At this point, I’m not afraid to admit that my favorite character in Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth is the little tentacled eyeball creature known as Species 64 or t. ocellus. It’s intelligent, it’s deadly, it’s honestly kind of adorable, and like Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), I am nothing short of obsessed with it.
T. ocellus has managed to steal the show in every episode it’s been in so far, with the unfortunate exception of Alien: Earth’s season 1 finale. In space, no one can hear you sigh with disappointment. Too bad we’re on Earth.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Alien: Earth episode 8.]
Entitled “The Real Monsters,” Alien: Earth episode 8 thankfully doesn’t make us wait long for t. ocellus to get some screen time. Before the episode even hits the five-minute mark, we’re shown that Species 64 is right where we left it at the end of episode 7: still embedded in the eyesocket of Victoria the sheep, trapped in a small containment unit in the middle of Boy Kavalier’s office, and still looking pissed.
“I wish I could hear your voice,” Kavalier tells t. ocellus, toying with a bottle of ADHD medication he clearly hasn’t been taking for a while now. “The things you’ve seen… Yeah, that really would be an interesting fucking conversation.”
I wholeheartedly agree. That would be an interesting conversation, but it’s one Hawley apparently isn’t prepared to have until season 2, which is a little concerning given the fact that, at the time of writing, the show has yet to be renewed for a second season.
We get a brief moment of hope when Kavalier asks his bodyguard, “How do you feel about your eyes?” But he ultimately sends the guy off to find his manservant, Atom (Adrian Edmonson). The revelation that Kavalier killed his own father and built Atom (who we learn is a synth in this episode) to replace him is definitely interesting, but at this point, I want one thing, and one thing only: to watch t. ocellus climb into someone’s skull. Preferably Kavalier’s.
I did get part of my wish near the episode’s end. As Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the rest of the Hybrids go rogue, it becomes clear that her human brother Joe (Alex Lawther) is Kavalier’s ideal host for t. ocellus. Atom lures Joe into Kavalier’s office, before locking him inside with t. ocellus, which has been let out of its cage. But Wendy arrives just in time, and together, she and Joe manage to scare t. ocellus off. It escapes the Prodigy facility and later comes across the recently chest-bursted corpse of Arthur (David Rysdahl), which it immediately inhabits. The corpse sits up. Oooooh, spooky!
…and that’s it. Whatever t. ocellus’ plans are, we won’t see them until next season, assuming there is a next season. I’m also a bit disappointed the creature’s current host is yet another days-old corpse. We’ve seen it inhabit a cat’s corpse, and we’ve seen it pop the eyeball out of a living sheep and commandeer its body, where it has remained for the majority of the season. But the last time we saw it climb into a fresh human corpse (one that it presumably killed), things really got interesting.
In episode 5, it hijacked the body of Maginot mechanic Shmuel (Michael Smiley), promptly imitated a Xenomorph call, and then immediately attacked when the Xenomorph showed up, making horrific noises the entire time. We didn’t actually get to see it crawl into Shmuel’s eye socket, as that happened off-screen, but t. ocellus’ encounter with the Xenomorph was one of its most fascinating scenes. I’m pretty bummed the season is over and we still haven’t had the chance to watch it scoop out a living human’s eyeball and take over their body — especially a human as deserving as Boy K.
Don’t get me wrong, the final episode of Alien: Earth season 1 has its high points. Wendy’s Xenomorph tore through its fair share of redshirts, but no one especially important was killed. That weird, ceiling-hanging plant-thing from the Maginot finally ate one of Joe’s friends. We got to watch Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) and Morrow (Babou Ceesay) throw down in a synth-versus-cyborg battle that was pretty cool. But the one thing Hawley’s been teasing us with all season never quite pays off, and that’s damn disappointing.
I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye out for season 2.
