Can Noah Hawley’s Mysterious Alien Show Fix the Franchise's Broken Timeline?
Alien: Earth may provide new answers to old questions.
Alien: Romulus is continuing its stunning box office triumph, leaving fans wondering what’s next for the Alien franchise. The answer, of course, is another prequel.
An Alien TV series, Alien: Earth, has just wrapped production under showrunner Noah Hawley, best known for his work on Fargo. But what will Hawley’s Alien: Earth be like, and how will it fill the gaps between the existing prequel films and the rest of the Alien saga? Prometheus and Covenant created a massive mystery about the true origins of the xenomorphs, and the answer to the riddle might be found in a new hint from Hawley that the show could “be the next 10 years” of his life.
What is Alien: Earth?
Alien: Earth is set at least three decades before the events of Alien. Because Alien takes place in 2122, this would place Alien: Earth somewhere in 2092, right before the events of Prometheus in 2093. As the title suggests, the show will take place on Earth and will be a “big imaginative reimagining” of existing Alien canon. It’s been speculated that the series will show the formation of Weyland-Yutani, which makes sense because, in Prometheus, the company is still just “Weyland Corp.”
Noah Hawley is leading Alien into an unknown era.
But in January 2024, Hawley told Variety he wasn’t a fan of the futuristic aesthetics and lore of Prometheus, suggesting his show would look more like the retrofuturistic world of the original Alien and Aliens. However, the showrunner confirmed he’s been in discussion with Ridley Scott about “many, many elements of the show” to make sure everything more or less matches up.
Hawley is also clearly interested in examining the purpose (and origin) of the xenomorphs, a subject that’s been an open question among fans ever since Prometheus raised new questions about where they came from.
“This ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution,” Hawley said. He also noted that he wasn’t interested in thinking of it as “a bioweapon created half an hour ago; that’s just inherently less useful to me.”
Hawley seems to be saying that his show won’t be picking up any of the loose threads left behind by Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, which hinted that the sadistic android David (Michael Fassbender) was behind the creation of the xenomorphs. Ridley Scott teased as much in his two prequel movies but never got a chance to complete his planned trilogy. Now, it seems that despite making a TV series set mere years before Prometheus, the franchise has no plans to solve its biggest mystery.
And yet, if Alien: Earth lasts beyond its first season, it will start to run into the Prometheus and Covenant canon, right? Maybe, but maybe not.
Alien: Earth could run for a long, long time
Harry Dean Stanton in Alien.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Hawley reflected that Fargo has spanned a decade of his life and that perhaps Alien: Earth “could be the next 10 years of my life, for sure.” If so, the timeline would likely bump up against the machinations of David.
Right now, most fans have two interpretations of what happens in those films. Either David’s gene-splicing experiments created the xenomorphs that we know, or David recreated creatures that already existed. The second explanation creates a lot more wiggle room. It might also suggest the Engineers didn’t create the xenomorphs either but merely weaponized their DNA when convenient.
Hawley’s quote implies that’s the approach he’s taking, and if the xenomorphs were merely recreated by David and weaponized by the Engineers, then Alien: Earth could sidestep Prometheus and Covenant canon altogether.
Right now, no one knows what happened to David and his face-huggers after Covenant, but even if Alien: Earth does catch up to that point in the timeline, the show’s title suggests none of the space-bound characters from those movies will crossover. Thankfully, that’s not a problem if the xenomorphs have been lurking in space forever, and we don’t need to factor in every last detail of David’s role in their creation.
“If people wanted a television series based on the world of Alien, I think I’m going to give them something special,” Hawley said. And if his series shows us the xenomorphs on Earth — which it almost certainly will — it will inherently change the timeline of that universe as we know it. If we’re lucky, it will also simplify everything once and for all.
