“Now, we rule.”
For all his proclaimed genius, Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) failed to account for the probability that his Hybrid creation, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), would turn on him. Many “Alien: Earth” viewers might claim to be shocked at her mutiny if we didn’t know how vicious 11-year-old girls can be when given the opportunity to preside over a social hive. This one figures out how to converse with one of the deadliest extraterrestrials in the known universe — and not only does it understand her, it obeys her commands.
Our Boy placed that child’s consciousness inside a synthetic body resembling an adult woman, then endowed that construct with superior strength, heightened reflexes and a supercomputer with remote hacking capabilities for a brain.
The main pluses humans have going for them are their overconfidence and yearning to manipulate anything and anyone they can for their own ends.
If Boy Kavalier had ever been a boy, he might have recognized what a dumb move that was. But he never viewed Wendy as anything other than a “floor model” advertising a vehicle for immortality, similar to the way that he considers the space lifeforms he purloined from his corporate competitor, Weyland-Yutani, to be his toys.
(Patrick Brown/FX) Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier and Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh in “Alien: Earth”
Conversely, among the truths that Wendy lands on in the end is that her maker is nothing like his fairy tale role model, Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. That’s because he was never a boy, she says. “You’ve always been a man — a mean, angry little man who decided to hate everybody. Just like your daddy.”
With that, Wendy and her aliens seize control of his paradise. As the Pearl Jam song electrifying the end credits announces, it’s “One, two, three, four, five against one. . .Torture from you to me/ Abducted from the street/ I’d rather be. . .I’d rather be with. . .I’d rather be with an animal.” Boy Kavalier can’t help cackling hysterically.
Watch enough “Alien” movies and you come to expect certain inevitabilities. For one, the titular alien always escapes. Two, any resident androids will turn against the people they’re supposed to help, which the boss’ assistant, Atom (Adrian Edmondson), does in fulfillment of his Boy’s wishes to have the eye midge infect Wendy’s brother, Joe (Alex Lawther). Wendy thwarts that in accordance with the third trope: the hero returning to save someone weaker than she is.
Noah Hawley’s “Alien: Earth” finale, “The Real Monsters,” fulfills those expectations, multiplying the variety of carnage and twisting other franchise mainstays. This time, the humans aren’t hunted by one xenomorph but two, including a teacup version, along with a hyper-intelligent eyeball monster and a killer plant.
The eye midge alien, like the rest of the beings Boy Kavalier underestimates, offers him the chance to finally enjoy something he can’t buy or make: a conversation with a being of equivalent or greater intelligence. As the hour starts, the thing is still possessing a sheep.
“I wish I could hear your voice. The things you’ve seen – yeah, that really would be an interesting f**king conversation,” Boy Kavalier coos, never presuming that this being might have bigger plans than engaging in idle chatter.
(Patrick Brown/FX) Sydney Chandler as Wendy in “Alien: Earth”
Much later, Wendy’s confrontation with Atom qualifies as synth-on-synth violence. As for Kirsh, Timothy Olyphant’s science officer android, he has business with the cyborg, Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who has been itching to crush Kirsh’s artificial brain with his augmented hands. Part of the series’ breathtaking cinematic scope includes occasional jolts of action, and this long-foreshadowed death match lives up to the best of those scenes. The pair breaks every beaker on Kirsh’s table until the cyborg slams the android over it, breaking his artificial spine.
The puppet masters dueling for control from behind the scenes aren’t too far removed from the ones we’re living under now.
For a breath or two, Morrow seems to have won. He even launches into a triumphant monologue about the legend of John Henry: All night long, Morrow says, John Henry drove steel, fighting a machine that could dig deeper and faster. Morrow’s conclusion is that man always wins in the end. It’s a question of will.
Kirsh can’t resist taunting his foe through milky spittle, reminding Morrow that John Henry died of exhaustion. But before the enhanced human can blow apart his enemy’s operating system, however, another alien escapes its tank. Kirsh uses the distraction to yank Morrow off balance and choke him out. Then Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) and Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) step in, bind them both, and whisk them off to the holding cell.
