The Only Recap You Need Before ‘Alien: Earth’
For the first time, the horrifying creatures from the “Alien” franchise are set to cause terror on our home planet in a new television series. This fresh chapter, developed for FX, will move the action away from the isolated corridors of spaceships and distant colonies, bringing the iconic Xenomorphs directly to Earth.
The show comes from the mind of Noah Hawley, known for his work on series like “Fargo” and “Legion.” It promises to deliver a new kind of suspense to a world that, until now, has been largely unaware of the extraterrestrial threat.
This series will not feature familiar faces like Ellen Ripley or the characters from the recent prequel films. Instead, it introduces a completely new cast and storyline, focusing on a different corner of the vast “Alien” universe. The show is designed to stand on its own while still honoring the tone and style of the original 1979 film directed by Ridley Scott.
It aims to capture the same feeling of claustrophobic horror and corporate conspiracy that made the first movie a classic, but on a much larger, planetary scale.
Titled “Alien: Earth,” the eight-episode series is scheduled to premiere with its first two episodes on August 12, 2025. It will be broadcast on FX and available for streaming on Hulu in the United States. International audiences will be able to watch it on Disney+. Subsequent episodes will be released weekly.
The show is intended to be an ongoing series, with Hawley and the network expressing interest in developing multiple seasons to tell a larger, serialized story.
The narrative is set in the year 2120, a mere two years before the events of the original “Alien” film. This places it sixteen years after the conclusion of “Alien: Covenant.” In this near future, Earth is a world dominated by powerful corporations. Five major entities—Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold—hold immense power.
The story kicks off when a mysterious deep space research vessel, the USCSS Maginot, crash-lands on Earth. The official synopsis reveals that this event leads a young woman and a group of soldiers to a terrifying discovery that poses the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.
Leading the cast is Sydney Chandler as Wendy, a central and unique character in the franchise’s lore. Wendy is described as the first “hybrid,” a synthetic body infused with a human consciousness—specifically, the mind of a child. This concept introduces a new layer to the series’ exploration of what it means to be human.
Wendy is joined by her synthetic mentor and trainer, Kirsh, played by Timothy Olyphant. Alex Lawther portrays CJ “Hermit,” a human soldier and Wendy’s brother, who is determined to protect her.
The wider cast includes Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, the young and brilliant CEO of the Prodigy Corporation, the company responsible for creating the hybrids. Essie Davis plays Dame Silvia, a high-ranking human scientist, while Adarsh Gourav portrays Slightly, a synthetic who is close to Wendy.
Other key roles are filled by Kit Young as Tootles, Babou Ceesay as Morrow, and Adrian Edmondson as the cold and ruthless Atom Eins, who works for Prodigy.
The series will delve into themes of corporate greed and the ethics of artificial intelligence, familiar territory for the “Alien” franchise. However, it will also explore new ideas, such as the concept of transferring human consciousness and the potential for new alien species beyond the well-known Xenomorph.
Showrunner Noah Hawley has indicated that while the classic alien will be central, the show will introduce other extraterrestrial organisms to expand the universe’s mythology and recreate the sense of unknown terror from the first film. Principal photography for the series took place in Thailand and wrapped in mid-July 2024, followed by an extensive post-production period to complete the visual effects.
The show aims to answer questions about what was happening on Earth in the lead-up to the Nostromo’s fateful mission and how much the powerful Weyland-Yutani Corporation already knew.