TV Recap: “Alien: Earth” Episode 3 – Lost Boys, Found Nightmares
After the shocking reunion and near-fatal injuries of Episode 2, Alien: Earth Episode 3 escalates both the personal and scientific stakes. Wendy’s pursuit of the xenomorph holding her brother leads to a brutal confrontation that leaves both siblings on the brink, while back on Neverland, Prodigy’s experiments reach a grisly new stage. This chapter leans into body horror and moral dilemmas, showing just how far Prodigy is willing to go in its race to weaponize survival.
Episode 3: “Metamorphosis" – Written by Noah Hawley and Bob DeLaurentis
Wendy (Sydney Chandler) takes off in pursuit of the Xenomorph that took her brother, Hermit (Alex Lawther). She uses her ability to hear the alien’s clicking noises to track them to a level of the building for deliveries. It’s full of parked truckbeds. She calls to Joe, who warns her that it’s a trap. She doesn’t listen, finding him in a trailer full of hanging cowhides with a plastic strip curtain covering the only entrance. Hermit has been wrapped up in hive resin, and Wendy begins to set him free when the Xenomorph’s silhouette appears behind the curtain.
In the lab aboard Weyland-Yutani’s USCSS Maginot, Nibs (Lily Newmark) stares at the tentacled eyeball, successfully contained in a tube, remembering how it tried to attack her. She’s having an existential crisis, asking Curly (Erana James) a lot of questions about why they couldn’t keep their real names, why they’ve all been assigned names from Peter Pan, and why they’re referred to as “Lost Boys" when some of them are girls. “Lost Boys, they don’t get to grow up," Curly explains, satisfying another one of Nibs’ questions about why they have adult bodies instead of child bodies. Lastly, she seems jealous that Wendy gets to be Wendy, the heroin of the story.
The mood is tense on Prodigy’s “Neverland" Research Island as founder Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) finds scientists Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) and Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl) venting their frustrations with the situation. He forces them to reveal their thoughts; he was reckless for sending the kids into the field while they’re still in a discovery phase of this new hybrid technology. Boy Kavalier calls Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), asking him to bring the Lost Boys and all of the specimens back to Neverland. He’s furious to learn that Kirsh doesn’t have eyes on Wendy and Slightly.
Hermit alerts Wendy to the Xenomorph at the entrance of the trailer. She draws her makeshift sword, and he becomes protective of his sister, both of them trying to take the lead to slay the beast. But surprisingly, after looking through the curtain and showing its teeth, the Xenomorph backs out of the trailer and jumps on top of it. Wendy listens carefully, using her body’s incredible strength to drive the sword up through the roof of the trailer. The Xenomorph lets out a pained hiss, and as Wendy withdraws her blade, the ceiling starts to break apart, dripping acid blood into the trailer. The creature knocks the trailer on its side, and its tail reaches in and grabs Wendy, pulling her out.
Grabbing a meathook, Hermit exits the trailer to save his sister, but he can’t see where they’ve gone. He calls for her, and suddenly finds the Xenomorph's tail stabbed through the center of his chest from the back, knocking him down. The creature bends low over Joe, opening its mouth as the inner jaw protrudes towards his face. He’s saved at the last minute by Wendy, who picked up the hook and drove it through the inner jaw, dragging the alien toward an open garage door. Hermit gets up to help when he realizes the plan, hotwiring the door to try and close it at the right time.
Wendy has the creature lined up perfectly with the door, but Hermit’s first attempt fails, only partially closing. As he fumbles with the wires to try to close the door on top of the creature, its inner jaw detaches, and the Xenomorph pulls Wendy inside as the door closes. Hermit can hear her struggle with the creature on the other side, with dents banging into the door as he tries to open it up again. When the door opens, he sees the Xenomorph lying still on the floor, leaking acid. His sister is standing, but something is wrong. A white fluid is leaking from the top of her head, and she loses motor function, collapsing. Her brother is also severely injured, bleeding from his chest where the creature stabbed him. He lies next to his sister, holding her hand as he loses consciousness.
Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), who was supposed to follow Wendy, remained by the torn opening of the USCSS Maginot in the circle of eggs. Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) scares Slightly when he comes looking for him. He tells Slightly about the blood-sucking space bugs and the octopus eyeball he missed in the lab as he curiously looks at the eggs. But before Smee can get too close, Morrow (Babou Ceesay) steps forward with his gun drawn. As a cyborg, Morrow recognizes them as synthetics, but is confused by their childlike nature when Slightly asks if he needs a friend. He starts to ask questions, but both boys are reluctant to share any information.
Morrow presents Slightly and Smee with a scenario as he plugs into the ship’s computer and uploads his memories. He puts them in his shoes by asking them to imagine they are the chief security officer on a deep-space research vessel that found eggs on a plane and brought them aboard. The eggs hatched, and monsters emerged, but the orders were that the only thing that mattered was getting the specimens back to Earth, not the lives of the crew on board. He asks what they would do: follow orders or try to save the people. Slightly and Smee consider the options with their childlike scope of humanity, saying that they would follow orders unless the people in danger were their friends or parents.
His curiosity piqued, Morrow asks how Slightly and Smee can have parents if they’re synthetics. The boys realize they said too much, and become even more nervous when Morrow’s right hand turns into a knife. He pins Slightly against a console and leans close, whispering, “When is a machine not a machine?" The boys are saved by Kirsh, who came to find them. Having tapped into the ship’s data, he correctly assumes the stranger to be Morrow, who asks Kirsh if he’s their “Parent." Morrow doesn’t have any knowledge of Prodigy Corporation, but he understands that Kirsh is taking the specimens for a competitor. “She won’t let you have them," he warns about Yutani as one of the eggs begins to open. Morrow takes his exit, jumping through the ship’s opening and disappearing into the building.
Prodigy’s army packs up the crash site. Siberian (Diêm Camille) and Rashidi (Moe Bar-El) help transport the dead Xenomorph on an acid-proof platform. Chief Nagg (Sahajak Boonthanakit) tells Kirsh that the building has been swept and there’s no sign of Morrow anywhere. Wendy’s unconscious body is transferred back to Neverland on a table like the one that moved her consciousness, while Hermit is on life support in an enclosed bed next to her during the flight. Boy Kavalier watches gleefully as the ships are unloaded on his secret island.
Dame and Arthur Sylvia work on repairing Wendy, frustrated when Boy Kavalier enters their lab, hoping to speak with her. He leaves them to their efforts to revive her.
Tootles (Kit Young) and Curly help Kirsh load the specimens into a lab. Boy Kavalier enters, congratulating them all on a job well done. Having dismissed the kids, Kirsh tells his boss that he risked a decade’s worth of work by sending the Lost Boys to the crash site, but Boy Kavalier appeals to Kirsh’s inquisitive nature with the groundbreaking work they brought back. One of the eggs seems ready to hatch, and Boy Kavalier gets close to it with excitement when Kirsh warns him to get out. “It’s a parasite," he warns his boss, sharing what he learned from the Maginot’s computer. “The xenomorph lays its eggs. They wait for organic life to draw near only to hatch some kind of proto-creature." Understanding that a living host is needed, Boy Kavalier puts Kirsh in charge and gives him orders that the only people allowed in are synthetics.
In the living room, Slightly draws pictures of the Xenomorph. Smee warns him to hide it as Boy Kavalier’s right-hand man, Atom Eins (Adrian Edmondson), enters and sits next to Slightly. Atom Eins reveals that he was watching footage from their retinal cameras, aka their eyes, and both boys are unnerved to learn that the adults can see everything they do. Atom Eins wants to know all about their encounter with Morrow, particularly a moment that happened outside of his view when he whispered something to Slightly. “He said, ‘When is a machine not a machine?’" Slightly informs him. The boys are worried that Morrow is going to come find them on Neverland, but Atom Eins tells them that’s impossible. “Trust me, he’ll be dead or in custody by the day’s end," he says as he leaves them alone.
