‘Alien: Earth’ “Observation” Succeeds By Putting The Spotlight On The Hybrids

Since their introduction as a group of in the first episode, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the Lost Boys have gradually stepped more and more into the spotlight with each subsequent episode. As they get more to do and more screentime, they transition from “interesting concept rich with thematic potential” into actual characters (helped along by the actors playing them relishing the opportunity to play meatier bits with the characters). That largely culminates here in “Observation”, the season’s halfway point, as they become the drivers of most of the action in the plot. The titular aliens are still around, but they’ve moved (one frighteningly-bipedal sheep aside) to the margins: the real horror is now what is happening to these kids who may not even be kids but are instead just AI ghosts of kids.

Throughout “Observation”, we see most of the Lost Boys paired off with an adult mentor of some sort — Wendy and Joe (Alex Lawther), Curly (Erana James) and Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), Isaac nee Tootles (Kit Young)with Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) with Morrow (Babou Ceesay) and Nibs (Lily Newmark) with Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis). The various pairings and the different motivations/actions of the Lost Boys within each pairing underscore some of the key questions the series has been asking about them since the beginning: are they actually new forms of their old selves, or just really good simulacrums? Do they have autonomy and the authority to act on their own behalf/out of their own desires, or do they need to be controlled, either because they’re still developmentally children and/or the physical property of Prodigy?

In underscoring these questions, the show makes it clear that the Lost Boys, like their literary counterparts, are caught, in part or in whole, between two forces who don’t necessarily have their best interests at heart: Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Boy Kavalier and Morrow. Kavalier is at perhaps his most Peter Pan-ish yet in “Observation”, wearing a full patchwork suit that resembles Pan’s mottled garb as he reads from Peter Pan over the Neverland PA system, making impulse-driven decisions instead of thinking through the ramifications of his pronouncements, sending his “shadow”, Atom, to play the heavy to Joe. To say the trillionaire tech company CEO boy genius is the villain of this show airing in 2025 is hardly revelatory, but if we had any doubt, this episode makes it clear he is, if not the series’ villain, than an antagonistic force. He clearly views the Lost Boys as both his property, and only useful in as much as they are a means to his own ends.

Similarly, “Observation” makes it clear that while Morrow may be working in opposition to Boy Kavalier, who cares no more about the well-being of the Lost Boys, and is working towards his own agenda. Captain Hook is, after all, the villain of the Peter Pan story. If the conversations with Slightly pitched almost certainly intentionally at the tenor of a child being groomed by an adult weren’t enough, than the sequence in which Morrow chillingly threatens Slightly’s mother and brothers makes it clear: Morrow has his agenda, and he doesn’t care any more than Boy Kavalier if the Hybrids get used up in achieving his goals.

The parallels between the two, and the way these kids are in over their heads, is highlighted by a parallel exchanges in which both Boy and Morrow manipulate a respective Hybrid into doing what they want by scoffing at their deployment of “please” in their arguments. “Please” is a powerful word for a child, one of the first bits of societal manners they’re taught, a word that carries with it all the argument in favor of what they want necessary. To add “please” to a request is, to a child, all that is necessary to elevate the request from the realm of “nice to have” to “must to have”. Yet both Boy and Morrow are dismissive and derisive of the word when Wendy and Slightly deploy it, both because they don’t care that they’re talking to children, and because they don’t care about anything that doesn’t serve their immediate goals. Pan and Hook are what matter; the Lost Boys be damned.

All of which makes the closing minutes of the episode all the more interesting. Of all the various themes running through the Alien franchise, one is the notion that man is the ultimate monster. We certainly see that here, with the aliens taking a back seat to the cruel manipulations of Boy Kavalier and Morrow. “Observation” establishes the idea that Wendy may have the ability to communicate with the xenomorph, and by the end, she is reaching out, smiling, to pet the snake-like infant xenomorph that has emerged from her brother’s lung. Thus, we are left asking: if the Lost Boys are just a means to an end, if the powers that be in this world, the corporations personified by Boy Kavalier and Morrow, don’t care if they crush the little people in their quest for power, what happens when the little people find allies lifted from some of the darkest corners of the universe?

Stray Thoughts

• In other “murderous aliens are the least of our problems” news, both Prodigy’s healthcare plan re: Joe’s new lung (it’ll take a lifetime contract to pay off) and the discussion of the rise of the Five coming in the wake of democracy’s failure paint some grim visions of our future.
• Given the way Nibs knocked the image of her insides aside so violently, it seems like there’s something more to the Hybrids’ insides than typical robot junk.
• Is Nibs “pregnancy” a reaction to her trauma (either of the transfer or her experiences aboard the Maginot) or could she possibly have been impregnated by the eyeball octopus monster when it was grabbing onto her.
• Speaking of, the eyeball octopus-possessed sheep standing up on two legs really was hella creepy.
• Kirsh remains a wild card in all of this — he clearly views the hybrids as synths more than humans, but also doesn’t really care if they want to rename themselves or about Prodigy’s corporate interests. Is he holding back on Slightly’s interactions with Morrow to try and lay a trap, or to ally with him? Either is possible!
• Given that the xenomorphs are traditionally considered to absorb some measure of their hosts DNA and the chestburster Wendy befriends at the end of the episode incubated in her brother’s lung, it kind makes it her brother as well.