The seemingly inexhaustible supply of Alien-related projects continues with a TV prequel where xenomorphs come to Earth

A xenomorph alien from the Alien franchise opening its toothy mouth as it always does

(Image credit: Hulu)

Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, I distinctly remember three rumors spreading around at school:

Mikey from the Life cereal commercials died from eating Pop Rocks and Coke
In the next Friday the 13th movie, Freddy Kruger from the Elm Street movies would fight Jason
In the next Alien movie, the aliens would come to Earth

Mikey, thankfully, didn't burst from eating candy and soda simultaneously, but Gavin's third rumor is finally sort of happening: the aliens from Alien are coming to Earth, only it's a TV series and not a movie.

The show is coming to FX and Hulu this summer and is called Alien: Earth, which feels like a working title they eventually just decided to stick with. The cast includes Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, and Samuel Blenkin. Here's the teaser:

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We don't really see a whole lot—it's a teaser, after all—and most of it is from the alien's perspective so we can't really tell what form the xenomorph is taking. But I'm getting a real flying insect vibe, as it flits and bangs around the narrow corridors of a spaceship like a wasp that's gotten trapped in your car. As it bonks against the window and the perspective switches to an exterior camera we get a few blurry frames of what could be a giant wasp-like body—multiple legs and translucent wings? Or am I just imagining things because a wasp stung me in the face a few months ago?

Weirdly, the show is somehow a prequel to the original Alien film from 1979, which means the xenomorphs got to Earth before Ellen Ripley's first encounter with the acid-blooded creatures in space, though maybe Alien: Earth will provide a reason as to why Ripley's ship The Nostromo was sent to investigate the mysterious signal on LV-426 in the first place. Or has that already been answered in one of the other seemingly unending Alien-related properties? I've fallen way behind on the lore. I never even finished playing Alien: Isolation.

At least we know how the xenomorphs got to Earth, which is by infecting and crashing a spaceship, which I think is how they always get everywhere. Gotta hand it to 'em: they stick with what works.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.