I'm Beyond Impressed By How Well Alien: Earth Fits With Ridley Scott's Classic, But Can't Get Over One Scene's Completely Avoidable Mistake

Slight spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the series premiere of Alien: Earth on FX or via Hulu subscription, so be warned!

Even though fans had wait through an extended hyper-sleep to finally reach Alien: Earth’s highly anticipated premiere on FX and Hulu, it arrived with all of the expected intergalactic pomp, grandeur and acclaim that I’d hoped for. Noah Hawley’s efforts have (at least so far) been well worth the efforts. After just two episodes, I’m nearly ready to call this my favorite horror TV show on the 2025 premiere schedule, months before Stranger Things’ final season arrives.

The new series is shockingly faithful to one of the best horror movies of all time, Ridley Scott’s seminal 1979 classic Alien, arriving earlier in the franchise’s complicated timeline than the events that turned Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley into an unforgettable scream queen. Despite the extreme amount of attention to detail on display, however, one premiere scene features a rather baffling mistake that completely took me out of what was an otherwise highly suspenseful moment. And I just don’t understand how nobody pointed it out and fixed it before it aired.

Alien: Earth Nails The Looks Vibes And Set Designs Of Ridley Scott's Alien

Making modern-day prequels to projects from decades past can be a tricky endeavor, since current technology and filmmaking techniques are far advanced compared to past efforts. But Alien: Earth being set just two years before Alien actually words for the show's advantage, with the cleaned-up USCSS Maginot  showing what the Nostromo would have looked like on its best days, just without all of the otherworldly specimens locked behind glass.

The whole opening sequence purposefully mirrored the way the film introduced core characters like Ripley, Dallas and Ash, with everyone gathered around to engage in eating, drinking, smoking and touching base on the mission status. It's wild how none of these new characters are total replicas of the Nostromo crew, but still feel as if they would have all passed each other walking down Weyland-Yutani's hallways or whatever.

The distinct Alien vibes carry over into some of the characters habitating the Prodigy Corporation's Neverland research island, perhaps most notably through Timothy Olyphant's synthetic Kirsh sharing traits with Ian Holm's Ash. This part of the story shares more in common with James Cameron's Aliens in terms of following aggro, gun-toting soldiers, but the way the horrifying leech creatures are introduced is somewhat reminiscent to the gory shock of seeing the facehuggers in action for the first time.

All the superb attention to detail throughout the first two episodes might have made it easier for most to ignore a glaring visual error in the opener, but it unfortunately bugged me enough that I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of my viewing experience.

How Did This Reflection Mistake Make it All The Way To The Final Edit?

Much like the Nostromo's crew, the first batch of spacefarers we meet in Alien: Earth meet similarly gruesome fates, though it isn't initially revealed how the Xenomorph and other creatures escape their captive states. What's soon made clear, however, is Babou Ceesay's cyborg security officer Morrow is the only survivor left to presumably help take down the numerous deadly threats unleashed by the ship's crash landing.

The scene in which he's alerting the ship's "Mother" about the rest of the crew getting slaughtered is extremely intense, with a gnarly Xenomorph attempting to break into the room. But any excitement and second-hand fear I might have felt during that bit was completely upended by the computer screen's reflection on Morrow's face.

For seemingly logical reason that I can possibly think of, the monitor's "Crew Status: Crew Dead" text is reflected very noticeably off of Morrow's face, but isn't actually mirrored text. The words are just seen forward and normal, and read the same way they do on the screen, as if they were actually bouncing off of another reflective surface before appearing on Morrow's face.

Not the case, though. I even tried to justify it in my head right away, telling myself that Noah Hawley just wanted the "Crew Dead" message to carry over, and that the text was just superimposed on the actor's face. But that wasn't the case either.

How did this premiere get so many sci-fi elements magnificently right, and yet managed to flub it up when it came elementary science? All of that text had to have been added in post-production, since a practical reflection would be backwards, so it's mind-boggling that no one stepped in at any point in the process to say, "Hey, if we're going to add this unnecessary visual, shouldn't we turn it around first?"

Already, I had minor issues with the show's throwback green font being blurrier than necessary when identifying locations and timelines, but at least that's an aesthetic choice, and not an attention-disrupting gaffe. I'll never understand, though, how the premiere made it through so many edits and test screenings and promotional screenings before it landed on FX and Hulu, and the face reflection faux pas survived them all.

I'm cool with Hawley & Co. tweaking certain storyline details to make this storyline work, but have to draw a line when any show asks me to forget how mirrors work. Thankfully, that kind of a mistake can't fully take away from all the other horror and sci-fi excellence on display, even if it sticks in my saliva-slathered craw for far longer than desired.

Alien: Earth drops new episodes every Tuesday on FX and Hulu.