Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't yet watched Alien: Earth's opening act on FX or with a Hulu subscription.
After having the release of Alien: Earth circled on the 2025 TV premiere schedule, especially after the high praise from critics, I caught the first two episodes on Tuesday evening, and have to say, I was really impressed with its debut. There’s enough to say about Noah Hawley’s Alien series that it would be pretty handy to have a smaller mouth inside of my normal one, despite any inherent communication issues. But what I want to really talk about is why it wasn’t this franchise's Xenomorphs that kept me on edge the most.
Alien: Earth Introduced These Terrifying Ticks That Had Me Shuffling In My Seat
Alien: Earth takes place two years prior to the original Alien movie on the franchise’s timeline, and instantly I felt like I was being transported to Ridley Scott’s original vision as the series started on a Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel that ultimately crash lands on Earth with at least one Xenomorph and a bunch of other specimens on board. Of course, horrific scenes involving the Xenomorph(which were actually practically shot) were present and accounted for, but it was one of the new alien creatures that had my skin crawling.
We're introduced to these nasty little nightmares that look like ticks. When two Prodigy soldiers come on board after the vessel's crash landing, they are caught and tied up to a pole by Morrow (the cyborg from the ship’s crew). Then enter these bug-like aliens attaching themselves to their veins in the neck and sucking all the blood out of their bodies. As a result, they become much bigger, and these creepy things filled with human blood, and it's just gross and terrifying. Seriously, I want to jump around and swat ferociously at my arms and legs just writing about them.
The ticks aren’t the only new aliens in Alien: Earth, either, even if they're ones that could be hiding in your shoes and cereal boxes, just waiting for your blood. There are quite a few others to learn more about, and I think it’s really smart of the series to up the stakes with unexpected kills from aliens after so many Alien movies.
I'm Especially Stressed About The Group Of Hybrids Introduced In The Premiere Episodes
One of the major strengths of the Alien movies from the beginning has been the commentary on human nature through its science fiction lens. This very much continues in Alien: Earth with the plotline regarding Prodigy’s experiment on “Neverland” research island. In the series, its CEO and trillionaire Boy Kavalier has created a program where a group of kids who had terminal illnesses, like cancer, get a second chance at life through their consciousness transferred into a synthetic body, in a new Alien term called a Hybrid.
I’m absolutely locked in to the storyline of Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, who is the first Hybrid. When her brother, Joe Hermit, becomes part of the rescue team of the vessel, she insists that her and the other Hybrids go to aid in rescue. It wasn’t long in the mission before I started getting anxious about these children being placed in these stressful situations, just because now they are in a form that doesn’t easily break.
I can tell Alien: Earth is going to have me really thinking about what it means to be human as these children-turned-Hybrids continue to run around. There’s already interesting implications around whether they are still “human” or because they are in synthetic bodies, no longer having hormones running through their bodies, if they will become more like Cyborgs or Synths. So long as they stay away from my neck blood, however, we can be copacetic.
Anyway, I’ll definitely be catching the next episode, coming out next Tuesday, but count me satisfactorily stressed over this new entry of Alien already!
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