision with his own experiments, about the border between technology and the body.
This combined approach – biological horror, corporate thriller and philosophical parable – creates a basis for the transition to the technical aspect of Alien: Earth. Because it is thanks to the visual and sound solutions that the series is able to withstand this multi-layered tone and convince the viewer that we are not facing a repetition of the classic, but its continuation on a new scale.
Alien: Earth is built on two pillars – physical materiality and sonic horror. Practical effects make the xenomorphs palpably present: slime, trembling bodies, a shadow in a narrow corridor – all this does not seem like computer graphics, but as if it were actually shot in a studio, as in the days of Ridley Scott. CGI is used sparingly, primarily for new creatures, but it does not destroy the sense of weight and texture.
Special attention is paid to the scenery. Prodigy's laboratories are built as sterile, almost hospital-like boxes: white walls, cold lighting, smooth surfaces and silence, which emphasizes the soullessness of the experiments. This is a space where a person turns into an object of research. In contrast, the Weyland-Yutani environment is designed in a different aesthetic – these are industrial and rather "shabby" rooms. Metal corridors, dull green panels, red emergency light, wires and pipes protruding from the walls – all this directly refers to the Nostromo - not clinical sterility, but functional technical dirt. It is this contrast between the two corporations that forms a new multi-layeredness in the visual aspect of Alien: Earth – Prodigy personifies control, experiments and the future of humanity, while Weyland-Yutani leaves a feeling of old, crude capitalism, where everything is decided by resources and profit.
A large proportion of the characters in the series are actually children, and they become the core of the narrative. Despite the riskiness of this approach, the young actors coped with the task surprisingly convincingly: their images combine natural naivety with a new, uncharacteristic childhood burden of uncertainty about the future and the perception of a sharp change in their own body. Wendy, played by Sidney Chandler, is striking in the way her gaze combines childish vulnerability and eerie "otherness", while her interaction with the synthetic mentor Kirsch (Timothy Olyphant) emphasizes the contrast between the human and the artificial. Thanks to this, the story is perceived not as a cold horror attraction, but as a drama in which children's voices sound most authentic, because they are played by adult actors.
The color scheme clearly refers to the classics: green-black and gray-blue shades of the corridors, flickering lamplight, red emergency signals - all this creates a direct visual legacy from James Cameron's Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). Even the scenes with the new monsters are shot in semi-darkness so that the viewer does not see the whole form, but only a hint, which is always creepy. Of the recent films, only Alien: Romulus tried to tighten the style and sense of reality of the ship's equipment as in the original films.
The overall aesthetic of Alien: Earth also works towards a return to the original source: a gritty sci-fi, where every screw and vent feels like a living organism of a ship or city. This retro-futurism, combined with modern filming techniques, allows Alien: Earth to simultaneously feel like something new and a continuation and expansion of the classic canon, without a break in style.
The first two episodes of Alien: Earth set the tone for the series – tough, bloody and uncompromising. Here the viewer gets classic Alien suspense: dark corridors, emotional tension, and a xenomorph that acts quickly and ruthlessly. The third episode expands the scope, adding intrigue between corporations and emphasizing Wendy's internal conflict, who gradually realizes her own otherness. The fourth turns into a real explosion of horror and novelty: a new representative of the dangerous alien fauna appears on the scene. The scene with the sheep has already become a meme, but it is she who demonstrates the style of the series – a combination of absurdity, disgust and deep anxiety.
What is important here is not only the expansion of the bestiary, but also the discovery of new meanings. The appearance of the Prodigy corporation next to Weyland-Yutani shows that the world of Alien is no longer locked into a single all-powerful company. Now we see a corporate war, where not only xenomorphs but also human consciousness itself become objects of manipulation. This adds new layers of meaning to the universe, not rewriting the foundations, but developing the themes of exploitation and control laid down back in 1979.
This is where the main difference lies with Ridley Scott's latest films –Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). Both tried to redefine the mythology of the aliens, raise the question of their origin and rewrite the lore, making numerous biblical references. Alien: Earth chooses a different path: it does not try to rethink the original sources, but expands the context - transfers the action to Earth, adds new corporate players, weaves into the world issues of consciousness and corporeality, and the complex theme of transhumanism. As a result, the series is perceived not as a revision, but as an organic creation: it leaves the canon intact, but opens up new territories for horror.
Despite its spectacle, the series maintains an intellectual core. It asks uncomfortable questions: is a person still a person without their own body? Who is the real predator – a xenomorph or a corporation that turns its employees into laboratory material? And can fear be a tool of control when it is used not by monsters in the dark, but by people in white coats?
The first five episodes of Alien: Earth demonstrate that the series has found its own voice in a familiar universe. It brings back the feel of the classics through atmosphere and production, but at the same time adds new ideas – from the question of Wendy's identity to the emergence of Prodigy, a corporation that changes the balance of power in the world. It's a story where horror goes hand in hand with philosophy, and the xenomorphs once again feel like a real threat, not just an icon of the genre.
It’s technically a prequel to the first film, so it’s interesting to see where it leads. The second half of the season promises to shift the focus from asking questions to finding answers: who will be the real enemy, what role does Wendy play in the relationship between man and alien, and how will this plot connect to the well-known story of Ellen Ripley and the Nostromo. At this point, the series looks like a confident and ambitious attempt to bring Alien back to form – not through nostalgia, but through an exploration of what else this universe hides.