Ask A Genius 1498: Noah Hawley’s “Alien” Series Brings Fresh Horror and Dread
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/20
Rick Rosner reviews Noah Hawley’s The New Alien Earth, calling it the most competent entry in the franchise since the first two classics. Set in 2120, Earth is ruled by megacorporations, including one led by Boy Cavalier, a shoeless boy genius who creates “Lost Boys”—children’s minds in synthetic adult bodies. As they battle new alien forms, including a turbo leech and a tentacled eyeball parasite, Hawley balances horror with restraint, often showing aftermath rather than gratuitous gore. Rosner praises Hawley’s inventive storytelling, comparing it to his reinvention of Fargo, and highlighting Timothy Olyphant’s role as a synthetic voice of reason.
Rick Rosner: You have seen The New Alien Earth—the Noah Hawley TV series.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Nope.
Rosner: And it is very competently done—the first two Alien movies—1979 and 1986. I do not know who did the first one, but the second one was James Cameron. Super competent guy. Not great with dialogue, but everything else he does is rock-solid.
Then there were, what, five or six or seven more? One by David Fincher—it had some fascinating ideas, but overall it was mostly a bummer. I feel like the TV show is the first thing in a long time to be smart about stuff. I am not stupid. I am schmott. Like in The Godfather, John Cazale as Fredo, always trying to prove himself to Michael. “I am not stupid, Mike!” I do not know if he says “schmuck,” but that is what I think of.
Moreover, I like the new Superman, which I have not seen yet. However, there has been some bummer Superman stuff. I trust James Gunn to do a competent job.
Anyway, this is episode three of eight in this season of Alien. In the first two episodes, a spaceship crashes into a skyscraper in an Asian city. Earth, at this point, is owned and run by five megacorporations. The year is 2120.
Now, the crash physics were bullshit. The ship would have had to come in a lot faster than it did. Moreover, if it had, it would have been destroyed. Instead, it comes down largely intact.
Jacobsen: That bothered you?
Rosner: Nah. You must give a little leeway. However, still—it would have required some anti-gravity tech, because the ship has no wings. By physics alone, it should have just plummeted, but instead it glides in. So, yeah, you give them that.
Anyway, the ship crashes into the skyscraper owned by the Prodigy Corporation. That company is run by a boy genius named Boy Cavalier. He is arrogant, a super-genius, and never wears shoes.
At the same time, he has developed the first synthetic beings with human consciousness transferred into them. Everything before this had been cyborgs—humans with replacement parts—or synthetics, entirely artificial beings. This is new.
Six people are the first to have their minds transferred. All of them were dying kids—because it turns out only a child’s mind is flexible enough. Adults cannot handle the transfer. These kids wake up in adult synthetic bodies—bodies with immense strength and speed.
Boy Cavalier decides the perfect first test is sending these “Lost Boys”—yes, Peter Pan reference—into the wrecked spaceship. Inside, they face the classic Alien we all know, plus four new alien types, each with different nasty traits.
By now, we are at episode three. Most of the people inside the skyscraper/spaceship wreck have made it out alive.
Moreover, now, at the beginning of episode three, they have stupidly brought all the specimens back to Boy Cavalier’s lab—his Bond-villain-style island. And, you know, of course, shit is going to get loose and mayhem is going to follow in ways we have not seen before—because this is a competent production.
Timothy Olyphant—do you know him? He is a snarky, casually arrogant-looking actor. He played a prick well in Justified. He is good at that. Here, he is bleached his hair white, and he plays a synth—an artificial being—who is the voice of reason. He is the one who says, “You are screwing up. If you do this, there will be consequences.” He is also the minder of the Lost Boys.
So anyway, we have got five and a half more hours of this season, and a lot is going to happen.
Rosner: What about the new types of aliens?
Jacobsen: Right. Well, there is one that’s a turbo leech. It drops from the ceiling on a strand of mucus. It latches onto your neck or some other juicy spot with a blood vessel, drains all your blood in about forty seconds, and goes from being the size of a pen to almost the size of a volleyball. Leaves you deflated, mummy-like.
Then there is the eyeball with tentacles. Just an eyeball with, like, sixteen to twenty tentacles. It tries to latch onto your face, poke out your eye, and replace it with itself. We saw it do that to a cat—and the cat did not survive.
There are also some variations on the classic facehugger-style grabbers. Moreover, something else—we do not fully understand what we have seen yet. For instance, there is this dangling watermelon-looking thing, with a little chute at the bottom and tentacles. It is going to open up and unleash hell when conditions are right. We will get to see it in action, and people are going to die. It is fun.
Jacobsen: What did you think was the most creative aspect of the new extraterrestrials?
Rosner: Honestly, the most brilliant move was Noah Hawley’s overall approach. He said he wants the show to recapture the same feelings of surprise, revulsion, and dread people felt watching the original Alien. Back then, part of the horror came from the shocking life cycle stages of the creature—each step was disgusting and terrifying.
Hawley does not waste time rehashing that. He assumes we already know it. Instead, while the classic Alien is still there—still formidable—he changes how we see it. For example, in one scene, it kills four people in about ten seconds. In another, it takes down maybe eight or ten in just as much time. However, the show does not linger on the kills. They happen in the background, off-camera, while the main action is elsewhere. Only after it is over does the camera shift back to reveal the carnage—the dismembered bodies everywhere.
That, I thought, was the smartest fucking thing. It is terrifying without being gratuitous.
He knows we have seen that shit before. We have seen it for forty-five years. Moreover, he is giving you a little nudge, like, “Yeah, we are not recycling old shit. Keep watching—we are going to show you new shit.”
So, for example, there is a scene where, after the Alien’s rampage, there is this decadent party—people dressed like the court of Louis XVI at Versailles. The Alien gets loose among them. They do not linger on the massacre itself, but they do show the aftermath: everyone is dead except one guy, cut in half, dragging himself and his entrails across the floor. So yeah, you get a little gore, but mostly the point is: we are not wasting your time on tired bullshit. You have got to appreciate that.
Moreover, this is Hawley’s thing. Look what he did with Fargo. He took the Coen brothers’ movie and spun it into five seasons, each a different story, but all with that same deadpan mix of meanness, humour, and violence. The Fargo world is full of criminals—some competent, some bumbling, some terrifying—set against ordinary, competent, fundamentally decent people who eventually confront them. Sometimes the good survive, sometimes they do not, but the tone always carries through.
Moreover, Hawley distilled the essence of the movie into a formula without repeating himself. He even played with setting—most of the series does not even take place in North Dakota, despite the name, but in other northern states like Minnesota. Each season tells a fresh story, with a plot that’s tricky enough you do not feel like you are just watching a remix. Like the last one—with Chris Rock as a 1960s crime boss. Not the casting you would expect, but it worked.
So he is a competent guy, no question. Moreover, he thinks ahead. He writes novels, too. Honestly, it frustrates me—guys like him get shit made, they get it done. Meanwhile, I get up, yell on Pod TV for an hour, then go back to bed. Maybe later I will talk Carol into giving me a hand job, then I will nap again. I have been sleeping a lot lately—I do not know if I am still shaking off COVID, or if I am just the laziest bastard alive.
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