(KTLA) — The first season of FX’s “Alien: Earth” came to a close with Tuesday’s season finale, and the big, eventful episode puts several things in place for a new dynamic shift in a second season.
The episode, titled “The Real Monsters,” finds things on Prodigy Island in disarray as the battle between Yutani and Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier comes to a head.
Spoilers ahead for “Alien: Earth” episode eight.
‘They won’t let us be adults’
Prodigy Island’s communications have been cut by Weyland-Yutani Corp. soldiers, cutting the island off just as a tropical storm hits. Though Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is urged to evacuate, he refuses, choosing instead to keep observing T. Ocellus and watching the hybrids on surveillance.
After last week’s attempted escape, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the rest of the Lost Boys are locked inside a circular holding cell — and the kids aren’t happy about it. The group wrestle with the knowledge that not only can they die, as Isaac did, but that Boy Kavalier had no qualms about jailing them.
Curly (Erana James), the final remaining BK fangirl, says she shouldn’t be there because she’s Kavalier’s favorite.
“Wendy Darling was Peter Pan’s favorite,” Wendy reminds her. “But then she grew up and that made Peter mad, and so he kidnapped her daughter Jane.” Though Curly, whose real name is Jane, has been constantly reminded that Wendy’s considered the remarkable one, this bit of reasoning appears to finally break the spell.
Wendy points out that they’ve all been locked up because they can’t be controlled anymore.
“We’re all in this cell because we can’t be kids anymore, but they won’t let us be adults,” she says, as she starts manipulating the facility’s surveillance system. As she cuts the cameras, she calls her xenomorph back from the jungle.
Elevator of death
Wendy’s going HAM with the Prodigy systems. With mere swipes of her fingers, the hybrid starts putting enacting revenge against her captors.
To start with, Wendy projects footage of the pre-transition hybrid children onto all the screens in Dame Sylvia’s room. The “home videos” send the former mother figure of the group, already riddled with guilt over what she’s done, spiraling.
Meanwhile, Prodigy’s security team, including Siberian (Diêm Camille), moves through the facility in search of the escaped xenomorph. Though jumpy, the team doesn’t feel the least bit suspicious when an elevator arrives and opens in front of them just when they needed one. Tumbling inside, the lift rises before Wendy does her thing, sending the elevator into a self-destruct sequence (a normal feature in elevator mechanics, obviously). With just 30 seconds before the shaft blows, most of the team makes it out through paneled roof.
Wendy watches all of this unfold from surveillance — which only she and the other hybrids can see — in addition to checking in on her brother Joe (Alex Lawther), who’s been locked up in a different cell alongside cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay). The cyborg’s arm is also locked up in some sort of special cyborg-arm-sword-iron-glove (which Prodigy had lying around for some reason), preventing him from aiding their escape.
Though she can free them at any moment, she doesn’t.
When questioned about why, she explains that she’s still mad at Joe for shooting Nibs (Lily Newmark) last episode. In Wendy’s eyes, Joe chose his fellow soldiers (specifically fully human soldiers) over her and the Lost Boys. Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) reasons Nibs was killing people and Joe just tried to stop it. And honestly, yeah, killing multiple people over one man taking her stuffed animal was a bit of an overreaction! Though still doubtful, Wendy releases Joe and Morrow.
Synth vs. cyborg
Fresh out the slammer, Morrow heads straight to the lab, where he surprises Prodigy chief scientist Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) and we’re treated to our first real robot vs (kinda) robot fight scene. Did anyone else just hear Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done” start playing? The synth and the cyborg go at it with real hate (this beef has been building for multiple episodes) and Morrow flips Kirsh into what appears to be a possibly fatal position.
Before Morrow can send Kirsh to synth heaven, however, one of the escaped specimens distracts Morrow just enough to allow Kirsh to trap him in a chokehold.
Behind the Music: Boy Kavalier
A lonely Kavalier comes to pester the still-jailed hybrids, who he says he’ll only release if they “play nice.”
Looking him in the eye, Wendy snaps her fingers and opens the cell door. A truly shocked (though thoroughly impressed) Kavalier attempts to regain his power by laying out his story. According to BK, his father was a “drunk” (whom it’s somewhat implied was probably abusive), but that when he was born, he was a “miracle,” who figured out a way to remove himself from his circumstances. Again, we’re taking this origin story with a grain of salt, but Kavalier says he was so unhappy he built a synth when he was just a child and that one night his dad came home to find his synth sitting on the couch.
