Spoilers below for the Season 1 finale of Alien: Earth, so be warned if you haven’t yet streamed it via Hulu subscription or Disney+ subscription.
After eight dense episodes exploring the foibles of humanity in the face of superlative technology and extraterrestrial beings, Alien: Earth is now in TV limbo, awaiting to learn its fate from FX execs. The franchise’s first small-screen entry has been a rousing success by and large, with earning praise from Sigourney Weaver, Stephen King and plenty of other genre hounds. Some viewers, however, have been more eager to complain that the show puts more emphasis on the “Earth” than the “Alien.”
As it often goes with horror and sci-fi projects based around beloved iconography, Alien: Earth has bumped against certain audience members for pushing Xenomorphs to the background in order to focus more on Boy Kavalier and other power-hungry corporations, as well as the myriad synths, cyborgs and other not-quite humans milling about. (You know, because the first Alien movie was only Xenomorphs and no humans…or not.)
Creator Noah Hawley spoke with THR about why he ended the season in such a way, and whether or not there are plans for the future, and his explanation also manages to justify why the series isn’t just a giant, saliva-covered alien free-for-all. When asked whether he's allowing for his longterm plan to be influenced by audience responses to Season 1, Hawley answered with:
I think there’s an artistic answer to that, and there’s a commercial answer to that, right? Obviously, I had to plan and execute a story that that’s going someplace. And then, this whole thing is a proof-of-concept experiment to see if enough people on the planet want to watch an Alien TV show to justify the expense of a second and third season of an Alien TV show. So for me, I never hedged my bets.
That's really all the explanation one should need, as it makes total sense. Had Noah Hawley & Co. chosen to go a different and more alien-heavy route with Season 1, all the extra CGI and effects required could very easily have sent the show over budget to the point where FX and Hulu would be unable to renew it without taking a steep financial loss. Already, the series looks expensive as hell, and not just from all the excellent digital work on the eyeball creature and other lifeforms, but also in quasi-recreating the central location from Ridley Scott's 1979 film and all the completely unique settings.
Sure, it may seem naive in retrospect to think that audiences wouldn't want to watch Alien: Earth, but there are few guarantees in today's pop culture, even for high-quality hubs like FX. I doubt all the Powers That Be would have been jumping to spend millions of extra dollars to bring more aliens into it without any confirmation that viewers would show up.
That said, now that the season has been unleashed, and it's clear that there IS a dedicated fanbase out there for the sci-fi thriller, Hawley seems ready to go forward with the story from where he chose to leave things off, saying that despite Wendy & Co. seemingly securing a victory in the end, that everything could change for them in an instant. He continued:
This is not a closed-ended season. This chapter is closed, but Yutani troops are landing. The balance of power has shifted. These children have no idea what’s coming. The last line of, “Now we rule” is triumphant and uplifting. But cut to 10 minutes later … what is going to be happening? So I like that it has that real-time urgency to it.
I think another major reason to limit the amount of Xenomorphs and other species is because this first season had to spin a few of the creatures into actual characters, albeit untraditional ones. The eyeball monster quickly became a fan favorite, especially while embedded in the head of that gnarly sheep, and I doubt that would have happened if there were 20-30 of them swinging around.
Similarly, the show had to establish Wendy's communicative connection with the quickly growing Xenomorph, and even with the visual distinctions, it still might have been confusing for viewers to see a variety of phallic-headed beasts stalking about on the island, with only one of them having an actual storyline to fall back on.
I'm also unsure why anyone thinks the Xenomorphs are the most interesting things about the Alien franchise, anyway. They don't talk or do anything particularly interesting beyond mauling people, and having two mouths can only get you so far. So if this show was just weekly episodes of Xenomorphs obliterating random victims without any exposition, I'd certainly still watch, but it wouldn't exactly demand my interest for very long.
Which isn't to say I think the show was perfect, and I'm legitimately still bothered by a gripe I voiced back in the series premiere. But I was probably more impressed with it than any Alien franchise entries since James Cameron's sequel, so consider me a lock for Season 2's viewership.
While Alien: Earth no longer has any new installments for the 2025 TV schedule, stay tuned for any renewal updates, and re-stream all episodes on Hulu and Disney+.
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