The second episode of Alien: Earth ended on not just a cliffhanger; it was a cliff-jumper. A xenomorph grabbed Joe (Alex Lawther) and jumped off a ledge, sending his sister Wendy (Sydney Chandler) on a quest to rescue him. That’s where episode three picked up, and the showdown resulted in not just a fun, gross action set piece but also some tantalizing teases of where things will go the rest of the season.
Episode three of Alien: Earth is called “Metamorphosis,” and while that certainly could refer to a few big reveals at the end of the episode, it also fits into the overall show itself. This episode marks the end of the inciting spaceship crash and slides the story to a new location, while also introducing some surprising new storylines. Basically, this is the episode where Alien: Earth began its very own metamorphosis.
To set that up, the episode began in the crashed Maginot as Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) continues to download the ship’s files and learn about what happened on board. Nibs (Lily Newmark) and Curly (Erana James) start to show frustrations over their hybrid nature, and Prodigy leader Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) tells Kirsh that he and the children are no longer on a rescue mission. They are on a collection mission and are to bring all the alien species home. He’s not going to let Weyland-Yutani have all of this mysterious cargo that literally fell into his city. Which, of course, we know is a very, very bad idea. But there kind of wouldn’t be a show without it.
After his fall at the hands of the xenomorph, Wendy finds Joe stuck to the back of a tractor-trailer. As she attempts to rescue him, he tells her it’s a trap, which is confusing. Why would the xenomorph want to trap Wendy? Is it really smart enough to do that? The answer to the second question is yes, as the xeno peeks its head into the trailer and then starts to stalk them from the roof. Wendy takes the battle to him as she stabs up into the ceiling, drawing out the xeno’s acid blood. Mayhem ensues, and just as things go quiet, the xeno stabs and grabs Joe out of the trailer and into the large hangar.
“It’s a trap!” – FX
For the second time in two episodes, Joe seems done for. But this time, Wendy takes a hook and locks it into the xeno’s inner jaw (which, as we’ve seen in other Alien movies, looks like another xenomorph). She proceeds to drag the xeno by its innards, which was just so beyond cool. Something we’ve never quite seen before. Wendy is dominating this creature, but just as she tries to trap it, it drags her into the trap with it. Again, chaos ensues, and when Joe opens the door, we see Wendy has sliced the xeno’s head clean off. But it got her too, and the scene ends with a truly unforgettable shot of the xeno, Wendy, and Joe all lying on the ground, dead or unconscious.
Meanwhile, Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) is still waiting for Wendy with the xeno eggs when Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) shows up. You can tell these two are very close, but their playful banter gets stopped quickly when Morrow (Babou Ceesay) interrupts. Last we saw Morrow, he’d captured and lost the xeno. Now he’s trying to right his wrongs. Morrow has a tense discussion with the two hybrids that piques his curiosity about what, exactly, they are. He slyly places some kind of device onto Slightly. Later, Morrow will talk to his boss, Yutani, and tell her he wants to retrieve the creatures on his own, and he’s found a way onto the Prodigy island.
With that, Alien: Earth closed the chapter of its story in the Prodigy city of New Siam. The company has cleaned up what they can from the crash, extracted all the alien creatures, and brought them back to the secret island of Neverland. As they arrive, Boy looks like a kid on Christmas morning with all the wild new species he’s now in control of. He has no problem with the fact that the others think risking a decade of research on human hybrids just to study these mysterious beings isn’t worth it. Later, when he stops by the lab for a closer look, a xeno egg starts to open, so Kirsh quickly ushers him out. Kirsh then explains, for those who might not know, exactly how a xeno comes to life. Boy responds by saying only synthetics are now allowed in the lab.
Running to a xeno. – FX
Speaking of synthetics, as Wendy is out of commission in the medical bay, Alien: Earth got to spend some time with a few of the other hybrids. First is Slightly, who we previously saw talking to Morrow on the ship. We soon learn that Morrow implanted a direct line of communication into the hybrid and is now deviously trying to get on his good side. Similarly, Curly goes to see Boy to plead her case for being his favorite of the group. She explains how she feels so much smarter and more ambitious than Wendy, who only cares about her brother. Boy seems open to the idea but is most interested in the fact that she has these feelings in the first place. Nibs, meanwhile, is looking increasingly traumatized by the fact that the eyeball octopus creature tried to pop into her body.
Eventually, Wendy wakes up. She hears something and starts to stumble through the complex towards it. As that happens, we watch as Kirsh does something every Alien movie has always talked about but never actually done: experiment on xenos on Earth. It takes some doing, but eventually, he extracts the Facehugger from the egg and then goes further to remove the xenomorph zygote from the Facehugger. The one that would’ve been implanted in someone had the Facehugger gotten out. Somehow though, the agony of this procedure extends beyond just the one Facehugger. The other eggs seem to react as well, as does Wendy. It’s almost as if she can feel the pain of the xenomorphs, and, eventually, the stress of it makes her pass out again.
Finally, Kirsh takes the xenomorph zygote and drops it in a tube with a human lung. Wendy’s brother Joe’s human lung, to be precise. Quickly, it zooms right in, ready to become a Chestburster. Prodigy will soon have its very own, fully functional xenomorph.
When is a machine not a machine? – FX
After that exciting Wendy versus xenomorph action scene, this week’s Alien: Earth was really about showing us where things are going. Wendy has an odd connection with the aliens. The other hybrids are starting to show cracks in their relationship. Morrow is trying to make friends with Slightly for some reason. And, most importantly, all of the alien creatures that Weyland-Yutani acquired on its ship for the past 65 years have now been claimed by Prodigy. That’s a lot of story to explore as we move ahead.
Assorted Musings
- Why do we think the xenomorph tried to trap Wendy? Was it because it viewed her as a foe that couldn’t be defeated by strength alone? Or was it something more, like that it knew it had a connection to her, as teased later in the episode?
- The man in the black rubber suit spraying the walls of Prodigy was back again this week. And, this time, we got to see him. He’s an older Asian man who likes to smoke. Why does this matter? We still don’t know, but all three episodes have shown him for some reason.
- Did you notice that Boy Kavalier seemed to be playing with Lego when Curly came to visit him? I don’t think there’s any larger meaning behind this, but I just love that even in the future, trillionaires still love to play with Lego.
- When Morrow is talking to Yutani, two big things happen. One, we get a sense of time, as he was expecting to talk to her grandmother. And second, he quickly dropped the information that the Maginot had been sabotaged. How? By whom?
- After their encounter with Morrow, Slightly and Smee get questioned by Atom Eins (Adrian Edmondson), Boy’s right-hand man. He doesn’t learn much, but he does reveal that Prodigy records everything that the hybrids see, which they don’t like. That feels like a key piece of information.
What did you think of Alien: Earth episode three? Let us know below.
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