Here’s what we already know about Noah Hawley’s upcoming series, Alien: Earth. It’s set two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece, Alien. It follows several rival corporations competing over a crashed spaceship that contains multiple alien creatures, including the xenomorph. And one of those corporations will send a group of hybrids—robotic beings with the consciousness of humans—in to get the job done.
Which all sounds awesome but, also, tangential to the stories we know and love. Stories about Ripley, the Nostromo, LV-426, Colonial Marines, etc. Will Alien: Earth take those events into consideration or, maybe even, cross over with them? The answer is yes. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Hawley revealed that a potential crossover with the films is absolutely in his tentative plans for the show.
“I don’t yet know, in terms of the series from beginning to end, how much time is going to pass or where we’re going to end up,” he said. “But I do know that at a certain point, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is going to divert the Nostromo to that planet.”
To explain, if Alien: Earth is set on Earth two years before the events of Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are currently in hypersleep. Eventually, they’ll get woken up and told to go to LV-426, where they’ll pick up their unwanted visitor. So, depending on how long events of the show go on, that has to happen eventually. What we don’t know is how the Nostromo‘s owners, Weyland-Yutani, knew about the creature being there or who made the decision to send the ship to the planet and why. “We have the opportunity to maybe see what was happening on the other side of that phone call,” Hawley said.
The best part of this tease is that it’s miles away from the story Hawley is going to tell come August. His story will not only explore what was happening on Earth as the horror was happening in space but also explain why. And it sounds like a lot. For much, much more from Hawley on Alien: Earth, head to Vanity Fair to read the excellent profile. And we’ll have more on the show later this month.
Alien: Earth debuts August 12.
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