culture and entertainment - TV Recap Wendy goes on a rescue mission, Kavalier reveals his master plan and Kirsh plants a seed in an episode that feels like its killing time as much as Xenomorphs This post contains spoilers for t...
his week’s episode of Alien: Earth, “Metamorphosis,” now streaming on Hulu.
Midway through “Metamorphosis,” Boy Kavalier and his faithful synthetic sidekick Kirsh get into a debate about the wisdom of bringing the creatures retrieved from the Maginot wreckage back to Prodigy’s Neverland headquarters.
Kirsh not unfairly points out that Kavalier is risking a decade of work on the technology that created the Lost Boys “on something new and shiny.” The response disappoints Kavalier, who cites Shakespeare, saying these monsters are “like an undiscovered country.
And here you are — a scientist.” We know from the decades-long history of the Alien franchise that Kirsh is almost certainly right, and that bringing Xenomorph eggs — not to mention the walking eyeball and the other Maginot specimens — to a remote island base is a terrible idea that will almost certainly end in many deaths, with the expensive Lost Boys and their powerful boss all in enormous danger.
But the blind hubris of one of the most powerful people on Earth is less important than what comes later in the scene: Kirsh has already figured out the Xenomorph’s entire life cycle, mastering what it’s taken characters in several Alien films a much longer time to understand.
On the one hand, it’s probably a good idea for Noah Hawley and company to not let the audience stay too far ahead of the characters. We all know how this works, and it could be frustrating to sit through multiple episodes waiting for two genius-level intellects in Kirsh and Kavalier to catch up with us.
On the other, the quick and almost casual way in which Kirsh runs through what he’s figured out is emblematic of an ungainly episode that seems in a rush to get through a lot of things, especially where the Xenomorph is concerned. We pick up where we left off, with Wendy plunging deep into the bowels of the crash site to rescue her brother from the Xenomorph.
What follows should in theory be thrilling, as the show is pitting its most dangerous monster against a character who’s basically a superhero. But the staging of the fight is awkward, and seems to be going out of its way to protect Wendy, who’s super strong and fast yet doesn’t have any training (nor the killer instincts of her opponent).
There are multiple points where it seems clear that the alien’s barbed tail could gut Wendy within seconds, but it doesn’t get used. And then ultimately, she winds up defeating and killing it off-camera, after leaving Hermit behind while she does battle in an elevator shaft.
Editor’s picks Like Morrow being able to easily stun and trap the Xenomorph last week, the early action here speaks to the challenge this show faces in building an ongoing series around a species that lives only to murder others so it can breed, as well as being incredibly powerful and tough to kill.
Getting back to Noah Hawley’s comment about how he looks at the movies as being about the White Walkers, while he wants this show to be Game of Thrones, it feels the Xenomorph is the Trojan Horse for the other stories he really wants to tell in this universe. Which is fine for the most part, since there are a lot of fascinating ideas in this series, many of which are used well in later episodes.
But this one starts out deep in familiar Alien territory, and ends with Kirsh trying to breed a new Xenomorph by placing the face-hugger’s seed inside the lung that was surgically removed from Hermit. So it’s a lot harder this week to ignore all the messiness surrounding the titular being.
Timothy Olyphant in ‘Alien: Earth.’ Patrick Brown With the first Xenomorph dead, and with Wendy and Hermit both out of commission for now after that brutal fight, the focus of “Metamorphosis” is on the rest of the ensemble — the other Lost Boys in particular. Wendy was the first of them, and is so clearly favored by Boy Kavalier that he risked all of them because she wanted to go help Hermit.
And several of the others resent her for it. Nibs is jealous that Wendy took the only normal name available, and also seems to still be traumatized from her encounter with the eyeball creature. Curly doesn’t like being second fiddle, and tries to convince Kavalier that she’s really the special one.
Trending Stories Related Content Slightly and Smee have a run-in with Morrow on the Maginot, and because they have no chill, they let slip that they’re real people with synth bodies. And Morrow is later somehow able to communicate directly with Slightly, claiming to want to be his friend, even though we know he is solely focused on recovering Weyland-Yutani’s stolen property.
After being gone from Earth for 65 years, Morrow has no family left — not even the daughter he mentions to Slightly — so the ship’s cargo is his whole life now. All of this is necessary world-building for the rest of the season’s stories, after the first two episodes were so much about the siblings.
