This week's fourth episode of Alien: Earth delved into Wendy's (Sydney Chandler) mysterious connection to the Xenomorphs, while posing an intriguing question: Can the notoriously aggressive extraterrestrial species be controlled - or even tamed?
Spoilers follow.
In "Observation," Boy Kavalier encourages Wendy to vocalize the strange sounds she's been hearing in her head since she first got close to the aliens in episode 2. She does so, and the manipulative "Boy Genius" convinces the prototype hybrid to attempt to communicate with the baby creature that's currently gestating inside her brother Joe's surgically-removed lung.
At the end of the episode, the serpentine chestburster hatchling explodes from its glass case, and Wendy is able to use her new ability to calm the creature down and... pat it on the head!
Did the aliens somehow "choose" Wendy to speak through, or is her ability to communicate with the creatures simply down to her unique human/synthetic hybrid physiology and programming?
“Nothing is accidental to a kid, right? You know, everything feels meaningful,” showrunner Noah Hawley tells Decider.com. “There’s a moment in the fourth hour where she’s like, ‘They chose me.’ Right? Which is not true. Right? They didn’t choose her. She just can hear them because of whatever hardware or software issue that she has.”
A quirk in her programming or not, Wendy certainly seems to believe that she has some kind of higher calling, which could prove disastrous for those around her.
“The other thing with children is they don’t really assign… I mean, these are just animals to them, you know? So she’s looking at these creatures and she has empathy the same way that my daughter became a vegetarian when she was nine,” Hawley added. ”Well, these creatures didn’t ask to come here, and maybe they’re frightened. You know, she says to her brother, ‘This one, maybe this one could be good.’ Right? And it seems like... I don’t know, ‘your friend the shark,’ but you can understand her impulse to try."
We'll have to wait and see how this plot point progresses, but Wendy's pet Xeno is far from the only problem that awaits our protagonists, with an increasingly unstable and potentially dangerous Nibs convinced that she's pregnant, that creepy eye-alien biding its time in a sheep, and Slightly seemingly lining Joe up to be a facehugger host.
Have you been enjoying Alien: Earth so far?
“When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”
“In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named “Wendy” marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, “Wendy” and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”
Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille, and Moe Bar-El.
The show's supporting cast includes Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge, Andy Yu, Enzo Cilenti, Max Rinehart, Amir Boutrous, Victoria Masoma, Tom Moya, Michael Smiley, Jamie Bisping and Tanapol Chuksrida.