Alien has struck a chord of terror in millions of movie fans across several generations, largely thanks to the horrific beasts at the center of the franchise. The entire process of a facehugger parasite implanting a xenomorph larva inside a host, the bloody chestbursting process, and the resulting xenomorph drone are such a great metaphor for everything from birth to infection that Alien has never needed another kind of actual “alien” to sustain the franchise. Or so we thought. Now, Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley is proving that we’ve been thinking too small when it comes to this franchise. Alien: Earth has introduced a new creature, and by Episode 5 of the series, it’s already feeling like it could be a cooler mascot for the franchise than the xenomorph.
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WARNING: Alien: Earth Episode 5 SPOILERS FOLLOW
The premise of Alien: Earth‘s story is that the Weyland-Yutani corporation sent a vessel, the USCSS Maginot, on an expedition lasting more than half a century, to discover and capture five highly dangerous invasive species, which Weyland-Yutani could harvest and use for revolutionary bioengineering advancements. That mission succeeded, but (as we learn in Episode 5), a combination of sabotage by rival corporation Prodigy and internal machinations by the creatures on the Maginot led to the ship’s crew being slaughtered and the ship crashing.
It’s also made very apparent that the ‘Eyeball Monster’, ‘Eyeball Octopus,’ creature the Maginot captured had a very active hand in making its escape and helping to take out the crew. The Eye distracts science officer Chibuzo (Karen Aldridge) when she’s working, in order to help another creature, one of the blood-eating bugs known as “ticks,” escape its container. The Eye is also able to recognize a mechanical failure with the locking mechanism on its container, and devise a plan using its tentacles and body as a makeshift slingshot, knocking the container tube off of its wall mount. Just to drive the point home about his diabolical new creature, Hawley includes a climactic sequence of the Eye doing battle with an actual xenomorph, just to drive the point home that it is every bit of a physical match (and threat) to Alien‘s iconic mascot.
I Think The Eye Octopus Is Cooler Than The Xenomorphs (For Good Reason)
Alien: Earth has made a point all along to feature scenes from the Eyeball’s perspective. It was a curious choice when watching the initial episodes, where the xenomorphs and the evolution of Prodigy’s new human-synth “hybrids” were the main focuses; now, Episode 5 makes it clear that the Eyeball Octopus is indeed much more of a central antagonist in the show than it initially seemed. And I’m here for it.
As a longtime Alien franchise fan, I never saw any reason to reinvent the wheel: Alien is distinguished from other sci-fi and/or horror films and franchises precisely because of the uniqueness of monsters and creature designs. That said, Hawley is making a compelling case for why Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and other writers and directors who handled the movies may have been thinking too small when imagining what’s out there in space can make us scream. Giving Alien a more intelligent form of parasite monster – one who can carry entire scenes from its perspective – is a dynamic element to Alien that other directors have only dabbled with (like David Fincher in Alien 3 or Ridley Scott in Alien: Covenant). Episode 4 of Alien: Earth has also hinted that the Eyeball is smart enough to read the room at Prodigy and know that CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is the man in charge. Whether that means an eye transplant for Boy, or an unholy new alliance, remains to be seen.
Alien: Earth is streaming on FX-Hulu.
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