FX’s show Alien: Earth will premiere on August 12, 2025, and early reviews from critics are already hinting at an exciting series to come. Ahead of its release next week, Alien: Earth has already received an impressive RT score of 90%, putting it in line with some of the franchise’s best entries.
The new series brings the franchise down to Earth, and, excitingly, Alien: Earth will introduce new species, meaning the show’s characters will have more than the deadly xenomorphs to battle. Likewise, Alien: Earth‘s trailer has teased that it will capture the essence of the original film. Luckily, reviews highlight that the series lives up to the iconic franchise’s name.
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The Richly Written And Well-Acted Characters Are Easy To Invest In
Alien: Earth Includes Some Great Performances
The Alien franchise has always had some great, complex characters, and it seems that Alien: Earth is continuing that trend in a unique way. While Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley will likely always be the defining Alien franchise character, critics have praised Alien: Earth‘s Sydney Chandler and her character, Wendy.
The Alien franchise has long explored the bounds of humanity through its synthetic characters, and Alien: Earth takes that to an extreme. Wendy is a human consciousness inside a synthetic body, while Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsch is a synthetic. Like previous installments, this forces audiences to keep guessing where their loyalties truly lie.
Collider‘s review of the series outlines this perfectly, arguing that “Chandler’s Wendy is particularly exciting as she tries to figure out her new body and what she’s capable of.” Similarly, the reviewer praised Olyphant for being “restrained and in control throughout,” while noting just how impressive the entire cast is.
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Alien: Earth Strikes A Great Balance
None Of The Alien Franchise’s Key Features Are Ignored
Developing a new show that fits into a franchise with such an extensive history is not an easy feat. Noah Hawley could have easily overdone the character development, losing the action and horror elements as a result, or played too much into the existing lore without developing enough original material. Luckily, that is not the case for Alien: Earth.
In a sense, every TV show or film is a balancing act. Creators have to determine how to keep audiences engaged with the plot and pacing, create compelling characters without giving away too much too soon, and, in the case of the Alien franchise, balance the tension of the aliens’ existence with the horror of actually seeing them onscreen.
Numerous reviews for Alien: Earth expound that Noah Hawley manages to do just this. In fact, THR called the series “a heady, sprawling, occasionally unwieldy but eventually thrilling epic about personhood, hubris and, of course, the primal pleasure of watching people get absolutely rocked by space monsters,” making it everything an Alien fan could want.
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Noah Hawley’s Vision For The Series Stands Out
Hawley’s Work Feels Like A Love Letter To Alien
Noah Hawley, who is perhaps best known for adapting the 1996 film Fargo into a TV series of the same name, has once again proven that he is adept at putting his own spin on a beloved film. Hawley has previously made it clear that making the series feel authentic to the spirit of the original Alien was the most important part of Alien: Earth.
This goal has certainly come through in critics’ reviews of the upcoming series, with Collider noting that Hawley “beautifully melds all the different forms of the Alien franchise into one cohesive narrative.” As a result, Alien: Earth feels like a true fan’s love letter to the best aspects of the Alien franchise.
Reviewers also note that the world that Alien: Earth creates feels tonally and stylistically most similar to the first two installments in the Alien series. Going back to the strongest entries gives Alien: Earth a solid starting point, yet Hawley’s series is still distinctive and fresh.
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Alien: Earth Respects The Franchise’s History
The Show Feels Like A Natural Continuation Of The Beloved Series
Perhaps the most frequently repeated praise for Alien: Earth is how well it fits into the existing canon of the franchise. The series knows that its viewers are likely fans who have a sense of what an Alien series should look like, as well as understanding the basics of the Alien franchise’s timeline and key players.
To this point, Movieweb‘s review highlights that “Alien: Earth gets the little details right, using them as ways to remind the viewer of the world they’re in,” without going into a dull recap of every aspect of the universe’s lore. In other words, Alien: Earth treats its audiences intelligently, and the show is better off for it.
Likewise, Collider argues that Hawley “tapped into every facet of what has made Alien a tremendous and always surprising series of films.” The essential elements of Alien are all present in Alien: Earth, and the series does not try to retcon big pieces of existing lore; instead, it molds itself around what came before.
Across the Alien franchise’s various installments, different directors have attempted to institute their own elements into the existing universe, for better or worse. It is impossible to create a good addition without saying anything new at all, so this is necessary, but Hawley has clearly played within the established bounds of the universe more successfully than some of his predecessors.
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The Series Format Is Well Suited To Explore Concepts More Deeply
Alien: Earth Is Thematically Rich
Given how well Alien has done as a movie franchise, it is understandable that critics and audiences would be skeptical of how a TV adaptation might fare. However, Alien: Earth has proved that the franchise’s themes can be explored just as well in a lengthened series format.
Ross Bonaime of Collider argues that, unlike the franchise’s films, which “have largely centered around a group attempting to survive the attack of a xenomorph…Alien: Earth has the opportunity to take these larger details of its futuristic world and make them the focal point.” This makes the show’s universe and themes far more expansive.
The film series has always grappled with topics like technological advancement, corporate greed, and even what makes someone human. The extended runtime of a TV series quite simply gives Alien: Earth much more room to explore those themes, though.
Especially because many of the show’s characters are synthetics or hybrids, ideas of humanity and progress are explored very deeply. This is equally true of Alien‘s exploration of corporate greed as the series sets up five main companies that control the Earth and vie for limitless power through any means necessary.
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Alien: Earth Expands The Alien Canon
The Show Brings Something New To The Franchise
In addition to respecting the franchise’s history and long-built-up lore, Alien: Earth is also being praised by critics for creating something new within the universe. Not only does the show feel faithful to the early movies in its appearance, but it also expands upon the world that those original films take place in without changing things.
Alien: Earth is set two years before the 1979 original movie takes place, but crucially, because it is set on Earth, audiences are treated to an entirely new perspective on the world that Ripley and her crew came from. On this, CBR notes that “Alien: Earth easily divulges the political status of the world, without overloading the audience with exposition.”
Their review argues that, in contrast to many of the previous Alien movies, which don’t quite have a ton of worldbuilding, Alien: Earth takes the time necessary to show audiences the state of the world and where the characters fall within it. The franchise’s lore can be confusing, but Alien: Earth does a great job of keeping things clear and interesting.
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The Show’s Alien Creatures Are Truly Impressive
The New Alien Species Add Something Unexpected
Undeniably, Alien and its sequels are best known for their killer titular creatures. Xenomorphs are a recognizable feature of the franchise, and an Alien movie wouldn’t be an Alien movie without them. Naturally, Alien: Earth includes them as well, but excitingly, the show also introduces new creatures.
The series involves a mission to recover the contents of a crashed spaceship, and Alien: Earth‘s trailer has already revealed several new, deadly creatures are among this wreckage. Though introducing new creatures in a franchise with such an iconic enemy was a bit of a risk, reviews show that it paid off.
CBR‘s review states that fans of the previous movies will enjoy “watching various terrible species of creatures bring havoc to the humans and synthetics alike,” and that the new species sets up the future of the franchise. Luckily, though, for fans of the series’ classic monster, Alien: Earth‘s xenomorph is still the perfect killer alien.