By If you’ve watched any Alien film, you’ll be acutely aware that human existence (or synthetics, for that matter) holds little significance for the dubious enterprise Weyland-Yutani. However, one enigma that has consistently kept fans speculating is just how much the firm’s executives truly understood about the Xenomorph danger before dispatching Ripley and the crew aboard the Nostromo to LV-426.
Some firmly believe they were just as uninformed as the team (and that Special Order 937 was a standard protocol for all missions), others argue they were aware that something lurked out there, but they underestimated the peril it posed. Meanwhile, some – largely due to the last-minute choice to send Ian Holm’s dubious android Ash – assert with certainty that they were fully cognizant of what Sigourney Weaver and her companions were stepping into when they responded to that “distress” signal.
Now, Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley has intimated that the forthcoming TV spin-off may ultimately clarify matters one way or another…
“I am not yet clear, regarding the series from start to finish, on how much time will elapse or where we will ultimately find ourselves,” he recently detailed to Vanity Fair. “However, I do know that at a certain juncture, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation will redirect the Nostromo to that planet. We have the chance to potentially observe what was occurring on the other end of that communication.”
Though he does not elaborate further, it appears likely that Hawley is referring to Ash’s covert communications with Weyland-Yutani following the Nostromo’s receipt of the message from the alien-laden derelict craft in the 1979 movie.
Produced by franchise originator Ridley Scott, Alien: Earth unfolds in 2120 – Alien is set two years thereafter – and focuses on Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a synthetic possessing the physique of an adult yet the mentality of a child, who volunteers to recover valuable (and based on the official trailer, extremely lethal) cargo from the downed USCSS Maginot in the enigmatic city of Prodigy.
Timothy Olyphant stars as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic mentor and guide,