With its third episode, Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth continues to subvert expectations and cut through the noise of franchise fodder, instead finding something distinct and singular within the confines of the long-running series.
Titled “Metamorphosis,” the episode is directed by Dana Gonzales with a script by Hawley and frequent Fargo collaborator and Alfred Hitchcock Presents writer Bob DeLaurentis. Right out of the gate, the title of the episode itself immediately conjures some pretty compelling connotations for established fans of the Alien franchise; if the first two episodes featured a bunch of creatures and eggs in the earliest forms of their lifecycles, then a subsequent episode with such a title invites you to make some pretty clear conclusions about where this story might go.
And yet, much as it did with the first two episodes, Alien: Earth instead utilizes the established structure, trappings, and aesthetics of an Alien story to achieve an entirely different kind of result.
The titular metamorphosis in question is not actually that of any of the bevvy of alien creatures onboard the ship, but rather that of the primary protagonists, Wendy and the Lost Boys, themselves. The episode begins with a couple of stellar opening setpieces that follow up on the cliffhanger ending of “Mr. October” in supreme fashion.
Not only do audiences get to see Wendy (played by Sydney Chandler) pursue the Xenomorph that grabbed her brother Joe (played by Alex Lawther) and ultimately have a high-octane showdown with it, but there’s also a sequence that sees Morrow (played by Babou Ceesay) confronting Smee (played by Jonathan Ajayi) and Slightly (played by Adarsh Gourav) in dynamic fashion.
In moments that a lesser series could and would have easily dragged out for an episode’s runtime, Alien: Earth delivers impactful, kinetic, and compelling sequences that each end in unexpected and surprising fashion.
Anyone who might’ve been concerned that, for as intriguing as the story surrounding the series was, it would ultimately just be another Alien project that spent all of its time onboard a spaceship, albeit a crashed one, will have those fears assuaged surprisingly quickly.
While the films are often single-setting stories, allowing filmmakers like Ridley Scott and James Cameron to ramp up the tension and raise the stakes as the looming threat grows more pertinent, Hawley and co. are doing something entirely different with Alien: Earth, and this episode makes that clear. The Xenomorph is not the end-all-be-all of conflict here; the series clearly has bigger fish to fry and is utilizing the creature as a means of getting there.
To this end, the reveal that only a third into this episode that the mission is complete, the loose Xenomorph has been killed by Wendy, and all of the remaining creatures have been successfully apprehended by Kirsh (played by Timothy Olyphant), and that all of the characters are leaving the ship setting to return to Neverland is both shocking and invigorating.
These choices broaden the scope of the story while refining its focus, allowing it to all the more sharply zero in on the characters themselves in the aftermath. The entire concept of Wendy and the Lost Boys is such a fascinating idea on so many levels, and it's great to see Hawley and his team exploring it from a multi-faceted, genuine place of curiosity.
These children’s minds, who have been stuck inside of synthetic bodies, are clearly going through their own forms of changes, each of them struggling to feel at home within the confines of their digital minds. By throwing them straight into the fire in the prior episodes and now removing them just as quickly, the series is able to peel back the layers of these characters and send them off on diverging emotional paths.
Which is to say nothing of the remarkable performances by this cast, who are delivering nuanced, motivated, and fearless work. The highlight of the Lost Boys trope for me in this episode is Nibs (played by Lily Newmark), whose encounter with one of the creatures in the previous episode has some surprisingly potent existential effects on her. Newmark plays these scenes with aplomb and makes the unique trajectory of the character’s arc across this episode feel entirely earned and authentic.
Also, viewers hungry for more of Olyphant’s Kirsh will not leave this episode empty-handed, as he steals just about every scene he’s in.
Elsewhere, in following the exploits of Morrow as he escapes the ship and contacts Yutani, Alien: Earth gives audiences a more diversified look at the world of Earth in 2120, and it’s incredibly constructed by production designer Andy Nicholson.
Contrasting the pristine appearance of the Prodigy compound, where the majority of the episode’s runtime takes place, with these low-level slums within the city is great, and feels like an authentic blend of the brief glimpses of city life audiences got in Aliens and in Scott’s other science-fiction franchise centered on artificial lifeforms, Blade Runner.
Yet tellingly, thanks to Nicholson’s incredible work and the inspired visual language that Gonzalez and cinematographer David Franco construct, it never feels like a rehash of those things, but rather something bold and new. And once again, the use of large practical sets that are only accentuated and amplified by digital set extensions works incredibly well.
The crux of the episode’s story revolves not only around the evolution of Wendy and the Lost Boys as characters, but also about how their role as the primary characters at play within an Alien story fundamentally changes it. The scripting is able to extrapolate mechanics from across the series and incorporate this newfound meaning in effective fashion.
A great example of this is the idea that the eggs which house the facehuggers are found to be reactive to the presence of a potential host, which is why in all of the previous films they always seem to hatch just as a character gets near them. However, given that the protagonists here are all androids of one kind or another, they are inviable hosts, and thus exempt from the tension which generally permeates these stories.
It’s a fascinating wrinkle that is indicative of Alien: Earth’s whole approach to the larger mythos of the franchise. Not only does this make for incredibly compelling and accomplished storytelling in its own right, but it also takes the franchise back to the most objective and analytical approach it has had since Scott’s original film.
“Metamorphosis” is an episode that thoroughly lives up to its title, showcasing the series of Alien: Earth itself mutating into something new right before our very eyes. By utilizing the established tensions and conflicts of earlier films, Hawley and his team successfully introduced audiences to a new take on the material and new characters in inspired fashion. Here, they alleviate those tensions and begin to build to wholly alien ones, and the results are enthralling.
Grade: B+
Alien: Earth releases new episodes every Tuesday night on FX and Hulu.