Most Alien movies end in explosions and bloodshed, but with FX’s Alien: Earth, creator Noah Hawley took a different approach. To unpack the show’s season 1 finale, Polygon spoke to Hawley and star Sydney Chandler, who broke down the final moments and teased what could be coming next.
Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the end of Alien: Earth season 1.
Unpacking the ending of Alien: Earth
Alien: Earth ends on a cliffhanger. The robot-human Hybrids have revolted against their masters (both human and synthetic) and locked them up in a jail cell. The Hybrids also have control of a Xenomorph, which has bonded with their leader Wendy (Chandler) after she learned to speak its language.
In other words, it looks bad for anyone not on team Hybrid. But instead of unleashing that Xenomorph on her enemies, Wendy simply proclaims her plans to “take over the world” before the show cuts to black and the credits roll. The end.
This may seem anticlimactic — or even risky, what if Alien: Earth gets canceled? — but for Hawley, that’s exactly the point.
“A big part of what I try to do as a visual storyteller is always to engage the audience’s imagination,” he says. “Too much of what we watch treats us as passive viewers. So if the worst thing that happens is that the audience has to finish this story, I trust them to come up with some good ways to go forward.”
As for Chandler, she sees the show’s relatively bloodless finale as a logical endpoint to the story, and argues that Wendy’s even-tempered behavior in Alien: Earth is in keeping with her character.
“I don’t see her [Wendy] wanting a bloodbath,” the actor says. “She wouldn’t want to kill them. She’s too intellectual for that. She’s going to want to pull some strings. She’s going to want to draw that out.”
I’m pretty confident, given the show’s success, that we’ll get to make more. — Noah Hawley
If anyone in Alien: Earth deserves to die, it’s Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the petulant tech trillionaire who created the Hybrids and then tossed aside for a chance to control the Xenomorph and a handful of other alien specimens. But even there, Chandler doesn’t think Wendy would be out for blood.
“There’s a similarity between her and Boy K,” she says. “They can be easily bored and they’re both very smart. She’s curious about what will happen next, just as he is in his own screwed-up way.”
Chandler adds: “That final line is her saying checkmate to Boy K.”
Will there be an Alien: Earth season 2?
As of this writing, Alien: Earth hasn’t been renewed for season 2, though it seems likely that could happen at any moment. But in the meantime, Hawley doesn’t seem too worried that his show will end on a huge unresolved cliffhanger.
“I’m pretty confident, given the show’s success, that we’ll get to make more,” he says, before admitting that there’s still no guarantee. “The risk is the reward.”
Chandler is slightly less confident, but she’s holding out hope we haven’t seen the last of Wendy, Boy Kavalier, and the rest of the Alien: Earth ensemble.
“I’m hoping, hoping, hoping we get to go again to see what those dynamics will turn out to be,” she says. “As Noah said: Not enough people died in season 1. So if we go to season 2, it’s happening, which is terrifying. As an actor, you’re like: Please don’t let it be me.”