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There’s no question as to whether humans are worse than the xenomorphs by the end of “The Real Monsters,” as Ellen Ripley mused in “Aliens.” Xenomorphs are ruthless killers, but collaborative and community-minded. The main pluses humans have going for them are their overconfidence and yearning to manipulate anything and anyone they can for their own ends.
As the grisly opening frame of the finale shows us, we’re just meat for bottom feeders. Poor Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl) — deceived by Slightly, who arranged for a facehugger to impregnate him — lies dead on the beach as a crab picks at the gaping wound where a chestburster emerged. Arthur was a good man. Thanks to his boss’ overreach, now he’s crustacean food. A xenomorph inches close enough for the crab to raise its claws in defense before backing away from its tiny earthly cousin. Live prey is abundant and nearby.
As for Arthur, the eye midge grants him a second life of sorts, popping itself into his dead skull and jerking him from prone into a seated position. He simply can’t quit this terribly unethical job.
(Patrick Brown/FX) Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh in “Alien: Earth”
We’ve reached a point in history where many of the darker speculative assumptions about our collective future have become disconcertingly prescient. “Alien: Earth” follows that pattern, trading the classic robot uprising for a version of non-humans with minds and souls. But the puppet masters dueling for control from behind the scenes aren’t too far removed from the ones we’re living under now.
With this first season, Hawley has given us an excellent tale about colonization that covers space, Earth, and body sovereignty, cautioning against presumptions of superiority. Wendy never physically changes, but her mental development travels leagues from where she starts, spurred forward by her maker’s dismissiveness and cruelty — and they’ve had many conversations with Wendy’s brother concerning her humanity.
Joe insists that Wendy is still his sister and a child. Prodigy views her as a machine built to fulfill her creator’s whims. Boy Kavalier thinks he’s king of the planet with everyone else supplicant to his will. The parallels to our present-day politics are laughably clear.
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That makes Wendy’s conclusion empowering. She’s ascertained that she’s not a child and not an adult; not the sick little girl named Marcy who she used to be, nor her maker’s favorite. “And I can’t be what everyone wants me to be,” she concludes.
Her one certainty is that she’s more capable than anyone dreamed she could be. The finale’s script has a lot of lines worthy of stitching on throw pillows, but one of my favorites is when Joe apologizes to Wendy for helping his former military buddies get them recaptured. He begins to tell her that it’s complicated, but before the word escapes his lips, she cuts him short with, “Don’t say ‘complicated.’ That is what powerless people say to make doing nothing OK. And I’m not powerless.”
Every flesh-and-blood human being in the “Alien: Earth” finale falls victim to Boy Kavalier’s pretension, from the private army sent to die in the xenomorph’s teeth to Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), who naively believed her motherly kindness would persuade the children whose lives she took from them to go easier on her.
If Kavalier were better at faking kindness, Wendy might have continued viewing him as her boy genius and reveled in being his favorite. But he made the mistake of valuing her mechanics more than her consciousness and sharp logic, treating her like another piece of property, slightly above a lower life form.
“You wanna know why I like them? The aliens?” Wendy asks Joe. “They’re honest.”
It’s true. You always know where you stand with a drooling, ravenous killing machine. What about the woman whispering to them? Wendy is the hero of this story. Wendy is also a problem to be confronted in a second season that “Alien: Earth” presumably will get. By whom or what isn’t clear, although Weyland-Yutani’s forces are incoming.
Her predicament is reminiscent of another queen who embarked on a conquering path with snarling living weapons on her shoulder. She enjoyed an impressive run that won many viewers to her cause, a worshipful streak that ended when unchecked power turned her into a monster, too. That woman was only human, though. Wendy is something else, and that should frighten us.
All episodes of “Alien: Earth” are streaming on Hulu.
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