The latest episode of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, “Metamorphosis,” leaves the series in a very different place than it was when the episode started.
Over the course of its runtime, the third episode of the science-fiction horror show diffuses threats that seemed like they were being set up as series-long arcs and instead pivots to more introspective and meditative work. Rather than prioritizing the gradual ramping up of tension that audiences commonly associate with the Alien films, Alien: Earth zigs instead of zagging, and the result is an episode that is much more rooted in developing character and theme than it is in pursuing narrative ends.
As such, the Xenomorph who wreaks so much havoc in the previous two episodes is dispatched fairly early on in “Metamorphosis,” as the episode instead pivots to the Prodigy compound and chronicles what happens as Wendy, Kirsh, and the Lost Boys return with a few alien specimens in tow.
Alien: Earth episode 4, "Observation" preview
Now, in a newly released teaser for the fourth episode of the series, “Observation,” viewers get a glimpse at what may lie in store for the characters and the ticking-time bombs they’ve brought into their home base.
In the final act of “Metamorphosis,” a few profoundly intriguing story threads are established. For one, after being injured in combat with the Xenomorph early on, Joe’s lung is removed by the doctors at Prodigy, seemingly for his own good. However, it is later revealed that this may have been done for more nefarious intents, as Kirsh extracts a primordial embryo of a Xenomorph from one of the facehugger eggs they’ve ascertained and allows it to take root within Joe’s removed lung.
Secondly, though, and even more confounding in many ways, Wendy has a visceral reaction at the end of the episode to the facehugger’s dissection, even though she isn’t in the room when it happens. The sound design and associative editing of the sequence seem to suggest that Wendy is somehow linked to the facehugger itself, experiencing its pain, and the new teaser all but confirms this.
What to expect from next week's episode
In the teaser, Wendy briefly describes the sensation as “hearing it screaming,” and running toward it until it gets too overwhelming for her. This seems to imply a psychic link of some kind between Wendy and the creatures. Considering that she is already a child’s brain occupying an adult synthetic body, there’s no telling what exactly is going on here, but suffice it to say she shares a deeper connection with these creatures than she or the audience as of yet understands.
Elsewhere in the episode, viewers do get a closer look at how Hawley and co. may be utilizing that aforementioned lung, as one shot sees Wendy approaching the enclosed glass case of the lung just as something ejects out of it and blood sprays.
This would seem to be the series offering a new, more analytical look at how Xenomorphs take root and grow. In prior films, it has been established that a facehugger infects its human host via their airways. Then, utilizing the nutrients of the human body, the Xenomorph grows until it bursts out of the human’s chest cavity, killing them in the process.
By removing the lung, the Prodigy doctors are clearly hoping to study the ways in which the creature functions by examining outside the context of the human body, and Hawley is providing that same unique experience to viewers in the next episode, it would seem.
Will this odd incubation process affect the ultimate outcome and result in a new variation of the Xenomorph? It’s certainly possible, considering that films such as David Fincher’s Alien 3 established that facehuggers attaching to other mammals, such as dogs or boars, would result in different versions of Xenomorphs than humans would, so having the lung outside the body could potentially lead to different results.
We’ll all have to tune in to Alien: Earth next Tuesday to find out, when “Observation” drops on FX and Hulu.