It’s a shame that much of Alien: Earth’s plotting is classic horror, passing-around-the-idiot-ball kinda stuff, because its character work is fascinating.
Nowhere is this divide easier to see than the show’s focus: the hybrids.
The whole concept of children’s minds implanted into synthetic bodies is as compelling as it is abhorrent. From the jump, we are met with themes of consciousness and selfhood. As their memories & personalities are transferred into synthetic bodies, the children’s frail human forms are made to hold flowers, as if they’ve been embalmed for a wake. The first thing Boy’s new creations see is their own funeral, yet in his own arrogance he thinks he can keep them placated with bedtime stories. These kids are forced not only to grow up, but to grapple with the fuckin Ship of Theseus before they even hit robot puberty.
Alongside this, Alien: Earth muses on transhumanism and the different avenues each corporation takes to pursue it:
-The synths, cold and emotionless, but containing within them the complete repository of human knowledge and achievement.
-Cyborgs, born of the human desire for the power and versatility of machines, without having to let go of the soul that sets them apart from tools.
-And the hybrids, smack dab in the middle, with all the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind shoved into a near-immortal superhuman body.
All three of these approaches are contrasted with each other and brought into conflict constantly… yet they all are inextricably intertwined with questions of ownership and control, since none of these new beings can truly be free from the corporate interests that created them.
But despite all of this theming… first and foremost, it feels like the writers just thought this would be a clever way to get away with killing some kids. I can see the pitch: it’s a perennial horror frustration that all the characters act stupid, and yet, they have to in order to move the plot forward, right? Voila – just make all the characters literal children in the bodies of adults, and suddenly it’s in-character for them to make such bad decisions*! Plus, it solves the problem of an audience inured to the shock value of your franchise. Chestbursters are blasé in 2025, sure, but what about a chestburster killing a parental figure right in front of a ten year old so you can watch them acquire lifelong trauma in real time??
*though this particular angle falls flat once the adult characters start acting exactly as stupid as the children. looking at you, Episode 5
Honestly, I have a laundry list of issues like this with Alien: Earth. I can’t believe that there’s finally an Alien story set on Earth, and we still spend a third of the series in cramped spaceship interiors. I’m not a fan of the full flashback episode, taking time away from compelling plot threads with the hybrids to show an Alien fan-film we already got the gist of in Episode 1. I’m not a fan of the cinematography and its constant superimposed shots – it’s a crutch that seems to figure boring cuts don’t matter as long as you stack two or three of them on top of each other. I truly despised the corny fucking rock outros, which managed to ruin the vibe each and every time, no matter how good the ending was otherwise. And the more I watched Marcy turn into a literal god, ordering around a xemonorf like a trained puppy and magically controlling door hinges with her mind, the more I became convinced the showrunners have no fucking clue what they’re doing.
this probably gets the "Most Baffling Out-of-context Screenshot" award
And yet… the show has a bedrock of compelling character writing and performances that kept me coming back. Marcy and Joe’s back & forth was frustrating and believable: two estranged siblings joyous to have reunited, but struggling to cope with how much they’ve each changed since they last met. Boy Kavalier is despicable in such a pointed, nuanced way I can’t help but respect the performance.
Morrow is a powerhouse, at once deranged and calm, manic and stolid. I did a full 360 on his backstory, too. It’s interesting from the get-go: a man out of time, thrust 65 years into a future where he knows no one, whose company’s fiercest competitor didn’t even exist when he left. Then, we’re hit with a dead daughter twist that doesn’t work for me at all. You knowingly left her, bud! You’re heartbroken that she died while you were on the sixty-five year mission you signed up for? How did you not reconcile this already??
After some reflection, though, I think his disillusionment is different. Morrow’s plan was never to return to her – it was to make a sacrifice he could be proud of. To run away and be absent, but feel like he was doing so for someone else’s benefit, that he was justified in doing so. Now, with his own future already written off and no one left as the beneficiary for his sacrifice, what could possibly keep driving such a man forward? This lack, this hollowness, forms the core of Morrow’s character.
And Kirsh, my beloved Kirsh. At first I thought he was just bafflingly sinister – why do these humans keep this guy around when all he does is constantly remind them, to their face, how frail and inferior their species is?
The more I watched him, though, the more I found him to be one of the most unique takes on an AI I’ve seen. He’s not stiff and machinelike, and he’s not the servile, three-laws-of-robotics type. Neither is he the flavor of android who feels a tangible emotional disconnect, spending his efforts trying to recapture a humanity he’ll never have.
No, Kirsh genuinely feels like an alien, unreadable and with motivations inscrutable to those around him – a truly convincing take on androids as a new branch from humanity’s tree, a wholly separate entity that was born from us, but which we will never quite be able to understand.