With Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley takes on the narrative universe created by Ridley Scott, one of the most fascinating in science fiction. A monumental production, meticulous in every detail, capable of engaging not only with the Alien saga and the dark, visionary dimension of Blade Runner, but also of paying homage and echoing multiple auteurs — from Carpenter, Kubrick, and Cronenberg — and both sci-fi and non-sci-fi works.

Who is Noah Hawley | From Fargo to Alien

Writer, showrunner, and director, Hawley has built his reputation on the ability to take iconic narrative worlds and push them beyond their original boundaries. With Fargo — especially its second and fifth seasons — he showed how he can welcome audiences into a familiar universe and then unsettle them with unexpected turns. In Alien: Earth, he deploys the same skill: expanding, reinventing, and at the same time honoring the source material.

Celebrating Ridley Scott – and Beyond

From the very first episodes, Hawley pays tribute to Scott and his two milestones, Alien and Blade Runner. But the references don’t end there: the echoes of Legend (1985) intertwine with declared allusions to Peter Pan. The choice of child and adolescent protagonists recalls Jack and Lili (Tom Cruise and Mia Sara) and the story of the Lost Boys of Neverland — here transformed into the island of the Prodigy Corporation.

These young hybrids — humans whose consciousness has been transferred into synthetic bodies — remain trapped in a suspended mental and emotional growth, oscillating between childish clumsiness, purity, and lightness. The procedure that turns them into hybrids, while freeing them from terminal illnesses, nods to the cyberpunk world of Ghost in the Shell and, in some ways, to Lanthimos’s Poor Things.

The contrast with Alien: Romulus is clear: in Fede Álvarez’s film, the protagonists are young adults hardened by lives of poverty and oppression under the yoke of corporations like Weyland-Yutani. Here, Hawley instead explores the blend of innocence and immaturity with strength and superhuman abilities — a premise that promises new adventures and challenges.

Monsters et Al. | The Xenomorph is Not Alone

From the trailer, it was already clear: in this series, the xenomorph is not the only enemy. In the first episodes, we encounter creatures straight out of splatter and body horror — with echoes of The Thing, and even Little Shop of Horrors — grotesque and dangerous, yet still inferior to the perfect creature conceived by H. R. Giger.

The challenge is not only against these monsters, but also a rescue mission following the crash of the space vessel Maginot into city buildings. These sequences of devastation recall images of 9/11, while the military operation inside the ruins evokes the relentless action of Gareth Evans’s The Raid.

All Against All | Alien: Earth directors and cast

Every Tuesday brings a new episode of Alien: Earth on Hulu-Disney+. Direction comes from Noah Hawley, Dana Gonzales (Fargo, Legion), and Ugla Hauksdóttir, with a score composed by Jeff Russo (Fargo, Star Trek, Ripley). In the cast there are:

• Sydney Chandler (Don’t Worry Darling, Pistol, Sugar) – Wendy, the first hybrid
• Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game, The End of the F***ing World, The French Dispatch, Andor) -Joe Hermit and Wendy’s brother
• Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Game of Thrones) – Dame Sylvia, doctor of Prodigy Corporation
• Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror) – the Prodigy Corporation CEO Boy Kavalier
• Timothy Olyphant (Fargo, Deadwood) – mentor of the Prodigy Corporation’s hybrids

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With just its opening episodes, Hawley has already expanded Scott’s universe further. The possible developments are many, the themes and conflicts just as numerous — above all, survival. The idea of siege and the struggle for life itself run through battles against alien monsters, a crashed space vessel, terminal illness, the past, cyborgs, synths, and a capitalist, oppressive society.

But at the very center — often lurking in the shadows — remains the xenomorph.