Star Wars, Marvel, Godzilla. Doesn’t it feel like every blockbuster film series gets a streaming spin-off nowadays? Next up is Alien, with Alien: Earth set to land on Hulu and FX on August 12. Said spin-offs have been a hit-and-miss affair so far, so you’d forgive purists for cringing at the idea of sci-fi’s most infamously terrifying franchise making the jump to TV. For every Andor, after all, there’s been an Ahsoka or a Secret Invasion—episodic filler that serves little purpose other than to remind you that you’d rather be watching an actual blockbuster on IMAX, preferably with a sizeable bucket of popcorn close at hand.
Nonetheless, there are a few reasons to expect Alien: Earth will survive its warp-drive journey to the small screen. For starters, Alien is one of the few major film series yet to be milked to death— Earth will be its first TV installlment, save for a short web series spun out of the video game Alien: Isolation—so it’s not as though this spin-off will arrive at a moment of Alien-specific franchise fatigue. Conversely, Alien is one of those rare properties with an abundance of untapped lore that would benefit from the room for exploration that episodic TV offers.
And if you’re worried about Earth paying its dues to its cinematic forebears, take it from Sir Ridley Scott himself: “[Hawley] has gone down that route and definitely respected the original Alien,” the OG director told The Hollywood Reporter regarding series showrunner Noah Hawley, best known as the creator of Fargo. There’s another reason to feel confident about Earth: Hawley’s bona fides as a TV lead are well established, with Fargo having been nominated for dozens of Emmys, winning three along the way. If there’s someone you want at the helm of your big blockbuster spin-off, he’ll certainly be among the names.
So, will the latest entry in the Alien franchise find its place among the stars, or will it burn up on reentry? We’re cautiously optimistic for the former. Here’s everything else we know about Alien: Earth.
Alien: Earth is technically a prequel to the original Alien
The official synopsis has it that Earth is set in the year 2120, which Alien lore nerds will know places it two years prior to the events of 1979’s Alien. (Last year’s Alien: Romulus took place in 2142, which places it 22 years after Hawley’s series in between the original and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens.) As you’d probably gather from the sell of the spin-off’s subtitle, we’ve yet to see xenomorphs on terra firma; usually, they’re stalking the occupants of a starship in deep space, or massacring armed-to-the-teeth space marines on a distant colony planet.
Said synopsis offers a little more as to how the alien(s) might arrive. “When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth,” it reads, “’Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.” By the sounds of it, we’ll see the humans race against time to put a stop to the alien incursion before they can destroy the world. Hey, if worst comes to worst, there are always nukes.