Sydney Chandler Leads as Wendy in Alien: Earth

FX and Hulu’s Alien: Earth has been a long time coming, but we now have a final trailer for the highly anticipated prequel series. The streaming platforms released a teaser, along with an expanded synopsis, teasing a chilling, cerebral upcoming show. New scenes show meditative, almost existential moments spliced with flashes of sci-fi horror: cryptic alien vessels floating in space, dead bodies strewn in a shadowy hallway, bloodied humans running from unseen terrors, and in the distance… a xenomorph, in silhouette, prowling in the shadows.

Alien: Earth is being carefully shepherded by Noah Hawley, who has stated the series’ tone and mythology will be closer to Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) than to later prequel entries like Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant. The eight-episode first season will be set in 2120, a near-future world, two years before the first movie. The future is filled with mercenary corporate interests, a few mega conglomerates vying for control of the most valuable resource of all: life. The power struggle will get more vicious as one corporation unlocks the key to humanity’s ultimate dream: immortality.

Earth in 2120 Is Controlled by Corporations

Alien: Earth’s timeline is most famous for taking place in the year 2120, but few know that on Earth in this year, it’s not the governments that rule. Instead, this timeline is controlled by five mega-corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. This is the time of the Corporate Era, and synthetic life is rampant. There are cyborgs (humans with prostheses) and synthetics (humanoid robots powered by advanced AI). One of the corporations, Prodigy, sees this power balance threatened when its young, talented Founder and CEO innovates a technology beyond anything that’s come before: creating hybrids, humanoid robots with actual human consciousness uploaded to them.

The first is “Wendy,” a prototype from this secret race. Played by Sydney Chandler, Wendy is described as having “the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child.” Wendy is about to change the future of humanity, but first, some calm is broken.

In 2120, after years of tranquility, a Weyland-Yutani spaceship is seen streaking across the sky towards Prodigy City. It crashes, and Wendy and the other hybrids are exposed to an unknown alien organism. Unleashed upon the world, this terror is unlike any known to man. They are creatures far more dangerous and alien than humanity ever knew.

The Alien: Earth Cast

Chandler is joined by a stellar cast, including Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic mentor and combat trainer; Alex Lawther as CJ, a soldier; Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, a calculating CEO; Essie Davis as Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gourav as Slightly; Kit Young as Tootles; David Rysdahl as Arthur; Babou Ceesay as Morrow; Jonathan Ajayi as Smee; Erana James as Curly; Lily Newmark as Nibs; Diem Camille as Siberian; and Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins.

A New Alien Begins with Xenomorph POV Trailer

FX and Hulu had already teased fans with a surprise Alien: Earth short teaser, shown during the NFL’s AFC Championship game in January. That trailer was shot entirely from the perspective of a xenomorph. This point-of-view clip opened with the space creature bounding down a hallway. The backdrop is Earth hurtling toward the camera, a view only possible if the ship is hurtling directly toward the planet on a crash trajectory. The lack of exposition in the teaser left fans speculating.

The first official trailer came out last month, and it gave fans some answers. The first full trailer of Alien: Earth featured the creation of Wendy in 2120, on a research island called Neverland. The planet, already automated and virtually devoid of actual humans, is home to this new prototype of Wendy. When an alien spaceship crash-lands on the nearby island, Wendy offers to retrieve the ship’s mysterious cargo. This being an Alien movie, it doesn’t turn out to be a scientific breakthrough for humanity, but instead, grisly carnage.

On the dead ship, there are five alien life forms. Dead, unknown species that someone in the name of science brought back to a laboratory for study. The trailer then fades to black. It’s an ominous setup familiar to any who has followed the franchise’s history: human arrogance and the curiosity of a child meeting an apex predator. The final trailer cements this point. Alien: Earth will be less about flash and bang, and more about ratcheting up the dread, methodically laying the groundwork for how hubris, corporate greed, and human ambition always seem to pave the way for their comeuppance.

FX and Hulu are trying to play the long game with Alien: Earth. In a world full of streaming platform announcements, some series feel like they are already forgotten the moment they’re announced. Alien: Earth is benefiting from Hawley’s deliberate attention to detail and focusing on style and character complexity as much as plot and genre. By tapping into the claustrophobic horror, themes, and even the ethical questions that have made the original Alien so culturally resilient over 40 years, this new series should please both fans of science fiction and horror fans looking for something a little more cerebral.

Alien: Earth series will premiere streaming on FX and Hulu on August 12.