TITLE: Alien: Earth
EPISODES: “Emergence”
DIRECTOR: Noah Hawley
NETWORK: FX & Hulu ($9.99 (USD) per month)
RELEASE DATE: September 16, 2025

The following review contains SPOILERS for episode 7. If you wish to see our spoiler review of episode 6, 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 “Emergence” continue reading at the section marked “Analysis”.

Slightly is in his room at Neverland with Arthur’s incapacitated body under his bed. Slightly tries to feed Arthur, but the Facehugger reacts aggressively, and Slightly pulls away. Smee knocks on the door repeatedly, causing a commotion forcing Slightly let him in. Smee sees something under Slightly’s bed and finds Arthur. Slightly tries to explain his predicament and explains that his family is in danger. Slightly convinces Smee to help relocate Arthur for Morrow to pick up.

Kirsh arrives back at Neverland after the arbitration meeting. Security alarms are going off and staff is running around to try and secure the area. Kirsh goes to the Secure Lab and sees some of the chaos that Isaac and Slightly unleashed. A asset containment team stuns the flies and stows them away once more. Kirsh clears the alarms and makes sure the lab is functional. Boy Kavalier arrives and sees Issac’s dead body. Kirsh and Boy Kavalier watch playback on security cameras which shows the T. Ocellus ramming into its enclosure wall. That sudden action was the reason Isaac got startled and fell in the Fly’s chamber.

Wendy joins them in the lab, and upon seeing Isaac wants to inform the other hybrids of his death. Boy Kavalier attempts to dissuade her, but Wendy hears the Xenomorph chittering and tunes in to that. Wendy’s anger flares, she trills back to the Xenomorph and storms off to tell the other Hybrids about Isaac’s death. Boy Kavalier demands that Kirsh find the others before Wendy does but learns that all of their trackers have been deactivated.

Joe meets with his sister and tries to convince to to leave Neverland. He informs her that the Hybrid’s trackers are inactive. Wendy sees an opportunity to rally the Hybrids and moves out. She first finds Nibs and Curly. Wendy talks to them about leaving which gains Nib’s support. Curly argues that they should stay and Wendy replies, “The boy genius is not your friend, he owns us.” Curly opts to stay behind but agrees not to tell any of the staff what Wendy is doing. Wendy uses her ability to manipulate technology through a screen in Nib’s room and overrides the Xenomorph’s containment locks.

Dame Sylvia gets interrogated by Boy Kavalier because Arthur turned off the trackers. During his questioning another set of alarms start going off. Kirsh finds Slightly and Smee transporting Arthur’s body. Kirsh intervenes, but rather than stopping the two he tells them a quicker way out of the building. Nibs, Wendy and Joe are now out in the forest headed toward the docks. They come across a small grave site with all of the human children’s bodies. Both Joe and Marcy seem to reckon with the reality that her human body is gone.

Slightly and Smee hide from a security patrol outside. They set Arthur’s body down and it seemingly disappears after they look away. The Facehugger suddenly falls out of the trees above them, and they stomp on it. Arthur appears from the wilds nearby, and begins asking the boys what’s going on. Arthur’s recent memory is a bit foggy, and the two convince him they helped him escape a gas leak. The group makes it to the beach, but Arthur has flashbacks of the Facehugger’s assault.

Arthur promises to help the kids if they explain what’s going on. He holds their hands, and they start to walk away, but something inside him starts aggressively trying to escape. The Chestburster that was inside Arthur explodes out and escapes into the wilderness. Slightly panics, fearing he’s failed his mission and doomed his family. Smee freaks out because Slightly lied and told him Arthur wasn’t going to die.

Slightly and Smee haul Arthur’s corpse down a river on a makeshift raft. They’re near an outlet to the ocean and a team of mercenaries trudge out of the water. Morrow meets them and is angry that Arthur doesn’t have the “monster” within him. Morrow radios a change of plans.

Atom Eins meets with Boy Kavalier and confirms the Xenomorph escaped. Eins stresses that containment of the specimens is a priority. Boy Kavalier makes it clear his priorities are elswhere, and wants to talk to the T. Ocellus. He writes three digits of Pi on his hand and asks the creature what the next two digits are. The T. Ocellus-possessed sheep stomps out a response. Boy Kavalier wants to put the T. Ocellus into a person for additional cognitive testing.

Wendy, Joe and Nibs continue towards the docks. Wendy hears something in the brush, and they are surrounded by Weyland Yutani’s mercenaries. Wendy calls the Xenomorph out of hiding, and it slaughters everyone. After the massacre, the Xenomorph approaches Wendy. She talks to it again, and it runs off. Joe asks what Wendy just said, and she replies, “Hide and follow, I think.”

