Alien Earth – What Is The Black Goo Growing Inside of Prodigy’s Neverland?

Alien: Earth is proving to be a hit for FX-Hulu after the two-episode premiere event, in terms of review scores, and the necessary buzz indicative of a new show’s impact. Along with all the popular fan theories about Alien: Earth come a lot of new questions the show (and possibly the larger franchise) has to answer. From the mysterious new alien lifeforms that have now been set loose on Earth, to the powers and potential of the world’s machine being trifecta (synthetics, cyborgs, and the newly-invented “hybrids”).

It may be a minor detail of Alien: Earth‘s first episodes, but it’s certainly a conspicuous one fans are noticing: The halls of the Boy Kavalier’s (Samuel Blenkin) “Neverland” research facility are growing with some kind of black goo, which requires a mysterious figure in a hazmat suit to combat. Knowing everything we do about the Alien franchise, it’s hard to believe this is just a coincidence.

Have We Seen This Black Substance In Alien Before?

Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) is always playing 4-D chess with multiple levels of meaning, visually and thematically. While Boy Kavalier may not react to it, the sight of the hazmat worker and the black goo on the walls is obviously going to be triggering to anyone who has watched the Alien movies – and especially the prequel films directed by Ridley Scott, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant.

What’s especially curious is that Hawley and FX executives have been pointing out that his show will honor the continuity of the original Alien (1979), as well as the recent film Alien: Romulus from Fede Álvarez, ostensibly side-stepping Scott’s prequels. That gets tricky, as Romulus did borrow from Scott’s prequels for a key part of its story: Weyland-Yutani’s development of Compound Z-01. The Renasiance Space Station’s entire mission was harvesting the xenomorph corpse from the USCSS Nostromo‘s wreckage, extracting the mutagenic goo (“Prometheus Fire”) from the creature, and filtering out the genetic features that make xenomorphs highly durable and able to withstand any environment. The ultimate goal for the megacorporation was human augmentation and life extension – goals that are conspicuously similar to what Prodigy is doing.

Has Prodigy Already Experimented With Xenomorph DNA?

The hybrid program that Boy Kavalier is pioneering would potentially going to be the biggest leap forward for human augmentation – that is, if the timeline of Alien didn’t already portend its doom. Seeing how quickly Boy changed focus from his hybrids to securing the creatures Weyland-Yutani collected suggests that he may already have bioweapon projects of his own locked away in a secret lab somewhere. It would be a major twist in Alien: Earth‘s story to find out that Boy already has a sample of that mutagenic goo in his possession, and is all too aware of its infectious dangers. It would actually explain a lot of early implications about Neverland: why Boy relies more on synthetic beings than humans (less potential for infection); why he’s willing to risk the Lost Boys to retrieve the creatures (he’s already connected the data on the xenomorphs to the black goo); it could also explain the mystery of Wendy’s enhnaced abilities and sensory powers, as well as why her hybrid transfer was kept secret from her family.

If Boy and his scientists injected Marcy (Florence Bensberg) with some black goo compound before she became “Wendy,” then it would(after all, what was there to lose if the host body died?), then it could mean Wendy is actually the pinnacle of biological and mechanical life, and a much more important figure in the Alien canon than anyone knows.

Then again, the black substance on Prodigy’s walls could also be a subtle ode from Hawley to just how bad environmental conditions are getting on Earth, and why the need for humanity to evolve is getting so dire.

Alien: Earth is streaming on FX-Hulu.

Alien: Earth May Have Solved a Major Franchise Continuity Problem