FX’s “Alien: Earth” delivers suspense, nostalgia, and bold new twists to the classic franchise, making it one of 2025’s must-watch TV shows.
FX’s latest sci-fi hit, Alien: Earth, is already being hailed as one of the best TV shows of 2025 — and for good reason. Created by Noah Hawley, the mastermind behind FX’s Fargo, the series drops viewers into a thrilling, creepy, and surprisingly thought-provoking story set in the legendary Alien universe.
The show kicks off in 2120, just two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien and about six decades before James Cameron’s Aliens. We meet the blue-collar crew of the USCSS Maginot, who work for Weyland-Yutani — the powerful corporation that fans will instantly recognize from the original films. The crew’s mission? A grueling 65-year deep-space expedition to capture dangerous alien species.
Hawley wastes no time in setting the tone. The ship’s common room feels like a direct nod to the dining hall where an alien famously burst from John Hurt’s chest in Alien, and the gritty, retro-futuristic set design perfectly channels the late ’70s sci-fi aesthetic. But the nostalgia is just the appetizer — the main course comes when the Maginot malfunctions, crash-landing on Earth in territory controlled by a rival megacorp called Prodigy.
That’s when the real trouble begins. The captured aliens escape, Prodigy scrambles to respond, and viewers are introduced to one of the most fascinating new ideas in the Alien franchise: hybrids. Prodigy’s young, barefoot, tech-genius trillionaire leader Boy Kavalier (played with unsettling charm by Samuel Blenkin) has pioneered a way to place human consciousness into superior synthetic bodies. The result is a new breed of beings — ageless, physically superior, but mentally still young — who are sent in to capture the escaped creatures.
Guiding them is Kirsh, a synthetic human brought chillingly to life by Timothy Olyphant. With spiky blonde hair, a calm voice, and an eerie disdain for humanity, Kirsh delivers one of the show’s most unsettling monologues:
“You used to be food… You built tools and used them to conquer nature. You told yourself you weren’t food anymore. But in the animal kingdom, there is always someone bigger or smaller, who would eat you alive if they had the chance.”
It’s a perfect distillation of the Alien franchise’s central theme — humanity’s arrogance in thinking it can control nature and technology without consequences.
Across eight action-packed episodes, Hawley expertly balances suspense, corporate intrigue, and philosophical questions. The Maginot crew’s fate, the hybrids’ moral dilemmas, and the lurking alien threat all intertwine, creating a story that feels fresh while staying true to what made Alien iconic.
And for longtime fans, the show offers plenty of Easter eggs while sparking intriguing new mysteries. If aliens and hybrids were on Earth before the events of the first Alien film, why doesn’t anyone in the original movies know about them? Hawley isn’t giving away answers just yet, but the setup leaves the door wide open for future seasons.
At its heart, Alien: Earth is more than just monsters in the dark. It’s about the dangers of corporate greed, the moral limits of science, and the ways humans — or hybrids — reveal their true selves when the universe throws its worst at them.
For sci-fi fans and casual viewers alike, this is a must-watch. It’s tense, visually stunning, and full of characters you’ll root for — or be terrified of. Just don’t watch it with the lights off.