“And that was the end of daddy,” says Kavalier. “And the synth became my new daddy.”
The CEO, who claims he covertly worked as Prodigy’s “figurehead” as a kid, refusing to appear fazed by Wendy’s near-magic abilities bucks his chest out and explains that the hybrids belong to him, as products, and nothing more.
“You’re floor models,” he says.
The angered Lost Boys stand and approach him, prompting a lone security guard to pull his weapon. Never not in the mood to kill somebody, Nibs attacks and leaves a completely solo Kavalier to fend for himself.
“Run,” Wendy instructs him.
¡Eye eye eye!
Around the facility, Wendy’s xenomorph is slowly whittling down Prodigy and Weyland soldiers alike.
Inside, senior Prodigy exec Atom Eins (Ade Edmondson) lures Joe to the room where the T. Ocellus-hijacked sheep is being held with the promise of a great new proposal for him and Wendy. Once there, however, Joe is locked in and the eyeball monster quickly ditches its wooly host and flings itself after Joe.
Sorry, sheep. You’ll always be famous.
In a tense and well-choregraphed chase scene, Joe uses the creature’s cage to shield himself. The super-intelligent species immediately figures out a way in and soon, Joe is against the wall, with just inches of space between the monster and his face. Luckily, Wendy barges in at that exact moment, and slaps it away.
Just as Joe’s about to smash “Alien: Earth”‘s breakout star, Eins knocks him out. Gloating, Eins turns to Wendy and gives a big villain speech in which he reveals that he too is a synth. Does it make me dumb if I never considered whether or not he was? To be honest, he just seemed British. Unfortunately for Eins, Wendy realizes she can now control him and with a snap, freezes the menacing right-hand-man in place.
“You don’t get to hurt us anymore,” says Wendy, as the T. Occellus escapes through an opening in the floor.
Puberty is hell
Wendy and Joe, now with a little time to chat, hash out what happened back at the docks in episode seven. Joe tells Wendy he didn’t have a choice, as Nibs was killing his friends. This prompts Wendy (somewhat insanely) to say, “Are you saying Nibs isn’t ‘people’?”
Rightfully, Joe responds that that’s not what he said and that she’s acting like a child.
A distraught Wendy lays out her feelings: “I don’t know what I am. I’m not a child. I’m not a grown up. I’m not Marcy. I’m not Wendy. And I can’t be what everyone wants me to be.”
Cue Britney Spears’ “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.”
Finally, THE PLANT
Boy Kavalier is moving through the facility toward an escape, when he’s ambushed by Wendy’s xenomorph. Inside a classically “Alien” room (lots of metal, lots of shadows around unsteady bright lights), BK looks just about done for but two things happen: Prodigy’s soldiers arrive and Wendy and Joe walk in.
Wendy sends the creature after the soldiers, while Joe kicks Kavalier in the face.
The Prodigy soldiers, meanwhile, are scrambling for cover anywhere. This panic takes Siberian and others into the specimen lab, where a mystery creature is hiding on the wall behind them. Spread out like a starfish, it’s soon revealed to be the hanging plant that’s been teased all season.
In flash, the giant pod swallows Siberian whole, leaving her feet dangling the air.
To be honest, for how much this thing was built up, I honestly wanted a little bit more. Nevertheless, this was still pretty cool. RIP Siberian, we won’t send flowers to your funeral if it’s too soon.
Boy Kavalier gets ended
In more bad luck for Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl), the dead Prodigy scientist’s body is still out rotting on the beach. T. Ocellus, apparently still shopping for new hosts, crawls out from the jungle and inserts it inside Arthur’s eye socket. A re-animated Dr. Sylvia heads off back toward the facility.
Back inside, Wendy and the hybrids have locked Kavalier, Kirsh, Eins, Dame Sylvia, and Morrow inside a cell. Each Prodigy employee is coping in their own way. Sylvia begs for forgiveness — which Wendy denies, and Kavalier orders Eins to do something. Eins declines, knowing he’s been outdone.
“You’re not Peter Pan,” says Wendy to Kavalier. He was the boy who never grew up but you were never a boy. You’ve always been a man. A mean, angry little man who decided to hate everybody — just like your daddy.”
Me:
