Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Alien: Earth season 1, episodes 1 & 2.Disney, through FX, has changed the entireAlienfranchise in the first two episodes ofAlien: Earth. From the start,Alien: Earthwas a big change for theAlienfranchise. AftersevenAlienmovies,Earthis the first time the franchise is tackling a serialized format. It’s also the first time thatAlienhas gone to Earth since a brief moment at the end ofAlien: Resurrection.
Even though it’s groundbreaking by default,Alien: Earthstill marks a big shift inAlienlore. Even afterAlien: Earthepisode 2, the show has already rewritten, ignored, or outright contradicted previousAlienmovies. Here’s every wayAlienlore has changed after just two episodes ofAlien: Earth.
FX’s Alien: Earth Ignores Prometheus And Rewrites Canon
Alien: Earthdoesn’t outright rewrite the events ofPrometheusandAlien: Covenant, but it certainly muddies the water surrounding them.Earthbasically ignores bothPrometheusandCovenant. UnlikeAlien: Romulus, there’s no reference toPrometheus' black goo, Peter Weyland’s journey to meet the Engineers, or David’s experimentation with Xenomorphs.
2089/2093
2104
2120
2122
2142
2179
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Alien Resurrection (1997)
2379
The USCSSMaginot, which crash-lands and serves as the foundation ofEarth’s plot, was sent 65 years prior to 2120. That means it found Xenomorph specimens in approximately 2088, well before David began his experiments.The fact that theMaginotfound Xenomorphs about five years before David even began his experiments outright debunks the idea that David was their creator.
PrometheusandCovenantwere building to that moment, butEarthhas dashed any chance of it being realized. Theending ofAlien: Covenantsaw David take over the ship and heavily implied that he would continue experimenting on Xenomorphs, presumably until he created the classic black-skinned Xenomorphs.Alien: Earth, however, has made it clear that the Xenomorphs were around long before David.
Alien: Earth Also Contradicts The Alien Vs. Predator Movies
Much less surprisingly,Alien: Earthoutright contradicts the events of theAlien vs. Predatormovies. BothAVPmovies take place in 2004, well before the events ofAlien: Earth, yet there’s no reference to either the Xenomorphs or the Yautja coming to Earth prior to the show.Earthactually outright deniesAVPby changing the first time Xenomorphs landed on Earth.
Alien: Earthmuch more directly overwrites the events ofAlien vs. Predator, but it’s much less surprising.AVPhasn’t been considered a canon part of theAlienfranchise for over a decade, since Ridley Scott createdPrometheus. They’re now considered fun “what if” movies, rather than crucial pieces of knowledge to understandAlienas a franchise.
Earthbarely even retconned theAlien vs. Predatormovies because they weren’t part of canon in the first place. That would be like sayingThe Empire Strikes Backretconned theStar Wars Holiday Special, or that an official sequel retconned a fan fiction. Still,Alien: Earthmuch more directly rejects the events ofAVPthanPrometheusdid.
Alien: Earth’s First 2 Episodes Already Massively Change The Franchise
Prometheus,Covenant, andAlien vs. Predatorweren’t the only parts of theAlienfranchise that were affected byEarth, however.Alien: Earthhas already made some huge changes to smaller parts of theAlienfranchise after just two episodes. The biggest change was done to thehistory of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation inAlien.
For years, Weyland-Yutani was depicted as being so ubiquitous that it was referred to simply as “the Company.” Fans assumed it was the sole mega-corporation on Earth, with almost complete control of both the planet and the wider galaxy, including exploration and colonization efforts.Alien: Earth’s five corporations, however, have debunked that idea.
We now know thatfive different companies ruled different parts of the Earth. Weyland-Yutani still had a monopoly on the stars, but companies like Prodigy dominated the race for human immortality.Earthhas also introduced new alien lifeformsafter nearly half a century of assuming only the Xenomorphs and the Engineers were prowling the galaxy.
Alien: Earth’s hybrid syntheticsalso completely changed how we viewed androids in the franchise. The often-villainous synthetics (with a few notable exceptions) have gone from manmade sentient tools to efforts to achieve immortality. David was Peter Weyland’s first attempt at immortality, butAlien: Earthhas established that there was a much more widespread push than just that.
Earthalso included a slight change tohow the Xenomorphs see. Since the Xenomorphs have no visible eyes, previousAliencomics established that they “see” through their sense of smell, not unlike moles or bats.Alien: Earth, however, expanded upon that:Morrow established that Xenomorphs can sense fear, and he successfully escaped one by controlling his emotions.
Why It Makes Sense For Alien: Earth To Ignore Prometheus And AvP
All ofAlien: Earth’s changes toAliencanon (and non-canon) have one thing in common: they make sense.Earthmay have ignoredPrometheusandCovenant, but it would have been weird to reference them. The entire voyage of thePrometheus, for example, was kept secret by Peter Weyland, and the disappearance of theCovenantwas viewed as an unsolved mystery.Earthhad no natural way to bringPrometheusup.
There’s also still a way forPrometheusandCovenantto fit intoAliencanon.Alien: Earthmay have ignored the prequels simply because they had no bearing on its plot, and future stories could still revisitPrometheusandCovenant. We could find out at a later date that while David didn’t create the main Xenomorph species, he still fits into the largerAlienstory in some way.
RetconningAlien vs. Predatormakes even more sense. As previously mentioned,AVPisn’t canon and hasn’t been for over a decade. As such, there wasn’t a canon explanation for how Weyland-Yutani learned about the Xenomorphs.Alien: Earthfills that hole and explores the concept of Xenomorphs on Earth in a much more fitting way thanAVPever did.
The biggest reason making changes to theAlienfranchise made sense forEarth, however, is that it didn’t hold the show back.Earthdidn’t have to find a way to explainPrometheus' black goo simply by not featuring it. It also didn’t have to explain how the Yautja figures into the franchise by just ignoring it.Alien: Earthis allowed to tell its own story precisely because it ignoredPrometheusandAVP.
Prometheus
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Prometheus, released in 2012, is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott. It follows a team of explorers as they uncover clues about humanity’s origins, embarking on a perilous interstellar expedition where they confront formidable challenges to secure the future of mankind.
