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Contains spoilers for “Alien: Earth” Season 1, Episode 2 — “Mr. October”
The “Alien” franchise has always been realistic about the life cycles of its characters — you’re alive, you encounter a xenomorph, you’re dead — and its characters are wise enough to know that, which is what makes Kirsh’s (Timothy Olyphant) comment to Wendy (Sydney Chandler) in the critically acclaimed “Alien: Earth’s” second episode both prescient and eerie. He speaks to her about the food chain, explaining that while humans have forgotten being prey and think of themselves as apex predators standing at the top of the line, another creature might come along at any moment to displace them. As he says, “You’re born, you live, you die.”
If that line sounds familiar, that’s because it has a similar message and cadence to the one that Ripley 8 (Sigourney Weaver) makes upon learning that scientists on the USM Auriga are using human host bodies brought in by mercenaries to incubate xenomorphs for scientific study in “Alien: Resurrection.” “She’s a queen. She’ll breed, you’ll die.” A wise proclamation, and just one example of how the “Alien” universe lives by the rule of the beast.
The Alien Series has long been haunted by the horrors of the animal kingdom
Patrick Brown/FX
Not only are xenomorphs based on actual insects that exist in the real world, like the digger wasp, but the entire “Alien” franchise is haunted by images of the life, sex, and death cycle. There is – per multiple franchise creators – an intentionally violent and non-consensual element to what happens to someone taken over by a xenomorph and used to incubate a new creature. Violation leads to death; death leads to rebirth as a new creature.
Even the new, unnamed creatures that have been presented over the first couple of episodes of “Alien: Earth” feel like examples of this insect-based cycle. They’re parasites, using other creatures as host bodies and propagating their menace by breeding through other organisms. It’s kill or be killed, and human beings — and even cyborgs and other semi-human organisms — definitely aren’t on top of the food chain in this reality. Survival of the fittest, indeed.
