“Our show does take you to the trillionaires and the upper class,” series creator Noah Hawley tells EW.

Alien: Earth creator on staging an insane ‘eat the rich’ scene with a xenomorph

"Our show does take you to the trillionaires and the upper class," series creator Noah Hawley tells EW.

By Nick Romano

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Published on August 12, 2025 10:00PM EDT

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A xenomorph from 'Alien: Earth'. Credit:

**This article contains spoilers from *Alien: Earth* episodes 1-2. **

A scene that arrives in episode 2 of *Alien: Earth*'s two-part premiere Tuesday night gives you a clear indication of the kind of show this is.

After a spaceship carrying a menagerie of alien lifeforms, all apex predators, crash lands into a high-rise building in the middle of a bustling metropolis, search and rescue attempts to extract any survivors. Two soldiers, Hermit (Alex Lawther) and Rashidi (Moe Bar-El), have a particularly difficult time breaking up a Marie Antoinette-style party filled with wealthy revelers.

They are blissfully unaware that a giant research vessel flew straight through their lobby, but their refusal to leave the premises and denial of any actual danger lead to their immediate and grotesque deaths. A xenomorph promptly tears through the suite, leaving a bloody graveyard of bodies in her wake. It's a literal manifestation of "eat the rich," the phrase that has become a rallying slogan for those firmly against the influence of the uber-wealthy.

"The *Alien* franchise definitely thinks a lot about class warfare," Noah Hawley, the series creator who hails from FX's *Legion* and *Fargo*, tells ** of staging this moment. "They're just working class heroes, right? You introduced Paul Reiser [in 1986's *Aliens*], but he's middle management at best. You really don't get a great look at the top of the food chain, to use a term. But, of course, our show does take you to the trillionaires and the upper class, as well."

Hermit (Alex Lawther) vs. a xenomorph on 'Alien: Earth'.

There's "a great equalizer," Hawley points out, in the first episode of *Alien: Earth*. Kirsch (Timothy Olyphant), a synthetic, tells one of his hybrid charges, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), how humans used to be food but convinced themselves otherwise when they formed civilization. They're now being reminded to rethink that mindset.

"I do think," Hawley adds, "there is, among the ultra-wealthy, a sense of immortality or untouchability or invulnerability that is definitely put to the test in this episode."

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The showrunner acknowledges the timely parallel between a scene like this and our current reality. *Alien: Earth* is set a hundred years in the future in 2120, a time when five corporations govern the entire world. Hawley thought back to the turn of the century when companies Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse all battled for dominion over electricity. "The next big invention is immortality," Hawley says of his particular vision of the globe on *Alien: Earth*.

There are three competing technologies, and one is, essentially, A.I.; Synthetics (or synths), like Kirsch, are entirely robotic. The second is the cyborg, a human with robotic enhancements, like Babou Ceesay's Morrow, a human agent of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. The third is the introduction of hybrids, human consciousness infused into robot bodies.

Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier on 'Alien: Earth'.

The wunderkind CEO of the Prodigy corporation, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), develops this technological marvel by inserting the minds of terminally ill children into synthetic adult forms. Wendy and her Lost Boys are considered coveted IP as they grapple with the question of whether they're more human or robot.

"If you look back at the history of everything I've written, you can paint a pretty good picture of what was on my mind at the time," Hawley says. "So it would be foolish to say that our current moment isn't reflected in the work that I'm doing, but I guess what I would say is that this show is arriving four years after it was written. Those things that we're actively grappling with today were things that I was thinking [about] a few years back, maybe just seeing the way the world was going."

Hawley clarifies he isn't necessarily trying to skewer any specific real-world figures. When he was writing the drama, ChatGPT wasn't a thing and A.I. wasn't as shoved down our throats as it is now. *Alien: Earth* also started filming in 2023, when we as a society were only just seeing the first iterations of these developments.

"Anytime you're asked to tell a story about the future, you have to start thinking, What is the future gonna be like? I just tried to think one or two steps ahead," he explains. "Is it realistic that billionaires will become trillionaires? Is it realistic to think the corporations are gonna gain more power and not less, and realistic to think that there is this natural tendency toward monopoly that is a product of the way the capital works in our world?"

Sandra Yi Sencindiver as Yutani in 'Alien: Earth'.

Patrick Brown/FX

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Episode 2 expands the lore of *Alien* further by introducing the key player of Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver), the head of the Yutani portion of Weyland-Yutani, which is the company Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley works for in Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror classic. Like the xenomorphs themselves, Hawley liked the idea of a matriarchy for this corporate entity. The Yutani grandmother first sent the *USCSS Maginot* into space, and when it crash lands on Earth 60-plus years later, that half of the company is now run by the granddaughter.

"There's a sense of history and lineage from that," Hawley comments. "I do like that we take this hyphenate Weyland-Yutani for granted as a cohesive whole, but with the battle for the technology of immortality, potentially Weyland-Yutani is not a settled marriage of power."

Just wait until the xenomorph gets a whiff of them.

New episodes of *Alien: Earth* air Tuesdays on Hulu and FX.**

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL TV”