The xenmorph is crowning!
Well, sort of. On Wednesday, FX dropped a longer teaser of the highly anticipated "Alien: Earth" that is giving birth vibes. Created by "Fargo" mastermind Noah Hawley, the sci-fi horror series was a glint in Hawley's eye long before the COVID lockdowns, and after years of gestation, now we were getting signs of life. Yes, a rough due date has finally been announced.
In the teaser below, we see a xenomorph with an image of the Earth in the reflection of its shiny skull. We saw a similar image in a teaser from earlier this year. But wait, there's more! In a stern voiceover, we hear "In 2120, Mother Earth is expecting . . ." accompanied by matching text onscreen.
The year 2120 tracks with everything that Hawley has teased earlier – that "Alien: Earth" would take place roughly 70 years in the future and that would make the series a prequel to the original "Alien" film. However, he has also cautioned fans not to look to the prequel films for clues, but rather the first two films give a better idea of the series' aesthetic.
"I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films, and so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me," he said on KCRW's "The Business."
On Wednesday, FX also released an expanded series synopsis:
When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in the sci-fi horror series “Alien: Earth.” As members of the crash recovery crew search for survivors among the wreckage, they encounter mysterious predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined. With this new threat unlocked, the search crew must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it.
The series stars Sydney Chandler, along with an international cast that includes Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille and Moe Bar-El.
The teaser's promise that "Mother Earth is expecting" uses the language of birth, playing into the franchise's ongoing themes about motherhood. Along those lines, we also learn that the series itself will burst out of FX's metaphorical chest to say hello to the world in Summer 2025.
Check out the full teaser below. There are also flashes of images that frankly, we couldn't make any sense of, but maybe you'll have better luck:
FX's "Alien: Earth" will arrive in Summer 2025 on Hulu.