Morrow has escaped into the busy streets of New Siam, stealing food and a phone, which he uses to call Weyland-Yutani. After giving a receptionist the security code and keyword, he is surprised to find himself talking to the adult grandchild of the person who sent him on the mission 65 years ago, the new Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver). She wants him to return home for a debriefing, but Morrow has other plans. “These creatures, they are my life’s work, and I’m going to get them back," he vows. After hanging up, Morrow moves back through the streets, passing digital billboards with Boy Kavalier repeating the phrase, “Prodigy is forever."
The conversation Nibs had with Curly inspired something in her. Curly goes to Boy Kavalier’s office and asks him why Wendy is his favorite. He simplifies it as her being the first hybrid, and Curly shares that her dad used to toss out the first pancake. Curly is very interested in the prototype hybrid pieces that decorate Boy Kavalier’s office, and he’s surprised that the specifics of her creation don’t bother her. Curly shares that she has ideas about how to make the world better, refusing to share details because she knows Boy Kavalier will steal them. But she shows him how she became fluent in French in less than a week in her new body, and that while Wendy is only concerned about the well-being of her brother, she is focused on testing the limits of what she can do as a hybrid. Boy Kavalier asks Curly if she knows what a prodigy is, and she is familiar with the term for a kid genius. “What makes them geniuses is the fact that they’re children because children have access to a world of infinite imagination," he expands. He sends Curly away with some books and recordings to listen to, saying that when she’s done, she can come “play." Curly asks if that makes her his favorite Lost Boy. “No, but you’re in the race," he smiles.
Slightly sits alone in the living room, watching the animated film Epic, when he is startled by a familiar voice that’s coming from inside his head. “Did you figure it out, my riddle?" Morrow asks before adding, “I’ve figured out yours." We see that Morrow is still in Prodigy City, having hacked a computer in a busy club where nobody will notice him. Slightly is understandably scared, and Morrow apologizes. “I’m a parent, you know," Morrow tells Slightly, sharing that he had a daughter. Morrow brings up the fact that Slightly asked him if he needed a friend when they met on the ship. “Will you be my friend?" he asks, appealing to Slightly’s sympathetic nature. After brief consideration, Slightly agrees. Morrow bids him a goodnight, promising to talk to him again tomorrow. But after Morrow goes silent, Slightly continues to seem unnerved.
Another one of the Lost Boys is also full of anxiety, Nibs. She has been walking the halls and staring at her face in a mirror. She is haunted by the tentacled eyeball that tried to get inside her head. Among the creepy vignettes, we see her poke her synthetic eyeball with her finger. As she walks the halls, she keeps passing the person spraying something on a dark stain on the wall. Despite its repeated appearance since the first episode, it doesn’t appear to change, despite continuous abatement efforts.
Wendy wakes up on a table, with Dame Sylvia asleep in a chair next to her. She realizes she’s back on Neverland, but she also hears something that shouldn’t be there: the clicking noises of a Xenomorph. She quietly exits and follows the sounds towards Kirsh’s lab.
The eggs are in an enclosed chamber, all except the one that is in the process of hatching. Tootles and Curly help Kirsh load it onto a table, with a suction tube placed over the opening in case they need to suck something out of it. Kirsh’s lab has also grown to include a few organic specimens, like lambs and rabbits. Kirsh uses an electric saw to cut into the egg’s outer shell, peeling it apart to see the embryo. The legs of a face hugger can be seen wiggling, and he uses a scalpel to break through it. Pulling the wriggling face hugger out, Kirsh zaps it with a dose of electricity, and its movements cease.
Wendy enters the lab, her ears bothering her, as Kirsh dissects the face hugger. He cuts into a sack of acid and withdraws what looks like a translucent tadpole, dropping it in a glass of water and watching it swim around in search of an organic host. Kirsh, Tootles, and Curly don’t seem to notice Wendy, nor do they seem aware that another egg is starting to hatch. But Wendy is very aware, her sense of sound overwhelming her. She collapses onto the floor, twitching.
Hermit is alive as his body is operated on. His right lung is removed from his body, having been punctured by the Xenomorph. The lung starts to move in the water, as a translucent tadpole emerges from it, realizes there aren’t any better options around, and swims back into the tissue.
Next Episode: “Observation" - Tuesday, August 26th, at 8/7c on FX and Hulu
An unexpected connection is formed while a covert plot puts everyone in danger.