‘Alien: Earth’ Finale Review: The Kids Are Alright, But The Alien Isn’t
Noah Hawley’s stunning, slow-burn sci-fi saga ends its first season not with a chestburst, but a coup. It asks who the real monsters are, and the answer isn't the one with two mouths.
And so it ends. Or rather, it pauses. The final episode of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, titled “The Real Monsters,” closes the airlock on a season that has been less of a creature feature and more of a gothic synth-pop ballad about corporate damnation.
For seven episodes, we’ve been lulled by its dreamlike pacing, mesmerized by its stunning visuals, and occasionally jolted awake by moments of shocking, acid-blooded violence.
The finale doesn't break that rhythm; instead, it locks it in, turning the power dynamics of the entire franchise on their head and setting the stage for a second season that feels both inevitable and agonizingly far away. It’s a finale that is brilliant, frustrating, and a hell of a statement piece.
The Long, Strange Trip to Neverland
To understand the impact of the finale, you have to appreciate the trip Hawley took us on. This was never going to be a bug hunt. From the jump, Alien: Earth made its central thesis brutally clear: capitalism was the real alien all along. The show has marinated in the themes of corporate ownership, scientific hubris, and the exploitation of life, both biological and artificial, for profit.
The doomed USCSS Maginot wasn't just a crashed ship; it was a floating metaphor for a derelict system, carrying a cargo of horrors birthed from greed.
We were introduced to a world run by monolithic corporations, where even your lungs could be company property. Our heroes weren’t space marines; they were a damaged cyborg, a guilt-ridden scientist, and a sardonic security chief caught in the gravity well of Prodigy, a corporation run by the mercurial, barefoot boy-god, Boy Kavalier (a star-making, pitiable, and utterly punchable performance by Samuel Blenkin).
At the heart of it all were Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the "Lost Boys," children whose consciousnesses were transplanted into synthetic bodies, turning them into immortal, super-powered floor models for Kavalier’s twisted vision of eternal life. Their journey has been a slow, painful awakening, a realization that their "father" was their jailer and their home, "Neverland," was a laboratory cage.
This slow-burn narrative, dripping with allegories to Peter Pan, has been building towards one inevitable conclusion: the children have to grow up and kill their parents. Or, in this case, lock them up and take over the asylum.
The Revolution Will Be Synthesized
“The Real Monsters” kicks off in the chaotic aftermath of Episode 7's "Emergence." A fully grown Xenomorph XX121 is loose, another has just burst from the chest of the well-meaning scientist Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl), and the Lost Boys are imprisoned. But this isn’t a story about escape; it’s about ascension. T
he episode’s masterstroke is in how it portrays Wendy’s final evolution from a protective sibling into a chillingly calm, all-powerful matriarch.
Realizing they are, as Nibs puts it, "ghosts in the machine," the Lost Boys decide to haunt the place, and Wendy becomes the chief poltergeist. She doesn't just hack computers; she wields technology like a god, shutting down Atom Eins’ motor functions with a thought and turning Neverland’s security systems into her personal orchestra of terror. This is where the season’s thematic threads braid into a steel cable.
The very tools Kavalier created to control them become the weapons of their liberation. The kids he saw as products have seized the means of production.
The climax isn’t a frantic firefight but a cold, calculated seizure of power. Wendy, using the Xenomorph as her personal enforcer, systematically dismantles Kavalier's entire operation. The final shot says it all: Kavalier, Kirsh, Morrow, and Dame Sylvia, the adults and corporate overlords, are locked in a cage, looking out at the children they tried to own. And Wendy, flanked by her synthetic family and two loyal Xenomorphs, looks back.
Her expression isn't one of triumph, but of terrifying resolve. "Your time is done," she declares. "It's our time now."
Defanging the Perfect Organism?
This brings us to the acid in the room: the Xenomorph. For 45 years, the creature has been the alpha and omega of cinematic horror. It is, as Ash famously said, "the perfect organism," an unstoppable, primal force of nature whose only motivation is propagation through horrific violence.
In Ridley Scott's Alien, it was a singular, phantom-like stalker. In James Cameron's Aliens, it was part of a swarming, insectoid hive. But in both, it was fundamentally untamable.
Alien: Earth takes a massive, franchise-altering swing by questioning that very premise. Here, the Xenomorph has a symbiotic, almost deferential relationship with Wendy. She communicates with it through clicks and whistles, directing it like a well-trained, albeit terrifying, attack dog. It dispatches Kavalier's soldiers at her command but merely knocks Kavalier himself over, leaving him for her to deal with.
For many hardcore fans, this will feel like heresy. The show does a phenomenal job of making the creature feel dangerous in its early appearances, but by the finale, its menace is undeniably diluted. It has been demoted from the apex predator to Wendy's heavy. This shift serves Wendy’s character arc perfectly, cementing her as the new queen on the board, but it comes at the cost of the creature’s unknowable terror. Hawley has traded the franchise's greatest monster for a new one of his own making, and the jury is still out on whether that was a fair deal. The creature that haunted the Nostromo wouldn't be taking orders from anyone.
The Eyes Have It
While the Xenomorph was being domesticated, the show's other breakout creature, the disgustingly brilliant T. Ocellus, or "eye midge," provided the episode’s best moment of pure, skin-crawling horror. After its attempt to take over a human host is thwarted by Wendy, the intelligent, eyeball-snatching parasite escapes. For a while, it's a terrifying loose thread. Where did it go?
The answer is a fantastic twist. The creature finds the decaying corpse of Arthur Sylvia on the beach and, in a deeply unsettling sequence, crawls into his empty eye socket, reanimating his dead body. It’s a classic slice of body horror that feels ripped straight from the franchise's DNA and a clever way to keep the fantastic David Rysdahl around for Season 2.
This subplot proves the show can still deliver old-school Alien scares when it wants to.
An Ending That’s Really a Beginning
Ultimately, the finale of Alien: Earth feels less like a conclusion and more like an extended prologue. The lack of any significant deaths among the main cast is jarring for a franchise built on a high body count. The "goodies" get a clean, almost too-easy win.
We're left with a reset status quo: the kids are in charge, the adults are prisoners, Yutani’s forces are on their way, and a zombie-scientist-puppet is presumably wandering the island.
This isn’t a flaw so much as a declaration of intent. Hawley is playing the long game. The episode is an impressive distillation of the season's accomplishments, its high-minded themes, stellar performances, and impeccable aesthetic. But it deliberately denies us the catharsis of a definitive ending.
The real monsters, the show screams, are the ones in suits who see life as a commodity. But in making that point so effectively, it leaves us with an even more unsettling question for the future.
As Wendy stands on the precipice of godhood, with two of the deadliest creatures in the universe at her beck and call, we have to wonder: who’s to say she won't become the worst monster of them all?
In space, no one can hear you scream, but on this Earth, the boardroom and the throne room are starting to sound awfully similar.
Now, Alexa, play 'Animal' by Pearl Jam.
