Alien: Earth’s Secret Cameo Continued a Trend Started by Ridley Scott’s Original

Bringing the Alien franchise to the small screen is a huge risk. Up to this point, anytime Ridley Scott or anyone else wanted to deliver a terrifying story featuring Xenomorphs, they went the movie route. In fact, Alien is on a bit of a hot streak in theaters after the success of Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus. It’s hard to turn down an idea when Noah Hawley is leading the charge, though. Best known for the Fargo TV series and Legion, Hawley knows how to play in someone else’s sandbox and elevate the material. Alien: Earth is the same kind of challenge, and Hawley is going all out to ensure that it’s a winner for FX.

The following contains spoilers for Alien: Earth.

Like all great Alien projects, despite featuring monsters big and small and plenty of androids, Alien: Earth is a human story at its core. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) wants nothing more than to reunite with her brother, Joe (Alex Lawther), who believes she’s dead because she was suffering from a terminal illness. The connection between Wendy and Joe is so important that Hawley finds a way to place himself in the middle of it.

Noah Hawley Is Hiding in Plain Sight in Alien: Earth

Hawley pulls a similar trick to Ridley Scott, who many don’t know hid his own blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo in the original Alien. He voiced the chestbursting alien for that key scene. Decades later, Noah Hawley appears in a flashback sequence, very briefly, playing the father of lead characters Wendy and Joe.

Following the obligatory opening that focuses on a ship in space hauling strange creatures, Alien: Earth shifts its focus to Marcy, a young girl who’s very sick. The Prodigy Corporation is taking care of her on Neverland, a remote island where they’re attempting to do the impossible: transfer a human consciousness into a synthetic. Marcy is the first to undergo the procedure, and to make the process smoother for her, they show her clips from the Disney movie Peter Pan. Once she wakes up, she goes by a new name, Wendy, and quickly embraces her role as big sister to the other hybrids.

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In between giving lessons to the other kids, Wendy spends time watching over her brother, Joe, who works as a medic in Prodigy City. He doesn’t know she’s alive because the hybrid experiments are a secret, and Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier doesn’t want any loose ends. Regardless, Wendy holds out hope that she will see her brother again one day. She even finds a way to send him a message via a Prodigy robot, which drums up happy memories from their childhood. Joe isn’t ready to let go of the past because he’s the only member of his family left, having lost his father a year prior. However, there is still a chance that Joe and Wendy’s dad still has a major role in Alien: Earth.

Joe and Wendy’s Connection to Their Dad Could Be a Major Factor Going Forward

Since Joe is a little older than his sister, he remembers more about his dad. The thing they would bond over the most was baseball, with Joe being named after New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. All these years later, Joe still listens to games and makes a baseball reference whenever he can. The mission to the Maginot crash site even gives Joe a chance to reminisce a bit when he stumbles upon a rich man’s memorabilia collection that features a famous ball hit by Reggie Jackson. However, Joe’s focus changes when Wendy walks into the room and starts acting strangely. At first, he brushes her off because he learns she’s a synthetic, but her friend, Slightly, spills the beans about her true identity.

After the initial shock, Joe embraces Wendy, finding comfort in the fact that she’s still alive and part of his life again. Unfortunately, Xenomorphs don’t care about love, with the one that escaped the Maginot ruining the reunion by showing up and tackling Joe. Alien: Earth Episode 3 will surely follow Wendy’s efforts to save her brother, opening the door for the show to provide more insight into Hawley’s character. After all, Joe learns that his dad gave up his sister to a strange corporation without telling him, which isn’t an easy thing to move past.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu.

Were you surprised to see Noah Hawley in Alien: Earth? Do you hope he shows up as Joe and Wendy’s dad in future episodes? Let us know in the comments below!