Alien Earth debuts as Earth-centered Alien prequel on FX/Hulu

Alien Earth arrives as the first television entry in the Alien universe, a high-budget prequel that relocates the franchise’s terrors to Earth and expands its philosophical scope as much as its creature feature genre. Set in 2120, roughly two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, the eight-episode series centers Wendy Chandler, a terminally ill girl whose consciousness has been uploaded into a synthetic body, and follows a cadre of Prodigy employees and mercenary hybrids as a shattered ship crash-lands on Earth and vast corporate ambitions collide with human costs. Premiering on FX and Hulu, the show rolls out new episodes weekly, marking a deliberate shift in tone and tempo for the franchise.

The world of Alien Earth is built around five megacorporations that rule Earth and its colonies, with Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy playing pivotal roles. The Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani vessel carrying a dangerous biological cargo, crashes into a Prodigy city, igniting a cascading crisis that blends intimate human drama with high-stakes science fiction horror. On Earth, Wendy and her fellow hybrids—humans whose minds are transferred into synthetic bodies—emerge as a new form of...