The seemingly inexhaustible supply of Alien-related projects continues with a TV prequel where xenomorphs come to Earth
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, I distinctly remember three rumors spreading around at school:
- Mikey from the Life cereal commercials died from eating Pop Rocks and Coke
- In the next Friday the 13th movie, Freddy Kruger from the Elm Street movies would fight Jason
- In the next Alien movie, the aliens would come to Earth
I had no reason to doubt any of these because they all came from the same source, a kid named Gavin, who I just assumed was plugged into the Hollywood grapevine of celebrity deaths and production deals despite being an 11-year-old boy living 2,500 miles from Los Angeles. And one of those rumors eventually came true: Freddy and Jason did fight each other in a movie in 2003.
Mikey, thankfully, didn’t burst from eating candy and soda simultaneously, but Gavin’s third rumor is finally sort of happening: the aliens from Alien are coming to Earth, only it’s a TV series and not a movie.
The show is coming to FX and Hulu this summer and is called Alien: Earth, which feels like a working title they eventually just decided to stick with. The cast includes Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, and Samuel Blenkin. Here’s the teaser:
Watch On
We don’t really see a whole lot—it’s a teaser, after all—and most of it is from the alien’s perspective so we can’t really tell what form the xenomorph is taking. But I’m getting a real flying insect vibe, as it flits and bangs around the narrow corridors of a spaceship like a wasp that’s gotten trapped in your car. As it bonks against the window and the perspective switches to an exterior camera we get a few blurry frames of what could be a giant wasp-like body—multiple legs and translucent wings? Or am I just imagining things because a wasp stung me in the face a few months ago?
Weirdly, the show is somehow a prequel to the original Alien film from 1979, which means the xenomorphs got to Earth before Ellen Ripley’s first encounter with the acid-blooded creatures in space, though maybe Alien: Earth will provide a reason as to why Ripley’s ship The Nostromo was sent to investigate the mysterious signal on LV-426 in the first place. Or has that already been answered in one of the other seemingly unending Alien-related properties? I’ve fallen way behind on the lore. I never even finished playing Alien: Isolation.
At least we know how the xenomorphs got to Earth, which is by infecting and crashing a spaceship, which I think is how they always get everywhere. Gotta hand it to ’em: they stick with what works.
