Alien: Earth review: "Arguably the franchise's strongest outing since James Cameron's Aliens"

This review is spoiler-free.

This has been a long time coming. The show that became Alien: Earth was announced back in 2019, with Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley officially attached the following year. A lot has changed since then.

At the time, the xenomorph franchise felt pretty moribund, with 2017's Alien: Covenant faring poorly both critically and commercially. In the years since, however, the series (along with its sister franchise Predator) has seen a fairly remarkable renaissance. Last year's Alien: Romulus was a solid hit at the box office and was generally liked by fans, despite its tendency to wallow in unnecessary references and call-backs.

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Alien: Earth, then, arrives with both optimistic hype and not a little trepidation from fans. There's been confusion over when the show is set (2120 – two years before the Nostromo has its fateful encounter on LV-426), while a stray comment from FX Entertainment president Gina Balian about the show existing "in parallel" to the movies led some fans to panic and assume that this was going to be set in an alternate universe.

Well, unless the show does something drastically bizarre in its final two episodes (critics have been provided with six of the first season's eight instalments), that's not the case at all. This is very much the world of Ridley Scott's first film, plausibly expanded and with a stronger focus on the corporate intrigue that has always hovered around the edges of these films. The result is an imperfect series, but arguably the franchise's strongest outing since James Cameron's Aliens. Seriously – at its best, it really is that good.

Deep impact

Weyland-Yutani ship the USCSS Maginot is returning from a 65-year-long deep space mission gathering extraterrestrial samples when something goes wrong – you can guess what, though things are more complicated in that regard than they first appear. The ship crashes to Earth, slamming straight into New Siam, a city under the control of Prodigy, the youngest of "the Five" – the mega corporations that now control the Earth.

For Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), Prodigy's 'move fast and break things' CEO, the timing is perfect. In a world where synthetics are relatively commonplace, Prodigy has developed something new. Experimenting on terminally ill children, Kavalier and his team have seemingly discovered a way to transfer a young human consciousness into an artificial adult body. This leads to some of the show's most troubling and thought-provoking sequences, though anyone concerned the show might venture into icky Poor Things territory can breathe easy, as Alien: Earth thankfully never goes there.

The "Lost Boys" – Kavalier's name for his hybrid squad, and one of the show's many Peter Pan allegories – are the ideal team to dispatch to the crash site and bring back the alien samples. The team's de facto leader, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), has her own reasons for wanting to get to the Maginot. Meanwhile, Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) wants her deadly cargo back...

Alien: Earth's opening two episodes (both of which are available on launch day) are a masterclass in giving fans of the franchise what they want while also broadening the scope of the story. The show borrows plentifully from the "cassette futurism" of Ridley Scott's original movie, both in the Maginot's set – a beautiful reproduction of the interior of the Nostromo – and in the look of the wider world, but mercifully avoids the constant call-backs that littered Romulus.

At the same time, there are aesthetic touches that might throw some fans – for the first time in an Alien project, there are needle drops. While none of the songs here feel out of place or ill-considered, it's definitely a little strange the first time it happens. Alien has never been a TV show before, and seeing this familiar franchise morph slightly to fit into an entirely different medium can be disconcerting.

Another bug hunt?

As the show moves into its middle episodes the focus turns more fully onto the Lost Boys – and stumbles slightly. Hawley finds pleasingly different roles for each of the characters in his story, but while the cast are all strong, the series bites off more than it can chew with the notion that these are children in adult bodies.

That leads episode 3 to dabble briefly with humor, a tone that sits uneasily with the overwhelmingly ominous mood of the rest of the series. And while it makes sense that these characters are more naive than the adult humans, they sometimes make some frustratingly dumb decisions.

Still, the hybrids also provide the show with much of its disquieting heart. The question of whether Prodigy really has saved the lives of five sick kids – or simply murdered them and pasted their memories into a bunch of androids – lingers uneasily over the series.

There's also no questioning Sydney Chandler's Wendy. It's a terrific central performance, both cooly competent and youthfully inquisitive. Wendy's tender concern for Alex Lawther's human Hermit is effective and touching, but she also has more than enough steel to believably handle the alien-battling action.

Speaking of which, much has been made of Alien: Earth's introduction of four new species of critter. It's a bold decision: collectively, the egg, facehugger, and xenomorph make for some of the most memorable monsters in cinema history. None of the new creatures are as potent (though the baleful glare of a contaminated sheep quickly becomes one of the show's most indelible and unnerving images), but they add a refreshing unpredictability to the show's more horrific moments.

The classic alien, too, is well-handled. At times it feels more brutal and bestial than we've seen since Alien 3, at others more weirdly graceful. It's a more enigmatic presence here than the man-sized bugs of Aliens, though no less dangerous.

But while Alien: Earth doesn't skimp on the monsters and gore, it's the human – and android – horror that lingers the most. Babou Ceesay's Morrow is the show's most intriguing and terrifying character, and a dangerous mystery who only fully comes into focus in the more-or-less self-contained fifth episode.

Samuel Blenkin's Kavalier, meanwhile, represents a different kind of villainy. Backed up by Adrian Edmondson's officious Atom Eins, they deliver on the banal corporate cruelty previously represented by Paul Reiser's Carter Burke in Aliens, and hinted at in Romulus's opening scenes in the run-down colony on Jackson's Star. This is a world where being fired is as good as a death sentence, and a work contract (or an off-world mission) is a life-changing and family-wrecking event.

The perfect organism?

As we noted up top, critics have not been sent the season's final two episodes just yet. Because of that and a few slightly misjudged moments along the way, we can't say that Alien: Earth is an unqualified success. Still, from what we've seen so far, this is ferociously good television: ambitious, exciting, and beautifully realized. It's tangibly the same franchise, but it also feels fresh and new.

Part 6 ends with a lot up in the air – too much, perhaps, to fully wrap up in just two more episodes. Noah Hawley has indicated that he envisions the series as a multi-season affair, but as yet it's unclear if that means each year will be a standalone tale or if this is an ongoing story. On the basis of these first six episodes, we have to assume the latter.

What Hawley and his team have done here, however, is build on the foundations of Ridley Scott's original to create a believable and fascinating universe, one that's ripe with the opportunity for further exploration. There's nothing here so far that explicitly contradicts the later films, or Scott's divisive prequels, but Alien: Earth successfully restores a sense of mystery to this universe while also delivering some fantastic action sequences, lashings of gore, and compelling characters. If not quite a perfect organism, the alien's latest evolution is still a monstrous success.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu in the US from August 12, and on Disney Plus in the UK from August 13.

For more, check out our look ahead at the most exciting upcoming TV shows.