10 Ways Alien: Earth Season 1 Changed The Franchise’s Canon Forever

Alien: Earth Season 1 was a landmark event for the Alien franchise. It was the first Alien television series ever, which now seems like a crazy statement given that Riley Scott’s original film was released in 1979. But despite decades of movies and even a major crossover with another franchise (Predator), no one could figure out how to tell an Alien universe story in televised form. It shouldn’t be surprising then that in order to pull it off, showrunner Noah Hawley had to make some changes.

The lore we got in Alien: Earth was far more extensive and very different than what we knew from the movies. Below you’ll find 10 major changes Alien: Earth made to the franchise’s canon that can never be forgotten. These are not just new concepts and developments that have to be explored in Alien: Earth Season 2, but will be necessary to reference or further develop in future Alien movies.

10) Xeno-Birth

There’s always been a strange “chicken or the egg” situation with Alien‘s xenomorphs and their birth cycle. The Queen-egg-facehugger-host-xenomorph cycle serves a great body-horror purpose, but has gotten very convoluted over the years. Alien: Earth settled one canonical debate for good: when does xenomorph life truly begin?

In Alien: Earth Episode 3, the Prodigy corporation gets hold of a xenomorph egg, dissects the facehugger inside, and takes out the xenomorph embryo it houses. When the embryo is dropped into water with living human tissue (a functional lung), it comes alive like a vicious little tadpole, attacks the flesh, and gnaws its way inside to cocoon and grow into a xenomorph drone.

The question was whether facehuggers were secreting DNA into a host, which then grew into a xenomorph embryo (like human reproduction), or if a live xenomoprh larva was being injected into a victim, to nest and grow. Thanks to Alien: Earth, we can’t unsee the answer.

9) Synth Origins

The Alien movies and Ridley Scott’s prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant have all been consistent with the lore that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is the foremost and exclusive producer of artificial life, in the form of their signature line of androids, or “synthetics. ” Prometheus and Covenant established Michael Fassbender’s David as the prototype synth who was given too much free thought and ultimately went rogue, before more restrictive limits to synth programming were implemented. Alien: Earth has now stepped all over that lore.

Prodigy Corporation’s owner, Boy Cavalier (Samuel Blenkin), has been established as a revolutionary pioneer in android and AI technology, who puts Peter Weyland looking like an amateur tinkerer. Boy built his synths to be so convincing that he was able to use one as the avatar of his adult guardian, for years after having the android kill his own father. It’s going to be impossible to watch Alien movies from here on out without feeling like the idea of just seeing Weyland-Yutani synths is outdated.

8) Hybrid Technology

Alien: Earth‘s story hinges on Boy Cavalier’s next big technological leap forward from syths, which are the hybrids, i.e., android bodies that can house human consciousness. The entire idea of a human being’s mind getting a new start in a synthetic body got some level of attention in Alien: Earth, but it’s a change to canon that begs to be taken further.

Imagine: an Alien movie that could put a hybrid protagonist through an Edge of Tomorrow-style cycle of trying to survive a xenomorph horde to accomplish some mission or goal. Or a character thought dead (like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley) is now able to be resurrected in a hybrid body. It’s an easy way to recast a classic character with a new actor – or explain why an aged returning actor looks different.

7) Advanced Technology

The Alien franchise has been in a weird bind ever since the decision was made to blow it out into a whole franchise. When Ridley Scott made the 1979 film, his ability to convey humanity’s space-faring future was limited to the practical effects and imaginative concepts available in the late 1970s. Modern Alien films like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and Alien: Romulus have tried to be understated in how they merge modern tech concepts with the retro futuristic aesthetic of Alien.

Alien: Earth has made it clear: those space vessels are like eighteen-wheeler trucks that businesses run for years without upgrading. Back on Earth, however, companies like Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy have the world looking properly futuristic, with all the various tech amenities that come with it. Prodigy is especially cutting-edge with its tech, and it now feels like Alien is free to upgrade its tech aesthetic as the franchise moves forward.

