(This article contains spoilers)
After two episodes released on the same day, it’s time enter the cruising speed of the show. With Metamorphosis, third episode of Alien: Earth, we deal with the creatures from outer space to take a deeper look into the characters.
Staring Death in The Face
In the first half of the episode, Marcy runs after the Xenomorph that took his brother Joe hostage at the end of episode 2. Of course, our first thought is that he’s about to became a host for a new Xenomorph, so when Wendy eventually finds him in a sort of cold storage without a dead facehugger next to him, we know the plan failed. Or did it? Reunited, Wendy and Joe are ready to face the Alien coming to them, but the creature doesn’t attack. Instead, it seems to taunt them outside of the narrow storage. It must have felt that Wendy is not human, but it could have gone for Joe. Why the indirect attack?
Wendy and Joe ends up separated, and Joe is badly injured by the creature. His sister eventually comes to the rescue, grabbing the Xenomorph with a hook in its second mouth. But the plan to kill it doesn’t end the way they both hoped for. If Wendy manages to cut its head, she is hurt, off-screen, but we see her collapse, while Joe also loses consciousness. What really happened to Wendy’s supposedly unbreakable body is unknown.
The rest of the team, still under the order and surveillance of Kirsh, deals with the remaining creatures. Smee is sent to find Wendy and Slightly but only finds the latter among the alien eggs, unbothered and frankly not threatened by the horror lying at his feet. It’s a unique perspective to be able to be among a nest of facehuggers without triggering them while being a human. Or a sort of human. They’re both having fun like the children they are until Morrow shows up and threatens them. Right now, the real danger in the room is actually him. Being a cyborg, Morrow can do and see things regular human can’t and quickly realizes the two are not human. After downloading the entire research’s data from the ship’s system, he questions the two boys. Something doesn’t add up: he knows they have synthetic bodies but their behavior is suspiciously human. Kirsh eventually saves the boys and Morrow escapes, not only with the Yutani’s data but with the knowledge of Prodigy’s new kind of synthetics.
The Wonders of The Mind
Back on the Prodigy island, Wendy is taken care of while surgeons try to save Joe’s life. Meanwhile, things are moving fast in the lab. Kirsh is tasked with the study of the eggs and dissects a specimen. And this is where things take a strange and unexpected turn. In parallel, Wendy wakes up and hears the the same alien sound she first heard when they landed on the crash site. Following the sound in the hallways of Prodigy, she’s suddenly twisting in pain, as if what Kirsh is doing to the egg is affecting her. How?! Among the hybrids, she’s the only one to feel it so what’s the link? Meanwhile, we also see Nibs experiencing a sort of state of shock, of stupefaction, after being attacked by the eye octopus. She’s clearly traumatized by what happened, proving the hybrids are indeed very much still humans. But there seems to be more, what she experienced makes her question what she is now.
And this is where I appreciate the show addressing the “Lost Boys” still being children, human children. They have difficulties overcoming the violence they’ve been through. Nibs is shocked, Slightly is drawing the Xenomorph the way children depict a nightmare, Smee is anxious. On the other hand, Curly is growing bold and quite fearless, already forming more advanced thoughts and critical thinking. They’re kids but they’re also young teens, and teens grow up fast. The years between 10-11 to 18-19 are very chaotic and in a few years, innocence can completely disappear. Kavalier chose them so young for their flexible minds and endless imagination but he’s about to face teenagers, even if their hormones levers are under control. The human mind learns, grows, and these kids have enhanced minds on top of that. Some of them, like Curly, will grow out of their shell faster than the others.
For now, the question of the link between Wendy and the Xenomorph remains. How is that even possible? Could it be an entirely new level of consciousness so evolved it can resonate with creatures from outer space? The Xenomorph didn’t attack her head on, and Wendy collapsing after killing it definitely seems to show a link. Alien: Earth could be hinting at another new concept, something so big and dangerous that it could also explain why it might end with the show and not be something that still exists in the future of the world in the show, a future we get to see in the first movie Alien, from 1979.
