The Alien franchise has always been terrifying, but each horrific Xenomorph encounter comes with a silver lining: Hey, at least it didn’t happen on Earth! (Aside from the Alien vs. Predator films, of course.)
However, FX’s upcoming Alien: Earth does away with that silver lining entirely, asking what would happen if Xenomorphs arrived on Earth. The short answer: nothing good!
Created by Noah Hawley (Fargo), this prequel series kicks off when a Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel crash lands in Earth’s Prodigy City, named after the Prodigy Corporation, one of Weyland-Yutani’s rivals. A space ship smashing into a major metropolis is already a catastrophe by itself, but things go from catastrophic to “oh no, the world is screwed” once it turns out the ship was carrying not one, not two, but five hostile alien life forms from the deepest reaches of space. Among them is the Xenormorph, along with new creatures guaranteed to give you nightmares.
While the crash is a disaster for the entire world, Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) views it as an opportunity for profit. He wants to take control of whatever Weyland-Yutani found, so he sends a squad of soldiers to investigate the ship.
But these soldiers aren’t ordinary humans. They’re hybrids: humanoid robots who’ve been implanted with the consciousness of sick human children. Yes, that’s different from Alien‘s synthetics, which have artificial consciousness in addition to a robot body.
As the soldiers, led by Wendy (Sydney Chandler), close in on the crashed USCSS Maginot, the stage is set for an epic showdown between aliens and synthetics. For Earth’s sake, let’s hope the synthetics come out on top.
Produced by Alien director Ridley Scott, Alien: Earth also stars Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson, David Rysdahl, Essie Davis, Lily Newmark, Erana James, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Kit Young, Diêm Camille, Moe Bar-El, and Sanda Yi Sencindiver.
Alien: Earth premieres Aug. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on Hulu and FX.
