How âAlien: Earthâ Fits Into the âAlienâ Universe | TIME
Aug 12, 2025 2:04 PM PT
How FXâs Alien: Earth Fits Into the Alien Universe
by Megan McCluskey, Staff Writer
For the first time ever, the Alien universe is crash-landing onto the small screen.
In the wake of 2024âs Alien: Romulus, a seventh film entry in the storied franchise that began with Ridley Scottâs 1979 sci-fi thriller classic Alien, Fargo creator Noah Hawleyâs new TV series Alien: Earth will see the long-running horror saga touch down on a world itâs never explored before: our very own planet Earth.
âThe thing with Alien is that itâs not just a great monster movie. Itâs the story of humanity trapped between its primordial parasitic past and its AI future, and theyâre both trying to kill us. So, thereâs nowhere to go,â Hawley has said of the inspiration for Earth, which is also produced by Scott. âItâs really a story of does humanity deserve to survive? Does humanityâs arrogance in thinking that weâre no longer food and its arrogance in creating these AI beings who we think will do what we tell themâbut ultimately might lose their mindâis there a way out?â
The first two episodes of Earth premiere Aug. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on FX, with subsequent installments releasing every Tuesday through Sept. 23. New episodes will be available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally.
Hereâs how Alien: Earth fits into the overall Alien timeline.
How Alien: Earth connects to Alien
Babou Ceesay as Morrow in Episode 1 of
Alien: Earth. Patrick BrownâFX
While Romulus was set in the year 2142âright smack in between the events of Alien, which takes place in 2122, and the 1986 James Cameron-directed sequel Aliens, set in 2179âEarth serves as a prequel series that takes place in 2120, two years before the events of the original movie.
The show unfolds in a not-so-distant future where five rival corporationsâProdigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Thresholdâeffectively govern the Earth. As we learn from an opening transmission in Episode 1, itâs a moment in time when the race for immortality has evolved to take three different forms. There are cyborgs, biological humans enhanced with artificial parts; synths, humanoid robots infused with near-human consciousness (like the late Ian Holmâs iconic android Ash from Alien); and hybrids, synthetic beings downloaded with actual human consciousness.
Hybrids are the newest technological advancement of the three and come courtesy of trillionaire wunderkind Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) and his company Prodigy, which has developed a top-secret method for transferring the consciousnesses of terminally ill children into superhuman and theoretically immortal synthetic bodies. After bringing their first successful hybrid to life, so to speak, by transferring the consciousness of Marcy (Florence Bensberg), a 12-year-old girl dying from cancer, into an adult-bodied synthetic named Wendy (Sydney Chandler), the Prodigy team moves forward with creating a squad of childlike synths dubbed the Lost Boys. Kavalier obviously loves his Peter Pan references.
Itâs clear from the start that the whole thing is an ethical minefield of epic proportions. But itâs not until Kavalier sends Wendy and her Lost Boys to investigate the wreckage of a Weyland-Yutani spaceship that crash-landed in the Prodigy-controlled city of New Siamâand just so happens to contain not only a full-grown Xenomorph, but also a variety of other mysterious and highly predatory life formsâthat the experiment begins to truly spiral out of control.
Do Prometheus and Covenant come into play?
(L-R): Adarsh Gourav as Slightly and Sydney Chandler as Wendy in Episode 2 of
Alien: Earth. Patrick BrownâFX
For those wondering whether the somewhat convoluted backstory introduced in Scottâs previous two prequel films, 2012âs Prometheus and 2017âs Alien: Covenant, will come into play considering the latter is set just 16 years before the events of Earth, the short answer is no.
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