But it can’t always disguise its haste to get from all this set-up to the bigger stories yet to come.
Midway through “Metamorphosis,” Boy Kavalier and his faithful synthetic sidekick Kirsh get into a debate about the wisdom of bringing the creatures retrieved from the Maginot wreckage back to Prodigy’s Neverland headquarters.
Kirsh not unfairly points out that Kavalier is risking a decade of work on the technology that created the Lost Boys “on something new and shiny.” The response disappoints Kavalier, who cites Shakespeare, saying these monsters are “like an undiscovered country.
And here you are — a scientist.” We know from the decades-long history of the Alien franchise that Kirsh is almost certainly right, and that bringing Xenomorph eggs — not to mention the walking eyeball and the other Maginot specimens — to a remote island base is a terrible idea that will almost certainly end in many deaths, with the expensive Lost Boys and their powerful boss all in enormous danger.
But the blind hubris of one of the most powerful people on Earth is less important than what comes later in the scene: Kirsh has already figured out the Xenomorph’s entire life cycle, mastering what it’s taken characters in several Alien films a much longer time to understand.
On the one hand, it’s probably a good idea for Noah Hawley and company to not let the audience stay too far ahead of the characters. We all know how this works, and it could be frustrating to sit through multiple episodes waiting for two genius-level intellects in Kirsh and Kavalier to catch up with us.
On the other, the quick and almost casual way in which Kirsh runs through what he’s figured out is emblematic of an ungainly episode that seems in a rush to get through a lot of things, especially where the Xenomorph is concerned. We pick up where we left off, with Wendy plunging deep into the bowels of the crash site to rescue her brother from the Xenomorph.
What follows should in theory be thrilling, as the show is pitting its most dangerous monster against a character who’s basically a superhero. But the staging of the fight is awkward, and seems to be going out of its way to protect Wendy, who’s super strong and fast yet doesn’t have any training (nor the killer instincts of her opponent).
There are multiple points where it seems clear that the alien’s barbed tail could gut Wendy within seconds, but it doesn’t get used. And then ultimately, she winds up defeating and killing it off-camera, after leaving Hermit behind while she does battle in an elevator shaft.
Editor’s picks Like Morrow being able to easily stun and trap the Xenomorph last week, the early action here speaks to the challenge this show faces in building an ongoing series around a species that lives only to murder others so it can breed, as well as being incredibly powerful and tough to kill.
Getting back to Noah Hawley’s comment about how he looks at the movies as being about the White Walkers, while he wants this show to be Game of Thrones, it feels the Xenomorph is the Trojan Horse for the other stories he really wants to tell in this universe. Which is fine for the most part, since there are a lot of fascinating ideas in this series, many of which are used well in later episodes.
But this one starts out deep in familiar Alien territory, and ends with Kirsh trying to breed a new Xenomorph by placing the face-hugger’s seed inside the lung that was surgically removed from Hermit. So it’s a lot harder this week to ignore all the messiness surrounding the titular being.
Timothy Olyphant in ‘Alien: Earth.’ Patrick Brown With the first Xenomorph dead, and with Wendy and Hermit both out of commission for now after that brutal fight, the focus of “Metamorphosis” is on the rest of the ensemble — the other Lost Boys in particular. Wendy was the first of them, and is so clearly favored by Boy Kavalier that he risked all of them because she wanted to go help Hermit.
And several of the others resent her for it. Nibs is jealous that Wendy took the only normal name available, and also seems to still be traumatized from her encounter with the eyeball creature. Curly doesn’t like being second fiddle, and tries to convince Kavalier that she’s really the special one.
Trending Stories Related Content Slightly and Smee have a run-in with Morrow on the Maginot, and because they have no chill, they let slip that they’re real people with synth bodies. And Morrow is later somehow able to communicate directly with Slightly, claiming to want to be his friend, even though we know he is solely focused on recovering Weyland-Yutani’s stolen property.
After being gone from Earth for 65 years, Morrow has no family left — not even the daughter he mentions to Slightly — so the ship’s cargo is his whole life now. All of this is necessary world-building for the rest of the season’s stories, after the first two episodes were so much about the siblings.
But it can’t always disguise its haste to get from all this set-up to the bigger stories yet to come.