“The Real Monsters” Are Everywhere In The ‘Alien Earth’ Finale

One of the key elements across the Alien franchise is the idea of watching — and reveling in — the best laid plans of people who think they can control the uncontrollable come crumbling down around them (often on back of alien-fueled violence). “The Real Monsters”, the finale to the first season of Alien: Earth, pushes this idea arguably further than ever, by making the uncontrollable element not (or at least not just) animalistic engines of predation about which the would-be controllers know very little, but complex, conscious characters whom, until very recently, were firmly under the control of the same people trying to master the un-masterable.

The end result is an uneven episode, one which works better on a microlevel, as a cathartic expression of the put-upon manifesting their power over their oppressors, than it does on a macrolevel, as resolution of the themes and plotlines of the season and a furthering of the franchise’s core elements.

More or less handwaving away the cliffhanger ending to the previous episode, “The Real Monsters” opens with a voiceover establishing the positions of the major characters as the episode opens, fast forwarding over, say, the immediate fallout of Joe (Alex Lawther) shooting Nibs (Lily Newmark), prompting a look of horror from his sister Wendy (Sydney Chandler) to get to the part where all the Hybrids have been collected and locked in a cage Atom Eins’ (Adrian Edmondson) voiceover assures us probably won’t hold them (I don’t even think Nibs’ clothing has bullet holes in it throughout this episode). In its way, this sets the tone for the episode: as much as we might enjoy what is to come, it is predicated on certain characters acting very stupidly in the face of a threat, just like they often do when facing off against xenomorphs on spaceships or prisons or colony worlds.

Before long, Wendy is rallying her fellow Hybrids in the wake of her full onset radicalization last episode, using her previously-established ability to tap into Prodigy’s network to set them free and set them to “haunt” their oppressors — aka the humans and their Synth allies. The following sequences, in which the Lost Boys turn Neverland into a haunted house, are a delight, from a nigh-feral Nibs descending from the air vents while Wendy taunts Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) with reminders of her empty platitudes to Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) getting a moment of catharsis as he slams Morrow (Babou Ceesay) in the face with a canister after being groomed into killing Arthur to Wendy using her ability to communicate with the Xenomorphs to cause Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) to piss himself in fear.

But through it all, it’s hard not to wonder why it’s all happening. Wendy’s god-like hacking abilities are known to the likes of Boy Kavalier; once it became clear she’d turned on them, no one thought to try and disable it? The Hybrids are put in a cage that won’t hold them – but why isn’t there a cage that could? Prodigy can track the Hybrids, watch through their eyes, but there’s no remote shutdown? The answer, of course, is hubris. Just as Ash or Burke or Weyland thought they could control the alien monsters, Boy Kavalier and company never truly considered they couldn’t always control the Hybrids. But whereas the earlier instances involved interactions with lifeforms about which very little was known, everyone being haunted by the Hybrids here played some role in their creation. Hubris can only go so far.

The length to which you’re willing to stretch that hubris likely colors your reaction to “The Real Monsters.” At times, the title seems to be referring to the Hybrids, who prove to be the beings humanity — at least as represented by the members of Prodigy Corps and Morrow — should be fearing the most, not the alien monsters delivered to Earth. But in the end, it can be argued that the real monsters are — and have always been — the people in the cage, the ones who tried to exert their power, whether Boy’s finances and intelligence, Dame Sylvia’s well-meaning but fleeting expressions of concern, or the dual manipulations in service of their own needs of Morrow and Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), over a group of functional children. It’s no surprise to see Wendy side so firmly with the aliens — unlike the human monsters, they don’t act with malice aforethought (well, except for maybe the eyeball).

Thus, “The Real Monsters” is best when viewed as a cathartic expression of the oppressed rising up against their oppressors, claiming (or reclaiming) their power and humbling those who thought themselves untouchable. As a wrap-up to the season, however, it’s much less effective. By largely punting on numerous dangling thematic and plot threads — from the broad ongoing examination of what “being human” means and the struggle for post-human dominance between cyborg, Synth and Hybrid to the more immediate Prodigy/Weyland-Yutani conflict exploding into outright war to say nothing of what Mister Octo’s whole deal is, really — it reads less like a season finale and more like a mid-season pause. How bothersome that is to you — and whether the show returns for a second season — is going to color your reaction to it.

Stray Thoughts

• Obviously, this is structured more like a season finale than a series finale; as of this writing, no second season has been officially announced, though inasmuch as anyone can know these things nowadays, it sounds like the show has been a success, and given the presence of Weyland-Yutani iconography in the upcoming Predator: Badlands film, Disney seems invested in keeping this particular corner of their intellectual property simmering.
• There’s plenty to critique in the way the episode just yada yadas past the previous episode’s ending, but almost more maddening is the idea that while in the midst of this emergency situation, Dame Sylvia would just go for a casual stroll to visit the kids’ graves.
• As many speculated, Atom Eins did indeed turn out to be a Secret Synth and related to Boy Kavalier in some way, serving as his literal and figurative father replacement. The episode deployed this reveal well though, letting it be surprising but not making too big a deal out of it.
• Curly’s (Erana James) turn from Boy Kavalier protege to zealous revolutionary (reclaiming her original-but-still-laden-with-Peter-Pan-symbolism name in the process) happens really fast.
• The fifth and final alien — the flora/fauna plant creature — finally gets something to do, chomping up one of Joe’s army buds after illustrating an ability to move bat-like before surrounding its pray like a carnivorous plant.
• Though Mister Octo ultimately ended up in Arthur (ensuring Noah Hawley favorite David Rysdahl can return for season 2), Joe was Boy’s intended target for the parasitic eyeball, as suspected.