They’re calling it “the Andor of Alien,” and while I’m not willing to go that far after just two episodes, there is no denying the quality of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth.
The first ten minutes should sell you. Very quickly you realize a primary goal of Hawley here is to make Alien: Earth feel authentic to the late ‘70s/early ‘80s aesthetic of the first two films, from the sets to the costumes to the music to the sound design to even the slow fades between scenes. It’s unlike modern films which often simply use the mythology for a modern-day blockbuster, but given Hawley’s history of Legion and Fargo, this isn’t wholly unexpected. It is brilliantly executed.
Alien: Earth skips the expected. There’s a ship carrying Facehuggers. They escape, they murder everyone. This is not actually shown in any meaningful capacity, only flashes of violence and scenes of the bloody aftermath. So it’s not just a retread of the films that came before it, something I think plagued the good-but-derivative Alien: Romulus as of late.
Another skip is the Xenomorph reveal itself, which I greatly appreciated. No build-up for six episodes finally to show and unleash the alien near the finale. It’s out, it’s running around and murdering everyone it comes across. But one other aspect that stands out is the ship carrying other dangerous specimens like a small eyeball octopus that possesses a host, or little pincher bugs that drain your blood and swell disgustingly to thirty times their size. Each of these is a little new horrible mystery and a surprise past the chest-bursting we’ve seen a hundred times.
The non-alien part of this is the concept of “hybrids,” invented by a young trillionaire who places the consciousness of children into the mind computers of synthetic androids. Not a cyborg, not a synth, a hybrid, and the three “factions” now vie for world dominance.
The children who are recruited are dying, and chosen both for that reason, given that they need a new body, but the fact that adults cannot undergo this process at all. Their minds are fixed, while the mind of a child is still elastic and growing. It “fits,” while other ages do not. Hence, we have a 12 year-old now calling herself “Wendy,” now living inside a body of a 20-something. But it’s not just living, these bodies possess superhuman strength, speed and intelligence.
But they’re still just kids. They’re sent out on a first mission with the initial spaceship crashes into a city to do search and rescue, and even though they come across creatures they could probably dismember in a few seconds flat, we have scenes like the child-droids covering up a small creature like it’s a spider they caught on the kitchen counter, utterly terrified of it. That’s a consistent theme. These quasi-humans are still fundamentally children.
The show takes a central Peter Pan analogy a bit too far. The children watch the movie at the lab, and Wendy names herself Wendy. But then they go on to name all the other kids characters from the movie, and literally call them “The Lost Boys.” She grabs a tiny paper cutter blade on her way out that’s a stand-in for the movie’s sword. Too far.
While the only actor I recognize here is Timothy Olyphant as a blonde-eyebrowed synth, it’s easy to see this is going to be a standout performance from Wendy Actress Sydney Chandler, her highest profile role this far being five episodes of Apple TV+’s Sugar. This will elevate her greatly the way Legion launched Dan Stevens and Aubrey Plaza to new heights.
If we’re talking “Andor,” I’m not sure I’ve seen the type of gripping storyline and emotion that show gave us, but it’s early. The performances, production design are incredible, and it’s a must-watch for any Alien fan, but any sci-fi fan more generally.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/08/13/review-noah-hawleys-alien-earth-is-a-must-watch-on-hulu/