How FX's "Alien: Earth" Expertly Turned an Iconic Fairy Tale On Its Head!

The Alien franchise recently wrapped up its first foray into television with the freshman season of FX's "Alien: Earth". The finale leaves off in an interesting place for the future of the show, with the children/synth hybrids capturing the adults and declaring that they are in charge now. The children are also in control of not one but two Xenomorphs. While currently there is no news if the show will receive a second season, there is a lot to dig into with showrunner Noah Hawley’s debut in the Alien universe. 

Over the 46 years that the series has been around, the characters, moments, and imagery of the Alien movies have become iconic. While we love the horror, action, and the freakiness of H.R. Giger’s designs, the ideas and themes of the movies are the most interesting aspect of them. This is where the most recent film, Alien: Romulus, failed. Romulus played like a “best of” of the franchise, recreating moments or quoting previous films without the same weight as what they’re referencing. By contrast, this is where "Alien: Earth" excels. It has original ideas that build off the elements from the past installments interwoven with a classic children’s tale. The show asks questions of identity, morality, and has themes of immortality and eternal youth, using the iconography of Alien and through the lens of Peter Pan and Wendy.

Hawley's use of the Peter Pan story in "Alien: Earth" is hard to miss. The scientists play the Disney film for the kids before the transfer to synth bodies to put them at ease, and Boy Kavalier reads passages from the original J.M. Barrie book over the intercom system. However, the real story -- and soon to be their reality -- is much darker than what they were promised. There are also direct counterparts between the show and the book. The island where most of the show's action takes place is called  "Neverland" Research Island, named so because of Boy Kavalier’s company, Prodigy, doing research into human-synthetic hybrids as an answer to immortality. Once the children have their consciousnesses installed in synthetic bodies, Boy Kavalier gives them  new names from the Peter Pan story, most notably Marcy, who becomes Wendy, as well as the Lost Boys (Slightly, Curly, and Nibs), and even Captain Hook's bosun, Smee. The rest of the characters fit the roles found in Peter Pan as well. Morrow fits the Captain Hook roles as a tragic, sympathetic figure that seeks revenge, as well as a missing limb. Weyland-Yutani represents the Indians, with their company and Boy Kavalier’s company constantly sparring a la Peter and the Lost Boys with the Indians, and then accusing Boy Kavalier of taking something that is theirs (in this case, the alien specimens onboard their ship). The Xenomorph fits the crocodile, the creature haunting the story (and Morrow). Joe Hermit, to no surprise, fills the role of Wendy’s siblings, John and Michael Darling. The most obvious counterpart, though, is Boy Kavalier as Peter Pan himself. Peter and Kavalier put on this facade of youth and freedom, but both are revealed as evil sociopaths who are no worse than the adults. Akin to Wendy in Barrie's book realizing that Peter is not exactly the hero she thought he was, Marcy comes to see Boy Kavalier as the true villain of the story.

Wendy, in both "Alien: Earth" and the original Peter Pan story, represents those on the brink of adulthood. She is lured by Peter/Boy Kavalier into enter this exciting new world, full of adventure and eternal youth. This isn’t an entirely false pretense -- they are indeed forever children -- but there is more darkness hidden beneath the surface. For Marcy, this eternal youth also means a “cure” for her illness. The trick is that, on Neverland, you can still grow up, if you choose to. Growing up, kids go through this inward journey to find their identity. Marcy, now a hybrid, has to question this identity sooner than she should. Wendy is still partially Marcy, since she is just memories and data from the original Marcy’s brain. She is equally human and machine. There is no correct answer as to what the hybrids truly are. This also leads Marcy and the other Lost Boys to question their morality. The more they experience as the story progresses, learning the true nature and becoming disillusioned of the adults in their lives, the more they have to decide who the real monsters are. 

The children spend the show slowly realizing the true nature of the adults in their lives and how they are expendable to Kavalier and the others. There is one exception in Arthur, but his kindness is met with the grim fate of getting an alien eye creature lodged in his chest-bursted-corpse. The rest of the adults either let them down in some way -- whether its Dame sending Nibs to get her memory erased or Joe shooting one of Marcy’s friends -- or they became disillusioned with them because of the type of person/android they are. This trust is very important for Wendy, which is why she ultimately chooses her friends and the Xenomorphs. Wendy can trust and relate to them more than the people who experimented on and lied to them. In the end, they twist the Peter Pan story by having the kids stay on Neverland to run rampant and lock up anyone who wronged them so no adults get in their way. 

That’s just scratching the surface of "Alien: Earth". Noah Hawley has created a great show for the Alien franchise, one which has a lot to say about the future of humanity as much as it has cool but also terrifying alien iconography. All episodes are now streaming on Hulu!