Spoilers for Episode 6 of Alien: Earth to follow.

With only a few episodes remaining in Alien: Earth‘s first season, the Noah Hawley series returns home to Neverland after last week’s bottle episode in space. If last week acted as Hawley’s pitch to helm a theatrical Alien film, “The Fly” confirms that he knows a thing or two about how to pace a season-long arc.

Hawley co-writes (along with supervising producer and first-time series writer Lisa Long) while Ugla Hauksdóttir once again directs. But where “Observation” felt like all of the characters had been put under a microscope, “The Fly” feels like all of the experiments are starting to fall apart or splinter into unexpected directions.

Some talking points:

• Wendy’s (Sydney Chandler) connection to the now fully grown Xenomorph continues, though her trust in parental figures like Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) wanes after the hybrid discovers that Nibs (Lily Newmark) has had her memories manipulated.
• Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) gains the upper hand over Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) in a significant face-to-face arbitration meeting, proving to both the audience and his rival why Prodigy has become one of the big 5.
• Morrow (Babou Ceesay) has a flirty/aggressive conversation with Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) when the pair take an elevator ride together.
• After confirming that he’s the moral center of the show, Arthur (David Rysdahl) is naturally lured into Slightly’s(Adarsh Gourav) trap and becomes impregnated by a facehugger.
• Finally, in a shocking development, Tootles (Kit Young) is locked into a specimen cage after The Eye distracts him and becomes the first Hybrid to die when mechanical-consuming flies eat his face.

There’s a lot of pay-off in this episode, particularly with long gestating (heh) storylines such as the rivalry between Morrow and Kirsh, Slightly being manipulated by an “adult” to infect someone, and the Hybrids discovering that the adults on the island are not looking out for their best interests.

Trace and I spent a lot of time in our full-length Patreon episode debating whether Tootles is actually dead (or can his consciousness/data be uploaded into another body?), if Kirsh is plotting against Boy Kavalier, and when someone will notice Arthur’s absence since he was just fired by Atom (Adrian Edmondson) and his body has been dragged into the vents.

Also: how great is the personification of The Eye? Trace and I didn’t think we could love this creature more after the events of the last few episodes…and yet!

Listen to more of the discussion below on the Horror Queers Patreon:

Coming Up Next: It’s time for the penultimate episode, 1.07, “Emergence.”

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