‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 6 Recap: “The Fly”

We’re back home at Neverland after the space-bound terrors of Alien: Earth Episode 5, but everyone around here remains extremely unsafe. That goes for all of the island’s inhabitants, including the hybrids in their brand-new synthetic bodies, which we’ll get to in a second. With Episode 6 of A:E, the other side of its first-season arc begins, and like the isolated core cast of some horror movie – teens on a road trip, or college counselors in cabins – it’s probably useful to start plugging all Neverlanders into an alien consumption depth chart. Because inside the laboratory, from behind their flimsy partitions, the island’s newest residents are doing some meal-planning. Everyone is on the menu, from Kid Trillionaire to his hybrid creations, from the science staff to the security teams. With only a few episodes left of Alien: Earth, meals are about to get served.

Remember in Chibuzo’s lab on the Maginot, when Eyeball Tentacle tapped on the glass? It was like a warning to the scientist to be more vigilant, because the bug-like specimen was at that moment crawling into her sandwich. But we’re not granting empathy to this entity just yet. There was no empathy in the later brain-burrowing of Schmuel the engineer, for example, and using his body to attack Big Xeno. We don’t know what motivates Eyeball T, because Wendy only speaks ‘Morph. And here in Ep 6, when the alien again taps on the glass in Neverland’s lab, it’s to help another specimen, “The Fly” – the Cronenbergian references are fun to think about – make a meal out of Tootles’ face.

You see, it’s our contention that The Fly used tactics to lure the hybrid in there. And whether or not there is mental telepathy between these species, Eyeball Tentacle saw an opportunity, and distracted Tootles with the clacking of a sheep-body cloven hoof. Just like on the ship, some of the lab enclosures now stand open. Their indicator lights have gone from safe green to dangerous red. And in basically any Alien thing ever, once that happens, containment is a memory.

“Safe” really shouldn’t be a concept anyone in this 22nd century world ascribes to their corporate overlords – even in non humans-to-aliens proximity – but that doesn’t stop Hermit from spinning pipe dreams about living with Wendy somewhere not-in-Neverland and maintaining her upkeep, like she’s both his human sister Marcy and a sweet new 200” flat-screen. Kirsh is amused with Hermit’s naivety. After all, he’s also a sentient product built by Prodigy. Kirsh knows Wendy’s stream of consciousness represents part of the company’s bottom line. 

And while his protectiveness is understandable, Hermit also never asked his upgraded sibling what she actually wants. In captivity, her little xenomorph banter buddy has grown exponentially, and Wendy has progressed to full-on click-onversation with xenomorph. Her features display a sense of wonder in these moments – just chopping it up with an off-planet lifeform, no big whoop – but also the determination of a researcher. To Hermit’s protests that killing and consuming is all the alien species knows, Wendy says “This one could be good.” Maybe it’s because she already vanquished a xeno, but she isn’t scared, she’s fascinated, and there is more work to be done. To her brother’s gambit of escaping Neverland, she has a simple rejoinder. “What if I don’t want to go?”

When she said this, Wendy didn’t know about Tootles being fly-trapped, and only discovers what Prodigy did to Nibs later. After the hybrid’s declarations of pregnancy, Sylvia and Arthur put her into charge mode to diagnose the problem. They would treat her with therapy, and respect for her identity. Like we might fix a person. But Atom shut that squishy shit down. It’s a product, not a person. The Prodigy exec demanded a wipe of Nibs’ memory, to a point before the Maginot crash. Before her attack by Eyeball T. As if her cortex was a removable server blade. Which in a way it is. Arthur was like “That’s against every principle of the program,” but Sylvia always sees the corporate hand moving. She agreed to have Nibs up and functioning and charming in time for a Big Five corporate shareholders’ meeting in three weeks’ time. And Arthur? Well, Arthur was fired.

Arthur, who was always caught between the ethics and the science, was axed for disobeying orders, which seems weightless and trivial when the possibility of being eaten by an alien lurks around every Neverland corner. And sure enough, through his own rogue actions – sharing with Hermit the start-up code for a motorboat off the island, and shutting off the hybrids’ location sensors – Arthur unwittingly and very horror movie-ly walks right into Slightly and Morrow’s get-an-alien-off-the-island scheme. Entering the lab to check on Tootles, and practicing the Alien franchise’s utter lack of containment protocol while doing so, Arthur is promptly facehugged. Slightly then drags the scientist, as the alien constricts his throat, into a conveniently-large nearby vent. We know the kid’s got hybrid strength. But how does Slightly get a facehugged Arthur off the island and into Morrow’s clutches?

Which brings us to the teased arbitration meeting between Big Five CEOs Boy Kavalier and Yutani, which the Prodigy boss in his petulance attends completely barefoot. Plopping himself on the conference table, Boy Kav proceeds to pick at his toes while he frames the Maginot crash – which we know he caused – as some kind of danger to him. It’s corporate negligence. It’s a cover-up. Yutani is smuggling invasive species. There should be an investigation. By now he’s lurching across the table, like an earthly spider crab or a deep space facehugger. He’s preening, insincere, and spouting rich guy talking points that sound chainsaw-wavingly familiar. “In the future, where I live, we move fast and we make trillions.” Yutani can give him cash reparations, but he’ll keep the specimens. For safety’s sake. Wouldn’t want such dangerous deep-space creatures breaking out.

Humiliated and out-maneuvered by Boy Kavalier and his gross feet, Yutani calls Morrow to her side and pivots to his plan. Neverland was already a dangerous place, but it could be about to blow. “We destabilize the facility and exfil in the chaos.”

Specimens for Alien: Earth Episode 6 (“The Fly”):

• This week on A:E FM, we’ve got 1998 Godsmack and the drillbit guitars and aggrieved male blather of “Keep Away.” “Sickness spilling through your eyes” – OK, this track reeks of nu-metal overreach, but those lyrics notch nicely into Alien: Earth, especially while Eyeball Tentacle’s around. As for Alt-J and “Tessellate,” heard elsewhere in Ep 6, “Bite chunks out of me” feels appropriate.

• Kirsh saw the whole thing. He was already monitoring Slightly’s mind-meld with Morrow. But after the arbitration meeting, while on the airship back to Neverland, Kirsh has the Tootles incident and Arthur’s facehug moment fired up on his tablet, and doesn’t tell Boy Kav about any of it. He doesn’t say it out loud this time, but you’re familiar with Kirsh and Timothy Olyphant’s wonderfully peculiar way of playing him. You know what the synth is thinking. “Fascinating.”

• Once Wendy realized Nibs had her brain pan forcibly sanitized, she confronted Dame Sylvia. Kirsh likes to say the hybrids aren’t human, the deep-space lifeforms aren’t human, either, and in each case, it’s actual humans doing the messing. If this is what humanity does, Wendy says, killing things for science, and taking them apart to control what’s inside, “I don’t want to be people anymore.” Because around here, that kind of hubris tends to end badly.

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.