Alien: Earth is one of the best sci-fi shows on Hulu. When an Alien TV series was first announced, there was a fear that the franchise wasn’t suited to television. It’s a haunted house story in space — how do you stretch that out to eight hour-long episodes? But the show was in very safe hands with creator Noah Hawley, who’d previously brought Fargo and the X-Men to the small screen.
Hawley did something radically different with Alien: Earth. He didn’t just rehash the same plot formula that the movies have been using for decades; he brought the xenomorphs to Earth and told a completely new story. Alien: Earth is not without its flaws, but it is a fresh, exciting vision of the futuristic science fiction genre.
Alien: Earth Is Sci-Fi Television At Its Best
All great sci-fi stories should reflect timely social concerns through their speculative narrative, and capture the underlying humanity of their characters despite their far-flung intergalactic or futuristic settings, and that’s exactly what Alien: Earth did. Hawley combined the rise of A.I., the uphill battle against terminal illness, and the arrested-development themes of Peter Pan to tell a whole new Alien story.
Alien: Earth isn’t just about a xenomorph terrorizing a space crew (although the thrilling opening sequence did just that). It’s about a futuristic Earth where all the land has been split up among various corporations, and an ambitious young trillionaire is turning terminally ill children into an android army. It has as much in common with Blade Runner as it does with Alien.
Why Alien: Earth’s Finale Was So Controversial
When Alien: Earth ended its first season, despite the widespread acclaim for the first seven episodes, it divided audiences — mostly because it didn’t really feel like a finale. It just felt like another chapter of the story, as if there was another episode coming the following week, but that was it.
This is becoming an industry-wide problem in television, especially for streaming shows. Just in recent memory, the finale episodes of Peacemaker season 2, House of the Dragon season 2, and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 all had the same problem. Since streamers want to keep stringing audiences along for years, they avoid closure and finality at all costs.
How Alien: Earth Season 2 Will Be Different