Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Alien: Earth episode "In Space, No One..." Stream it with a Hulu subscription, and read at your own risk!
Alien: Earth continued to prove why it's an acid-oozing gem of the 2025 TV schedule with another great episode that evoked the plot, aesthetics and tone of Ridley Scott's original movie. Audiences witnessed the overarching events leading to the Maginot's crash-landing on Earth, with billionaire Boy Kavalier revealed to be responsible for the sabotage in a surprise twist, as he intended all along for it to end up in his territory.
Creator Noah Hawley spoke to THR about the big episode and drilled down on the reveal about Kavalier specifically. I love the larger message he was attempting to convey in subverting the typical tropes we see time and again when it comes to how fictional billionaire tech bosses are portrayed in fiction. Hawley spoke to how that applies to Boy Kavalier, saying:
I don’t look at our tech billionaires and think these guys are orchestrating some master plan. I think you have a lot of ADHD billionaires with impulse control issues. And we always look to impose a certain logic on our fiction that doesn’t apply to real life. For me, it’s a way to tie everything together, and as the show plays out in the rest of the season, we find that the boy genius is not a terribly thoughtful and calculating guy.
That last sentence echoed my thoughts episodes prior when Boy used the Hybrids to infiltrate the ship and recover the species intended initially to go to the Weyland-Yutani corporation. That said, he didn't have the heads up about how poorly things went for Ellen Ripley when she took on Xenomorphs in the best sci-fi movie of all time, as this series is set before the Ridley Scott classic.
Noah Hawley mentioned the point brought up by others at Prodigy Corporation when Kavalier suggested infiltrating the ship. The company was already just weeks out from revealing a major update for its immortality project, having successfully transferred the human consciousness into that of a synth. He didn't need to sabotage the ship to pursue another big project just for the sake of sating his curiosity, which the creator says is the whole point there:
He has all these ideas. He chases all of them at the same time. And he has never failed. So he thinks failure is impossible. He’s trying to launch this immortality product, so why would he do this other stuff? He thinks, ‘Oh, I could do everything.'
The billionaire believes he can do it all, to the point that he's ignoring the obvious red flags with the hybrids as the story continues. Wendy is capable of modifying her programming to do things she was not intended to do. Nibs is claiming she's pregnant and showing signs of violence, and Slightly has Morrow communicating with him inside his mind.
This could all go very wrong, and all at the same time. Perhaps if Boy Kavalier and Prodigy corporation were zeroed in on the hybrids or the species they captured individually, they might have time to get ahead of the impending disaster that seems to be on the way. Hawley likened Kavalier's attitude to that of contemporary, unnamed billionaires, suggesting perhaps that their hand is in too many pots:
It’s a statement, on some level, about the hubris we’re seeing around us by people who think they can go to space, re-invent travel, drill in the earth and enter politics. They’re doing all of these at the same time when none of them are necessarily being done well. They’re just all being done a lot.
Commentary about real-life figures aside, I like that Alien: Earth provides a story in which the potential villain is the billionaire who may be in over his head. It's a great juxtaposition with another famous billionaire in pop culture, Bruce Wayne.
Wayne Enterprises has its hands in things all over Gotham, all for the good of the city, while Bruce simultaneously uses his fortune to masquerade as Batman and protect the city by night. We assume Batman is doing all of this and it's resulting in good, but in reality, would it play out that way?
I think it's even fair to say that the argument could be made that Bruce Wayne is no better than Boy Kavalier, and it reflects in the fact that violent crime never stops in Gotham. And yet, the story doesn't often reflect Wayne as a failure in that it seems Alien: Earth could end up making Kavalier, with his hubris ultimately leading to his downfall. Perhaps Noah Hawley will inspire the plot for The Batman 2!
For now, I'll continue to enjoy Alien: Earth and watch new episodes as they arrive on FX on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. As someone who jumped in, having only watched a few movies before it, I now feel compelled to binge every single movie because I don't want this limited series to end.
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