The horrifying sci-fi franchise comes to television with acclaimed new series Alien: Earth
Since Alien’s journey to television was first announced in 2019, anticipation has been high for the latest addition to the franchise. The discovery that Noah Hawley, the man who reimagined Fargo for the small screen, would helm the new adventures of the xenomorph, made expectations soar even higher. Having already once subverted film fans’ expectations, Hawley seemed well-equipped to meet the thrills and challenges facing whoever was stepping into the shoes of Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
“An Alien movie is a two-hour survival story but, on a television show, you have to invest in a lot of characters who don’t die, and explore these characters and themes,” says Hawley. “The challenge was, ‘Let’s take the monsters out of it for a minute and think about the show. Where’s the drama that we’re investing in week to week?’ I’m not worried about the monsters. When we put the monsters in, that’s the money-back guarantee.”
Much like these legendary directors made each film their own, Hawley also wanted to explore new horizons with his version of Alien by bringing the action down to Earth. “The Alien movies are always claustrophobic, and they’re always trapped in a prison. I’m navigating some elements that the film never really had to wrestle with, leaving [behind] the Weyland-Yutani universe,” says Hawley. “There’s also an accessibility that needed to be built into the show and a challenge of balancing tone between horror and action, and a feeling of discovery that is less dread-driven.”
While extraterrestrial beasts are guaranteed, Alien: Earth continues to explore the human protagonists as the true monsters of the universe — starting with the trillionaires who own the corporations that now run the world. “What’s exciting is being able to explore themes as big as the ones that are facing us in our modern world,” says Hawley. “A technology race between different forms of immortality is a really interesting place to put the story.”
Tapping into our already rampant distrust of AI, Hawley presents the viewers with a future where machines look like humans, but for the first time human consciousness is about to be uploaded into a synthetic body. It is Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), a young trillionaire with an exceptionally short attention span, who is experimenting with merging terminally ill children with adult synthetic bodies, while entertaining the idea of weaponizing an unknown species. “We’ve got these great Peter Pan themes in the show that feel relevant to all of the Lost Boys, but also relevant to Boy Kavalier,” explains Blenkin. “Like, if you decide that you’re somebody who doesn’t need to grow up, it means that you don’t need to have any morals. Therefore, I’m justified in being a rule breaker.”
Boy Kavalier’s company, Prodigy, is the one that turns 12-year-old convalescent Marcy into superhuman adult Wendy (Sydney Chandler). How best to implement this new tech was something Hawley had given a lot of thought to. “What if adult minds can’t be placed into synthetic bodies yet because we’re too rigid in our thinking, but children can make the trip?” he muses. “Who’s more human than a child? If we’re talking about whether humanity will survive and what it means to be human, that’s the best way in.”
Surprisingly — or not, if you know both children and sentient computers — Wendy does not feel very beholden to her creators. For Chandler, playing the juxtaposition of a child’s mind in an adult body was both a challenge and a draw. “I feel like Noah was able to create a very layered, grounded character,” she says. “[With Wendy,] I would have this image of two magnets pressing up against each other, and you just can’t get them to touch as far as the mind, which is known, and this body, which is unknown territory. What’s in the middle — what’s that void? — is what she’s seeking.”
Then, of course, there are the monsters themselves. Chandler and her onscreen sibling Alex Lawther recall the first time they stared down the franchise’s most iconic character. “There is something childlike, being face-to-face with a man in a xeno suit,” says Lawther. “It’s kind of your wildest dream as a kid, to be playing with monsters.” The xenomorph in the series is played by Cameron Rodger Brown, who added an extra element to an already scary creature. “Head-to-toe in that suit he’s, like, eight feet tall and he can run fast, which I still don’t understand the mechanics of how. That was terrifying,” says Chandler. “It’s such an art to bring a suit like that to life. You’d think just put it on and there’s the monster, but his movements in it were incredible. It felt very real, and I hope that comes across on the show.”
Alien: Earth, streaming Tuesday, 5 p.m., 6:20 p.m. & 8 p.m, FX Canada; streaming on Disney+