Alien: Earth is not shy about playing with the lore and concepts of its franchise, but it will be staying away from the more recent worldbuilding established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. In a new interview with Empire Magazine, showrunner Noah Hawley pointed out that in this franchise’s four decade history, only two out of its nine movies have explored the ancient origins of humanity and xenomorphs, and to many fans, they are tangential to the larger story. Hawley agreed with many critics who have said that the xenomorph is scariest when it is mysterious, and that includes its origins. That will be the case in Alien: Earth, premiering on August 12th on FX and Hulu.
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“Well, look, that first movie came out in 1979 and Prometheus came out in 2012,” Hawley said. “So you’re talking about close to 40 years in which there was no black goo, no David, no Engineers. Alien, for me, is baked in as these creatures that have existed for millions of years. They’re the perfectly evolved species.”
Hawley did not criticize Ridley Scott — director of the original Alien and of Prometheus and Covenant, who was passionate about the “Engineers” angle of his prequels. However, with his own time in the franchise, Hawley said he’d prefer “to keep the lid on that can of worms.” However, he hesitated to say whether he considers some things canonical and some things heretical when it comes to his own series.
“What you have to do is tell these stories from an organically fan-place within yourself,” he said. Hawley repeated the geek culture adage “nobody hates Star Trek more than a Star Trek fan,” meaning that not every title in a series or franchise is going to please every consumer and fan.
Alien: Earth takes its own major risks when it comes to new concepts and faithfulness to the older titles. It is set two years before the events of the first Alien movie, and it takes place on earth. It seems like the show will bring a xenomorph right to our home turf, though other movies have always made that out to be the worst possible cataclysm that could befall humanity. On earth, it would be practically impossible to stop a xenomorph before it could infect a new host, and the species propagates too quickly to keep up with.
The show’s answer to that is another break from tradition — many of the main characters are Weyland-Yutani synthetics, meaning they can’t be hosts for more xenomorphs. However, the main character, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), is the first ever “hybrid” — a human mind and consciousness implanted in a synthetic body. This is a fascinating concept for the series, but because it hasn’t been done before, it will inevitably ruffle some feathers in the fandom.
We’ll get to see how Hawley pulled it off on August 12th when Alien: Earth premieres on FX and FX on Hulu.
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