Earth’ Boss on the FX Show’s Biggest Risk

The xenomorph — as Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley has rightly pointed out — is probably the greatest cinematic monster of all time.

The ink-black H.R. Giger-designed nightmare has long been characterized across numerous films by its ferocious and single-minded murderous instincts; a nearly unstoppable and certainly unknowable force of nature.

But what happens when a character seems to tame, and even train, a xenomorph?

Across the last couple episodes of Alien: Earththe hybrid Wendy (Sydney Chandler) has been raising and communicating with one of the Prodigy Corporation’s alien captives, a xenomorph follows her commands — including to kill a bunch of Prodigy employees.

We asked Hawley about this bold addition to the franchise’s canon and its thorny moral implications, along with some other burning questions we had after watching “Emergence,” the show’s seventh debut season episode.

Now we know from James Cameron’s Aliens that xenomorphs can communicate with each other. And if they can communicate, then the next iteration of that idea would be someone not of their species attempting to communicate with them. I assume that’s the inspiration for Wendy’s relationship with the xenomorph, but isn’t it always a bit of a risk when you take the scary monster and turn them into something that seems domesticated?

NOAH HAWLEY: There are a couple of things. Obviously, there’s that moment in Cameron’s film where the queen communicates with the drones. Is that a pheromone? Is it telekinetic? Is that a frequency we can’t hear? We don’t know, but that always seemed really interesting as something to explore.

The other thing, of course, is that an Alien movie is a two-hour survival story, and a television show has to be an ongoing series. You have to use the monsters in a different way. You certainly want to use them in the classic way, but you also have to figure out how to sustain having monsters in your show when the reality is they would kill everyone, or that you would kill them — and then that would be it. Bringing in other creatures allowed me to take the pressure off the xenomorphs to fill that void.

There’s also this idea of the hubris of people — that classic Jurassic Park thing of “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” And the naiveté of children, as well. There’s a romanticism that can happen in kids. She wants to believe that it’s not these creatures’ fault, that they didn’t ask to come here, and we shouldn’t experiment on them the way that she’s being experimented on. You can understand the rationale. But it doesn’t make it safe to make friends with one.

One of the big question marks was if fans were going to go with this idea. I don’t want her to have (a xenomorph as a) pet. But if it seems like an alliance has been struck, what are the interesting possibilities that we can pull out of that? And because this is a horror story, we have to assume that, ultimately, I wouldn’t bet on this working out.

There’s a philosophical debate within this, too. You’ve talked about the famous Ripley line, how “you don’t see (the aliens) fucking each over for a (monetary) percentage.” That debate is playing out within the show as Wendy and her brother (Alex Lawther) discuss whether the aliens are more honorable than messy humans. Perhaps I’m biased as I’m on Team Human, but to me, it’s our higher consciousness that makes us want to do better, and, on a day-to-day basis, we largely are better and do overcome our animal instincts, and that does make us better. But what are your feeling about this?

Well, they are predators. They are very intelligent. They’re calculating. But they don’t have ulterior motives. One of the most fascinating things to me about the Alien franchise is you never see them eat. None of their killing seems to be about food. They’re really about reproducing. So they’re kind of fascinating on that level. This all plays into this question driving the Wendy conversation. Humanity is a choice for her now, and the more she chooses to be human, the safer everyone will be. The more alienated and detached she feels from humanity and human morality … well, that’s not good. So there is a question of whether she is going to become a monster, too. I think that core tension makes the show really interesting.

In that episode seven, Wendy becomes a killer as she orders the xenomorph to attack. I had that classic geek question of, “How sorry should we feel for the maintenance people on the Death Star?” How is the audience supposed to feel about her decision?

Let’s not forget she’s 12. My son is 12, and I’m like, “Why is there an ice cream wrapper in the closet?” There some things that they do where you’re like, “Oh, you haven’t thought a few steps ahead here.” There are some executive function issues going on. I don’t want to take the moral onus off of it, but I think she’s angry at the way that (the hybrids have) been treated and what they did to Nibs (Lily Newmark), and she’s lashing out. Part of growing up is learning what consequences are.

And speaking of that: Nib’s freakout over the guard grabbing Mr. Strawberry was extremely satisfying.

It’s the fun of the genre. A lot my characters and storytelling go back to Stephen King, The Stand and Trashcan Man — this idea that you put these players in motion, and some of them are morally good, and some of them are morally bad, and some of them are crazy, and some of them are wild cards. It’s the same way in season five of Fargo with (the mysterious criminal-for-hire Ole Munch character). He was a wildcard I felt paid off in a very satisfying way. So Nibs can fill this space where you’re actually okay with the fact that she might end up being a sociopath, it fills a space in the genre where we always like those characters, in some way.

Finally, Timothy Olyphant seems to steal every moment he’s on screen. And maybe this question is too much of a spoiler that you won’t want to get into, but I’m constantly wondering: What does Kirsch want?

Yeah, that’s interesting to me. And the question of how much is he in control? What are the rules of his programming? Part of what I feel made (Ian Holm’s Alien android character Ash) crazy at the end of that movie was that he had this countermanding programming — the crew’s lives were expendable, but, somewhere in there, he had been programmed to protect human life. Those two conflicting impulses caused him to malfunction. I think with Tim, there’s definitely this question of how much is he autonomous? How much is he controlled by the programming, and how much is his sense of identity? If he is a scientist and experimenting, he doesn’t seem to have the human morality that others have. He’s probably programmed that he can’t harm Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). He may be programmed that he really shouldn’t disagree with him, or argue with him. And in these moments where Boy Kavalier is super patronizing and dismissive, maybe been programmed to smile and bear it. And yet: Is he done?