Earth’ Episode 4 Recap: “Observation”

In humanity’s time with the xenomorphs of the Alien franchise, we’ve usually underestimated them, then run from them, two reactions that come before becoming genetic hosts for them. Everything we learned about them, we learned downstream of the warnings. Like as determined by Ash, the science officer in Alien. Big Xeno is “the perfect organism,” with “a structural perfection matched only by its hostility.” So maybe things would’ve gone different if we’d just said “‘Sup?”

“What do you think they’re saying?” When Wendy comes back online after her fainting spell at the conclusion of A:E. Episode 3, it’s with this question rattling around in the barefoot brain of Kid Trillionaire. That tone Wendy heard while in proximity to one of the collected lifeforms? Boy Kavalier says they should encourage it as communication, and Wendy agrees. “They’re talking to me – I wanna hear them.” Then again, one of the first things she sensed from the xenomorph’s side of her 22nd century tin can telephone were screams. Lots and lots of screams. “You shouldn’t have cut them open.” While Kirsh cut into that egg pod, Wendy cut to the feeling.  

They didn’t actually say that. Wendy is inferring. But just like she hacked that HR bot to talk with Hermit, she can source xeno communication, such as it is, from the depths of what’s collected by her onboard hardware. And we get a weird and wild scene where Boy Kav, Hermit, Curly, and Dame Sylvia and Arthur witness Wendy replicating the alien sounds at a frequency palatable to human ears. It’s unsettling, because in this context, what the Alien: Earth closed captions describe as “[Soft guttural screeching]” seems to emanate from a human throat. If she were to open her mouth, only for another mouth to come out, then we’d really be talking evolutionary leaps. 

The capabilities of what they helped create seem as surprising to the science team as the ramifications of what they’ve done. In a strained argument on one of Neverland’s forested paths – he must think no one can hear them out there – Arthur complains to Sylvia. “What are we doing here? This isn’t science.” The consciousness of a terminally ill kid, jammed into a fully-dimensional AI, and the result runs around calling itself human. Again, it seems like Arthur should have considered the chief ethical dilemma of their work like a decade ago when Prodigy began its “transhuman project.” As for Sylvia, she conveys another version of Move Fast Break Things as reason enough for Boy Kavalier’s success. She’s still willing to support the science at a corporate level, even as she continues to mother the hybrids. 

“Trying to make sure everything went right with your transition – we never really talked about your new bodies.” This is Sylvia with Nibs, who interrupted the hushed tones forest argument with an announcement: she’s pregnant. Arthur rejected Nibs’ assertion. (“You’re a machine.”) But Sylvia tries to soften that during a later talk with Nibs in her office. Sure, God brings babies – but from her human childhood on a farm, she must also understand the biological piece, right? And hey, Sylvia prods gently, we never talked about that whole Eyeball Tentacle getting in your face thing. But Nibs suddenly takes a super-strength leap to get in Sylvia’s own face. “Stop talking.” Alerting Neverland security, Sylvia declares a Level Three Event. Whatever that is. 

Slightly’s hot hearing Big Xeno in his head, just Morrow. And the security officer continues to coddle and cajole the hybrid equally. His chats, inside the mind of a kid that is itself inside a technological device, are like a cocktail of bonding exercise and schoolyard taunt, and eventually they spill into the realm of outright threat. He wants Slightly to steal him an egg. Or in kid parlance, “a monster’s egg.” Steal it from Neverland and deliver it to Morrow and Weyland-Yutani. But failing that, and honestly we’re not sure how even a hybrid would’ve pulled that off, he wants Slightly to find some help. He shares with the hybrid his full name, “Kumi Morrow.” Draws from him his own, even though they’re not supposed to tell. “Aarush Singh.” Friends who know each other’s names help each other. They help get back what was stolen. And because Morrow knows Slightly’s real name, he uses it to locate the kid’s real human mother. The threat is implied. “You have 24 hours to choose someone and get them in front of the eggs.”   

While all this is going on, observation continues of just how awful and dangerous the collected specimens really are. In the lab, when Eyeball Tentacle is introduced to the same chamber as a sheep, it promptly and disgustingly burrows into the brain of the animal. If Wendy talking like the alien earlier was a shock, well, watching a sheep hop instantly onto its hind legs and regard the lab’s inhabitants like its jailers is straight-up startling. Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, so deadpan it stings: “Fascinating.”   

Boy Kavalier, Boy Kavalier’s footwork, and Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier are all getting a workout in Episode 4 of Alien: Earth. Obviously his intentions can’t be trusted. Atom, the always-hovering Prodigy exec, calls Wendy the “property of Prodigy Corporation,” and surely the corporation’s bespoke PJ’s-clad founder is mostly in this for the money. Human immortality as saleable commodity, and terrifying alien lifeforms from deep space as bio-weapon innovation. Still, in the lab, looking at a sheep being cognitively controlled by an alien presence, Boy Kav’s eyes are aglow. He’s like a proud parent, or a curious inventor, though in that moment he’s neither. In Kavalier’s referencing of Isaac Asimov on Arthur C Clarke is a kind of answer to what drives him. “Above a certain level, technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Boy Kav wants to be the first thing that magic sees – so he can sell it.

Kirsh is watching Wendy in the lab, where the insectoid xeno embryo he removed from the facehugger is now gestating inside Hermit’s surgically-removed organ. (Boy Kav to Hermit earlier: “How’s the new lung? You’ll never guess what we did with the old one.”) Wendy is looking at the containment cube intently. Are they having a chitter-chat? But then the glass shatters, the slithering, gestated Xeno Baby lands on the nearest surface, and rises up before her like a cobra ready to strike. (Kirsh looks on. We can’t hear his thoughts, but he’s probably saying “Fascinating.”) It won’t kill her. What’s a xeno gonna do with a body made of polymers and silicone? But the hybrid’s goopy human consciousness is another story. What part of that is malleable? As she caresses its miniature bulbous skull, Wendy coo-coos to the alien like she’s making baby talk. It’s weird regular old organic humanity never thought of that as a conversation starter.

Specimens for Alien: Earth Episode 4 (“Observation”): 

• The Alien: Earth end-credits banger has drawn from 1981 and 1996 and 1991, and now it’s on to 1987 for Jane’s Addiction and the Nothing’s Shocking standout “Ocean Size.”       Perry Farrell’s opening screech is itself in conversation with the alien from its coo-coo session with Wendy.

• Who might Slightly pick? Hate to say it, but Hermit could be the hybrid’s top choice for his human host xeno smuggling operation. After his cerebral rap session with Morrow, Slightly bristles when with the other hybrids. Why does Wendy get a real-live/real-time sibling when they all lost their given names and Prodigy told their loved ones they were dead? Slightly does seem conflicted about helping Morrow in this way, or at least unsure about how he’ll do it, so it helps that his brain chats are being monitored by Kirsh.

• But Hermit is also on thin ice with Boy Kavalier. Referred to dismissively as “the brother,” as an employee of a sub-sub-sub-susidiary of Prodigy, that he was even brought to Neverland feels like a function of what was inside him – alien biologic material – and not any deference to Wendy. Of her brother, Boy Kav tells Hybrid #1 she can “keep him” if she helps figure out what the aliens are saying. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.