TITLE: Alien: Earth
EPISODES: “Metamorphosis”
DIRECTOR: Noah Hawley
NETWORK: FX & Hulu ($9.99 (USD) per month)
RELEASE DATE: August 19, 2025

The following review contains SPOILERS for episode 3. If you wish to see our spoiler review of episode 1 and 2, click here. If you haven’t watched Alien: Earth yet, we encourage you to bookmark this review and return after viewing.

Episode Synopsis:

If you wish to skip the detailed recap of “Metamorphosis,” continue reading at the section marked “Analysis”.

This episode opens with Wendy running through the ship. Meanwhile Tootles chats with Kirsh in the laboratory, and Slightly is alone with the eggs. Nibs stares down the eyeball creature and begins having flashbacks; seeing her human body after being turned into a hybrid. She asks Curly several questions, “Why didn’t we keep our names? Why are we named after characters from Peter Pan, and why didn’t we get to choose our new names?” Curly states that it’s because they are likely supposed to be secret, and that Lost Boys never grow up.

Boy Kavalier calls Kirsh and declares it’s no longer a rescue mission. Kirsh gets chastised for not watching Wendy more closely. At that moment, Wendy sprints through the lower parking levels of the building below the crash site. Wendy brandishes her make-shift sword and calls out for her brother. Joe calls from a distance that it’s a trap. Wendy seeks him out anyway and finds Joe cocooned in the back of a shipping container. A Xenomorph stalks up behind the two, glowering at them through the entrance of the container. The Xenomorph slowly turns and walks away. Suddenly there’s noise on the roof of the shipping crate. Wendy jabs her sword into the ceiling stabbing the Xenomorph which starts to bleed acid.

The shipping container gets thrown onto its side. Joe grabs one of the giant deli hooks from the container and makes his way toward the front entrance. Joe gets impaled by the Xenomorph’s tail, thrown across the floor, and pinned by the alien. The Xenomorph hovers over Joe; extending its inner jaw and getting ready to kill. The alien suddenly takes a hit from the meat hook, now wielded by Wenty. The hook firmly snags the Xenomorph’s second jaw. Wendy rescues Joe by dragging the creature off to a shipping elevator. Joe starts typing on the elevator’s controls to close it off quickly. The doors start to come down. At the last second, the Xenomorph bites its second jaw clean off in order to get the extension needed to grab Wend with its tail, pulling her into the elevator. Joe panics to get the door open and runs in after Wendy. Joe finds the Xenomorph beheaded and Wendy shaking. Wendy is bleeding white synthetic blood from her head. Joe goes shifts into medic procedure but collapses and vomits up blood. Joe lies next to Wendy while begging her to stay with him.

We move away from the gruesome scene in the elevator and return inside the crashed ship. Slightly is alone in the room with the six eggs after Wendy chased after Joe. Slightly seems terrified. Smee arrives and the two happily reunite. The reunion is cut short when Morrow stalks onto the scene. Morrow hold the two at gun point, and asks some questions about where he is. The kids fill Morrow in and while they talk he can tell something is off with the two. Morrow begins to tell Smee and Slightly about a “hypothetical” story of a ship security officer who was told to watch his crew die. Morrow then plugs into the Mother computer for a Data Transfer.

Morrow asks the question, “what would you do” in his hypothetical, and he wonders aloud if the boys could stand by let people die. The kids say they don’t know, and Morrow catches on that they mentioned their parents. Morrow completes the data transfer, which announces “Data erased from source” when it’s done. Morrow ejects something from his synthetic finger, extends a blade and asks the kids, “when is a machine not a machine?” Kirsh shows up and steps in to defend Smee and Slightly, pushing Morrow back slowly with his gun drawn. The eggs in the chamber start to move. An egg opens and Morrow jumps through the same opening that Joe was abducted through.

Dawn breaks over New Siam, Wendy and Joe are shown being carted off by emergency medical services. The Xenomorph body is carted away as well. A crew member informs Kirsh they weren’t able to find “the cyborg” in their sweep of the area. The Lost Boys fly back to Neverland. All the specimens, dead, injured and tech has come home with them. Boy Kavalier watches the procession and gets excited.

Arthur and Dame Sylvia, are working on scans and diagnostics for Wendy. As they work they discuss how foolish it was to send billion dollar prototypes into the fray. Boy Kavalier stops by to check on Wendy and then heads to the secure lab to look at his specimens. Boy Kavalier and Kirsh talk briefly, but an egg begins to open and Kirsh quickly ushers Boy Kavalier out of the room. Kirsh explains: the eggs host a parasite that gestates in human bodies and grow up to be xenomorphs. Kirsh shares that this is data he secured from the crashed ship’s logs. Boy Kavalier takes Kirsh’s notes seriously declaring that nobody organic should be allowed in or out.

We move on to Atom Eins talking to Slightly and Smee about the cyborg they encountered. Smee asks if Prodigy will find Morrow, and Eins assures them they will. We see Kirsh watching this whole exchange and continuing to watch as Smee comforts Slightly. Out on the streets of New Siam that night Morrow stalks around and steal a mobile communicator. He calls Weyland-Yutani and submits a security code to speak directly with the lady Yutani. When he starts talking he’s confused because it’s not the woman he once knew. He tells her that the specimens have survived and though he was gone a lifetime and everyone he knows is dead, he will reclaim the lost creatures because they are his “life’s work”.

Curly reports in to Boy Kavalier. Boy Kavalier remarks about Wendy being special because she was the first of the hybrids. Boy Kavalier then asks if it bother’s Curly that Wendy is his favorite. Curly says it doesn’t bother her, but that Boy Kavalier is “wrong, because I’m better”. Curly goes on to say that she could be the next Boy Kavalier, or something more. She explains that she thinks about more than the others, and has gone out of her way to use her newfound processing capacity to do things like learning French. Boy Kavalier explains what a prodigy is, and how children are special because, “They have infinite imagination.” Boy Kavalier gives Curly some homework and sends her on her way.

Slightly sits alone watching a movie when he hears Morrow speaking to him. We see Morrow speaking out loud somewhere in the city while researching Boy Kavalier. Morrow continues talking through some connection and asks Slightly if he’s figured out “when is a machine not a machine”. Morrow also states he’s figured out the riddle that is Slightly: he now understands how a synthetic can have parents. Slightly tries to shut out the conversation and Morrow says “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Late into the night Nibs is walking around the Neverland facility. She seems to be having a kind of existential crisis. We flash between two scenes of her walking the halls and examining her own face. Simultaneously Wendy finished her scans and she re-activates. She gets up from the exam table choosing not to disturb Dame Sylvia and absconds. Suddenly cut to Joe in surgery. He is starting to come to in the middle of a procedure. We then cut back to the lab where Curly Tootles and Kirsh pull an egg out of containment and start to examine it.

Joe has his injured lung extracted. Kirsh begins slicing into the egg while instructing Tootles to use a vacuum tube to suck up the creature if it tries to escape. Wendy strolls the halls hearing more of the odd electric interference from the previous episode. Kirsh uses a scalpel to release the Facehugger and Wendy seems to have a visceral reaction. Joe’s lung gets attached to a mechanical breathing apparatus separate from his body. Kirsh handles the Facehugger, pins it down and electrocutes it. The Facehugger goes limp just as Wendy comes to one of the lab’s observation windows. Behind the crew working on the Facehugger the other eggs start to move. As the other eggs shift Wendy hears more interference. The signal seems to physically be straining Wendy. Kirsh extracts what appears to be a Xenomoprh embryo. Joe is now in a medical recovery station and Kirsh uses his lung is used to host the embryo. Wendy collapses on the floor and seems to go into shock and the episode ends.

Analysis: Substantial Progress and Setup

Top to bottom a very solid episode. This week’s episode had a lot to love and took steps in a more promising direction than its predecessors. The trailer for this show set up the idea that some of these monsters would break containment. Though the first episode had a few of the new creatures showcased, ultimately they ended up captured again. However, the fact that they have moved these aliens out of the urban environment sets them up to run wild in Neverland. I’m much more excited to see what this show has in store after this episode.

I think there are two pieces of this episode that made it such a joy: the balance of the serious, dark tone; and some of the comedy really works in this one. The moment it all clicked was just after watching Joe collapse next to Wendy and the beheaded Xenomorph. The show cut right back to Slightly, who was scared and alone. Slightly then reunited with Smee in a genuinely funny moment. Smee scares Slightly unintentionally. The two frightened kids both share what’s been happening and each swear, but they call each other out on it and share a hug. The actors playing Smee and Slightly both have so much fun and it alleviates a lot of the tension from watching Wendy and Joe collapse. Then the tone gets slammed back to serious because Morrow arrives and pulls a gun on them.

I’m going to say it: Morrow is the best character in the show. Babou Ceesay, who plays Morrow, does such a wonderful job of being intense. The whole scene where he talks with the Lost Boys was fantastic. And when Kirsh arrived, Morrow genuinely looked nervous but still kept that gravity of tension. The other highlight comes later in the episode when Morrow mysteriously contacts Slightly again. Morrow gives no hints about how he was able to do this, and keeps control of the conversation. I got chills at the end of that conversation when he quotes Slightly saying, “Everybody needs a friend,” and asks “Will you be mine?” The devilish smile Morrow shows after that was fantastic.

Final Score

This episode’s editing was very clean, the music was still solid, and the practical effects continue to keep this lofty science fiction quite grounded. The story has moved along in ways that make sense which sets up for more exhilarating scares and creepy creature moments. Kirsh and Morrow both seem to be playing a deeper game than we know, and I’m intrigued to know more. The first two episodes showcased an interesting idea and solid bait for viewers to want more. This episode doesn’t deviate from those successes and even builds on the better parts that I personally enjoyed. Oh, and Wendy’s makeshift sword was melted by alien blood, so I can finally stop thinking about how silly that was.

Boss Rush Network rates “Metamorphosis,” episode 3 of Alien: Earth, four and a half out of five stars.

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Featured Image: FX Networks