The Chestburster scampers around in the wild and gets trapped under a net. Meanwhile, Morrow makes his way to an entrance along the cliff-side of Neverland. A massive security team surrounds the mercenaries, and Kirsh walks in. Morrow levels a gun at Slightly’s head, and Kirsh displays the captured baby Xenomorph. Kirsh reclaims the boys and takes Morrow into custody claiming “Finders keepers” on the baby Xenomorph.

Down at the docks the three escaping kids find a single transport boat. Once they’re all aboard, Siberian and Rashidi pop out of the boat’s cabin and security surrounds them from the dock. Nibs goes berserk, ripping a man’s jaw off. During the fight Wendy calls out to the Xenomorph again, but Joe stops her by covering her mouth. Siberian shoots Nibs, and Nibs attempts to kill her. Joe shoots an electric pulse to stun Nibs who spasms and goes limp.

Analysis:

Innocence Lost in Paradise

Slightly, Smee, and Curly as children are still pure-of-heart. Their humanity might be both their best asset and biggest fault. Slightly fell for Morrow’s lies about friendship because he is young and naive. Morrow manipulated Slightly so well because he understood he was talking to a child. Morrow continued to use that by threatening Slightly’s family. We as viewers didn’t necessarily even need to see Morrow being with Slightly’s mother for him to make threats against the Singh family. Though, having Mrs. Singh speak to Slightly made the threat more imminent. Morrow could simply have continued to lie, and Slightly would have believed the threats.

Smee is another wonderful example of the children having pure hearts. All we’ve ever seen is that Smee wants to have friends and spend his time playing now that he isn’t terminally ill. Smee and Slightly are the tightest knit of the Hybrids by far. Slightly has been pushing Smee away ever since Morrow contacted him. Smee has obviously caught on that Slightly isn’t himself, but it isn’t until this episode that he sees why. Even now that Smee knows Slightly is doing something he shouldn’t, Smee agrees to be a part of it. Neither of them knew Arthur would die, but Smee truly believed that if he simply helped Slightly things would go back to normal. Smee childishly put his friendship above containing the specimens, and that act of humanity is what led him to witness a man dying in his arms! Arthur tried to be a final saving grace for the goodness in these kids. He told Smee and Slightly that he’d help them fix things no matter what, and it seems like he genuinely meant it. I’m amazed at how much emotional weight the show brought Arthur’s character.

On the opposite end of the human and emotional spectrum, we seem to have Wendy and Nibs. Wendy does not show any sign that she’s bothered or that she cares that she’s killed people. Wendy immediately—and without hesitation—called for the Xenomorph to slaughter an entire squad of people. It’s becoming clear that Wendy may actually be transcending her humanity like Boy Kavalier wanted. Her ability to commune with the Xenomorph and also to manipulate technology is unlike anyone or anything else. However, Joe is seated in the front row as the person his sister used to be evaporates in front of him. Nibs’ seems to be taking a similar path. Her prior aggression is out in full swing. We saw her lunge at Dame Sylvia, but who could have expected that she’d rip a dude’s jaw off! After getting shot she almost tried it again on Siberian!

A Game of Cat and Mouse

As expected Kirsh was several steps ahead of Morrow this whole time. We’ve seen Kirsh standing by observing nearly everything that’s gone on. We finally see that in action this episode. Kirsh had contingency plans for the Xenomorph that was inside Arthur. Kirsh told Smee and Slightly a quicker way to the beach to meet Morrow, and was able to use that to track them since their internal trackers were turned off. At nearly every turn since the Maginot crashed Kirsh has been watching and waiting to trap Morrow.

Morrow’s arrival at Neverland was quick and stunning. The reveal shot of the mercenaries emerging from the water was wonderful. There was a mercenary with them that had some heavy gear, including a shoulder-mounted piece that looked reminiscent of a Predator’s Plasmacaster. Morrow showing up and immediately seeing that Slightly had failed was fantastic. The way Morrow assessed and immediately moved on to the next plan of action was ice cold, and exactly what I’d expect from him.

Final Score

This episode felt short, which makes sense considering it is roughly fifteen minutes shorter than the others. However, the few plot lines in this episode seemed—ironically—drawn out. I understand that Neverland is a large island, but each time we cut back and forth from Slightly and Smee to Wendy’s group, I was shocked that they were still traveling to their destination. I’m curious what was left on the cutting room floor of this episode.

The few action sequences we had were satisfying, and we were gifted with a Xenomorph and a Chestburster in broad daylight. Now that there is another Xenomorph in the mix, I’m curious how things will progress. Wendy has seemingly tamed one, and now Kirsh has control over the other. I’m hopeful that things will heat up in the remaining episode, but this episode left me wanting more than what we got.

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Featured Image: FX Networks