6) More Mega-Corporations

The Alien franchise has always floated the lore about how Earth is now ruled by megacorporations, but Weyland-Yutani is the only company we ever see. Alien: Earth changed that trend by focusing entirely on a different megacorporation, Prodigy, and its owner, Boy Cavalier. However, in Episode 4, the entire cabal of megacorporations was name-dropped:

1. Weyland-Yutani – the most famous megacorporation in the Alien franchise, and the company responsible for the xenomorph incidents in almost every film.
2. Prodigy – The company that is the main focus of Alien: Earth, and specializes in synthetic android technology. The series begins with Prodigy successfuly creating “hybrids,” which allows human consciousness to exist within a synth body.
3. Dynamic – Name-dropped in Episode 1, but all other details are (currently) unknown.
4. Threshhold – Details unknown
5. Lynch – Details unknown

Now that we have that foundation established, there’s so much more lore to play with.

5) The Xenomorph Discovery

The entire premise of the first Alien movie is the USCSS Nostromo‘s crew responding to a distress call and stumbling across an unknown lifeform that turns out to be the xenomorphs. Once the crew examines the lifeform, the Weyland-Yutani corporation demands that synthetic crew member Ash bring the sample back for study. Ridley Scott complicated that premise with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, which posited that the synth prototype David was responsible for bio-engineering the first facehuggers and eggs from the black mutagen goo the Engineer race used as a bio-weapon.

Admittedly, there’s still a big gap in the Alien canon waiting to be filled when it comes to explaining how David’s facehugger creations ended up on an Engineer ship that crash-lands on LV-426. Regardless, Alien: Earth has firmly changed the canon to reveal that Weyland-Yutani discovered facehugger eggs and xenomorphs during the exploratory voyage of the USCSS Maginot, decades before the events of Alien. The xenomorphs are already running amok on Earth before Ripley ever got involved.

4) Weyland-Yutani’s Bio Weapons Division

Following closely along with changing the canon about when the xenomorphs were first discovered, Alien: Earth turned Weyland-Yutani into an entire bio-weapons harvest operation, whose ultimate goal is still unknown.

The films always painted the megacorporation as an intergalactic conglomerate that has its hands in virtually every pie of life, including bio-weapons. However, the xenomorphs were presented as something of a tragic accident, and that was largely the point of Scott’s film: there are many terrible possibilities when it comes to alien forms of life that may be lurking in the cosmos. Alien: Earth says that Weyland-Yutani knows that reality, and is all about engineering that doom, on purpose. Now the Nostromo crew’s mission looks very different, and very nefarious.

3) More Robots

Alien made synths and supercomputers (“Mother”) its signature forms of artificial life, and for decades, the franchise kept things consistent on that front. Alien: Earth has vastly expanded the franchise lore on AI to better reflect modern times and concerns. Now, in addition to synths, we have the hybrids, characters who invoke much deeper sci-fi concepts about machine vs. organic life, the nature of the soul, and what post-humanity could be. Then there was “Morrow” (Babou Ceesay), the Weyland-Yutani hunter who is also the franchise’s first cyborg.

We’ve already discussed the new possibilities for the Alien franchise now that hybrids are a part of things; a cyborg protagonist battling for survival against the xenomorphs is another exciting possibility we’d love to explore in future projects.

2) More Monsters

The Alien franchise is distinguished by its trademark beast, the xenomorph, and all the accompanying parasitic lifeforms (facehuggers, chestbursters, queens, etc.) that go with it. Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley apparently looked at that branding decision and thought, “Dream bigger.”

Thanks to Alien: Earth, we have four new alien creatures to haunt our nightmares: from the metal-eating “flies” to the “tick” insects that burrow into bodies and feed on blood. However, if there was one clear “star” among the monsters of Alien: Earth, it was no doubt “The Eye,” a highly intelligent and cunning creature with a single eyeball set atop a squid-like body. Hawley has shown that Alien can do so much more with its nightmare world of space monsters, and we’re here for it.

1) Xeno-Pets

Look, we saved the most divisive change to Alien canon for last. Alien: Earth turned the entire franchise on its head the moment that Wendy (Sydney Chandler) learned to ‘speak xenomorph’ and bonded with a chestburster in a way that turned the fierce beast into the hybrid’s personal pet and bodyguard.

Alien became a classic film (and subsequent franchise) because the xenomorphs are the ultimate extraterrestrial killing machines (the “perfect organism” to bio-weapon enthusiasts). Taming the franchise icon is a big, ambitious swing to take, and truthfully, the jury is still out on whether or not Noah Hawley is steering the franchise into a bad place. It’s up to Alien: Earth Season 2 to expand this storyline into a change that brings new intrigue to the franchise, but still keeps it terrifying.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu-Disney+. You can discuss Season 1 with us over on the ComicBook Forum!