Alien: Earth Just Dropped A Horrific Teaser That Rewrites Franchise Canon
What do the facehuggers look like before they hug your face?
If you’re hoping for squelching, disgusting xenomorph action in the upcoming series Alien: Earth, you’re in luck. Not only is it a prequel to the original movie, but it's expanding the basic canon of what we know about the xenomorphs, and when they first started using human bodies as hosts.
In a new trailer called “Gestation,” we get the inside view of how the xenomorph grows into a facehugger, its first stage after it emerges from its egg. No previous version of Alien has shown this process in such detail, and while the various images of cells dividing and reforming feel very much like the show’s possible opening credits, we’re also seeing how the series is visualizing its defining biological process.
Check out the teaser below. We can’t technically classify it as NSFW, but there is something gross and scary about it, which is saying something given the franchise’s history.
While the beginning of the video shows a more theoretical x-ray view of a facehugger, by the end, we see it flapping around the airlock of a spaceship. In the context of Alien: Earth, this ship is the USCSS Maginot, which will crash on Earth at some point early in the series.
The new trailer confirms this, as it shows the name of the ship on the computer screen of what appears to be an all-controlling AI known as Mother. The lab computer also says this creature is “full term,” and that its DNA is “unknown.”
This is a relevant detail for Alien nitpickers. In the original film, Mother, Ash (Ian Holm), and the Weyland-Yutani corporation were already aware of the xenomorphs. David (Michael Fassbender) went rogue in the prequel films, so he presumably never shared his knowledge of the xenomorphs. Alien: Earth, then, will show us the moment Weyland-Yutani became aware of them.
Alien: Earth may be sidestepping Prometheus’ complex canon, but it does seem to be answering other questions about the facehuggers’ history. Hopefully, no other friendly alien lifeforms will be offended.
