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Alien: Earth Just Gave One Character A Power That Changes Everything
Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley has been taking some big swings with expanding the franchise lore – but nothing quite like this latest reveal at the end of Episode 4. The first arc of the season teased what was coming from the very start, as the new “hybrid” being Wendy (Sydney Chandler) started exhibiting abilities that her creators couldn’t understand. The moment Wendy stepped onto the crash site of the USCSS Maginot, she began hearing a strange frequency that affected her head. Episode 3 ended on a bold cliffhanger: The Prodigy corporation started growing its own xenomorph drone, but the process clearly had a profound impact on Wendy, causing her to collapse.
Well, we didn’t have to wait long to get an answer to this mystery. Alien: Earth Episode 4 confirms what a lot of fans have theorized, as Prodigy has figured out how to
“talk to” xenomorphs.
In “Observation”, the team at Prodigy digs into the mystery of what made Wendy collapse on the lab floor. As the hybrid prototype reveals, she could hear the xenomorph larva inside a facehugger “screaming” as it was surgically extracted. Once the sonic connection is identified, Dr. Arthur (David Rysdahl) and Dr. Dame (Essie Davis) Sylvia get Wendy’s audio frequencies properly set: she can hear the frequency the xenomorphs “speak” on, without being too “loud” for her brain to handle. Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) isn’t satisfied with that; he wants to know if Wendy can take the next step: talking back to the creatures. It doesn’t even take a few test runs before Wendy learns to tune her vocal chords to the necessary frequency, and begins to “speak” in the xenomorph “language.”
The end of the episode sees the xenomorph drone get “born,” and Boy gets to confirm his theory: Wendy is there to greet the newborn and establish communication with it. By the looks of things before the credits roll, the hybrid has a new pet xenomorph to play with.
Wendy’s New Power Changes The Game for Alien: Earth (And the Franchise)
Noah Hawley has managed to create massive new stakes with this twist: Wendy can seemingly now speak to, possibly command, xenomorphs; suddenly, the slow-burning subplot about whether or not hybrids actually retain any of their former humanity seems much more paramount.
The Alien franchise has always thrown machines in the middle of the struggle between humans and xenomorphs: Alien: Earth has introduced hybrids as the literal embodiment of that franchise motif. Typically speaking, synths haven’t been the most heroic characters in the Alien movies – in fact, they’re pretty 50/50 when it comes to throwing humans under the bus: Ash (Alien) and David (Prometheus, Alien: Covenant) being bad apples, while Bishop (Aliens), Walter (Alien: Covenant), and Andy (Alien: Romulus) were good eggs. So again: Hawley is aware of that franchise history and its implications, which makes the level of stakes in Alien: Earth take on interesting new layers: how the hybrids develop, mentally, emotionally, and physically, as they find their place between human and machine could also determine some important outcomes for Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, and the creatures they are battling over.
As for the franchise: We don’t yet know fully if Alien: Earth will ever be considered fully canon; that said, it doesn’t necessarily have to be to add some fun new ideas for future Alien movies to play with. Already, the show has introduced rival corporations that can complicate the plot and widen the range of antagonists; additional forms of machine characters who can enhance that part of the films, and now a potential machine-based system for communicating with xenomorphs, which can be utilized for training them. And we’re only halfway through Alien: Earth‘s run.
You can catch the series streaming on Hulu-Disney+.
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