With its final episode, “The Real Monsters,” Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth cements its place as a bold, wholly original, and distinctly idiosyncratic tale within the larger franchise that dares to chart its own course and refuses to look back.
While other Alien projects have strived to give audiences a similar feeling and experience to the iconic original films, Alien: Earth instead utilizes the bones of those original stories to construct something brand new, and lands with a much greater aplomb and impact because of it.
Considering the series’ place in the larger timeline, set very shortly before the events of the original Alien film, some audiences might’ve been expecting the series to walk right up to the events of that first film in some way shape or form. Instead, what Hawley and co. deliver in this final episode is not some bridge between the events of this series and Ridley Scott’s seminal classic that started it all, but rather a kicking-in of the door on what this series can be and what narrative ground it can cover. Instead of bending over backwards to tie up loose-ends and neatly dovetail into the films, Alien: Earth throws those loose ends to the wind and leaves the narrative in a far more volatile and foreign place to franchise fans than it began with.
While there is every chance that there will be a second season that sees Hawley and his team returning to further develop and ultimately resolve these story threads themselves, that could also very easily not happen. In this way, “The Real Monsters” closes the series out with a bang, refusing to go quietly into that franchise-approved, algorithmically-dictated goodnight.
One of the strongest elements of the entire series perseveres through this final episode, and that is the character of Wendy, as played by Sydney Chandler. In the initial episodes of the series, it became apparent that what Hawley and his writing team were setting up with the entire narrative hook of this story had bigger themes in mind, but the question lingered of whether or not it would actually work. On paper, the idea of having these ‘hybrids’ (sick children, whose brains have been uploaded into synthetic bodies) leading the series sounds like something that could easily backfire if mishandled. But by steering all the way into the skid, Alien: Earth manages to craft characters that feel both organically comedic and tragic in their childlike innocence.
Nowhere is the full extent of the payoff of all of this more apparent than it is with Wendy. Over the course of the series, viewers see this character go on a gargantuan arc and feel every step of the process right alongside her. While she may begin the series as true ‘final girl’ of the Alien franchise, she morphs into something else as the series goes on, and “The Real Monsters” manages to bring her arc to a close with both immense satisfaction and grace.
Not enough can be said about Chandler’s performance, which has been so multifaceted throughout the entire series, but really gets a chance to come to the forefront in this final episode. So much of “The Real Monsters” relies upon Wendy as its central thrust, and Chandler excels at conveying her complicated and ever-evolving emotional state as a literal childhood realizing the boundless limitations of her true potential.
Director Dana Gonzales does a stupendous job through the episode of capturing the changing dynamics between the subsets of characters within the show, as Wendy, the Lost Boys (the other hybrids), and the creatures take dominance of the Neverland facility from the adults and their makers. There is no better encapsulation of the sheer visual power that Gonzales brings to these ideas than the moment where Boy Kavalier comes to see and taunt Wendy and the Lost Boys inside of their holding cell, only for Wendy to unexpectedly open the cell door with ease. In a single shot, Gonzales is able to showcase the complete turning of the tables on who holds the most power in the scene, escalating tension and stakes in the blink of an eye. It is fantastic filmmaking, and is so palpably motivated by the character arcs and themes at play here.
Elsewhere, the creature work is once again exemplary here. The episode is frequently punctuated with these gorgeous and provocative shots of the Xenomorph prowling the natural landscape surrounding the facility, alongside other natural creatures such as crabs and scorpions. Of course, it’s also frequently dismembering Marines and leaving trails of entrails all over the place. But to see the Xenomorph design so beautifully blend into these surroundings and feel so synchronous with it is a real testament to the incredible work done by the likes of the team at Weta Workshop.
The Eye also gets its fair share of screen time and certainly leaves a lasting impression, with the set piece centering around it attempting to take refuge in Joe (as played by Alex Lawther) giving the greatest horror sequences of the whole franchise a run for their money in terms of suspense, tension, and power.
It also must be said that while everyone within the ensemble does great work (special praise goes to Samuel Blenkin, whose performance as Kavalier reaches its final form here in the most obscenely pathetic of ways, in a good way) that the opportunity to see Babou Ceesay and Timothy Olyphant bounce off of each other and conflict in one of the series’ greatest action set pieces together is such a treat. Both of them have done such insatiably great work over the course of the season, so to see them clash finally feels so cathartic and deeply satisfying.
Episode Grade: A
As Alien: Earth comes to a close, I am personally delighted to see it so utterly unbeholden to expectations. While the show began as an inspired take on the Alien franchise, it has metamorphosed into something so distinctly its own over the course of its run, so to see that expansion curtailed in favor of simple narrative continuity would have been disappointing if understandable. Instead, “The Real Monsters” burns the whole thing down and instead hones in on delivering a rip-roaring finale that brings all the themes and arcs of the season to a head in profoundly satisfying fashion. Nothing less than a genuinely great episode of television.