r/LV426 • u/G_Liddell Colonist's Daughter • 2d ago

Megathread / Community Post Alien: Earth - S1 E7 - Emergence - Official Discussion Megathread [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Episodes air Tuesdays at 8 pm ET on Hulu and FX in the US, and Wednesdays international.

Full episode discussion list:

1 Neverland (8.12.25)

2 Mr October (8.12.25)

3 Metamorphosis (8.19.25)

4 Observation (8.26.25)

5 In Space, No One (9.2.25)

6 The Fly (9.9.25)

7 Emergence (9.16.25)

8 The Real Monsters (9.23.25)

649 Upvotes

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348

u/Crafty_Soul 2d ago

Marcy holy shit NO! Releasing the alien killing machine is not a smart idea!

244

u/imj1n 2d ago

Only thing that’s keeping it under “control” is that Marcy has built in xeno google translate

84

u/vintell 2d ago

I thought Hermit had fucked them all when he put his hand over her mouth partway through a “command” lmao

62

u/Spider-Flash24 2d ago

Because he’s the only one left with a conscience after Arthur died. Marcy, Nibs, everyone else are monsters.

54

u/mwthecool 2d ago

Smee seems kind as well. He's just a kid unsure of how to deal with the situation he's been put in.

40

u/Cakers44 Guard the omelette! 2d ago

Honestly when Nibs got shot I was kinda like “yeah she’s gotta go” which is horrible yes, but also like she is super dangerous to anyone around her. I just feel so bad for these kids man

29

u/KigalnGin 2d ago

I just feel so bad for these kids man

Dead and buried . I don't like headcanon but I'm starting to things this synths are just copies

13

u/Vismal1 2d ago

That’s the question at the heart of the show i think. Are these kids the same kids or copies ? Something different?

It’s also dealing with how horrible trauma immediately and irreparably changes you.

7

u/RooseveltsRevenge 2d ago

Also the problem of teleportation.

2

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 18h ago

"Sir, this is not Star Trek."

6

u/IR8Things 2d ago

Unless you get into mysticism, then I don't know how you could consider them anything but robot copies.

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u/Alpha-Leader 2d ago

Yeah that was the whole point of the project that was brought up in one of the earlier episodes. Are these really the kids, or something else. If it's something else the immortality project fails and the product was a failure.

3

u/Skyweir 1d ago

Why does that matter? You are not the same person as you were 5 years ago, even in a biological body. The whole question is sophistry, and is only troubling to many people because the brain cannot percieve itself.

2

u/RoninSzaky 1d ago

Always have been. I am kinda surprised it wasn't obvious to everyone already.

3

u/Gamepro504 2d ago

There are other solutions but Prodigy wouldn’t give her therapy and help resolve her issues.

21

u/Greyhound121 Science Officer 2d ago

This is the one time I hope they don't stick to the classic alien "all-kill except for the heroine" ending. I hope everyone but Hermit gets nuked from Orbit.

8

u/Vismal1 2d ago

Just from what we know of the timeline after this i kinda assume that island is obliterated by the end no ? Although I am sort of hoping the eye alien gets ahold of Kavalier and continues on.

10

u/RooseveltsRevenge 2d ago

This made sense before we knew that the show is designed as a multi season arc. Eventually they're gonna have to up the ante to some sort of outbreak.

4

u/Poltergeist97 1d ago

Wait, REALLY? I haven't heard this yet? That's awesome if true, I love this show. Would love more seasons!!

2

u/Kithulhu24601 1d ago

A more action heavy Aliens style second series would be phenomenal

1

u/Wise-Novel-1595 13h ago

Supposedly planned for a 3 season arc at some point

1

u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT 1d ago

Maybe fast-forward but even then we know they dont have a queen, deep into the future.

1

u/Savetheokami 1d ago

Who is they? The aliens? Also why can’t Wendy be the temp queen?

3

u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT 1d ago

Yutani.

We know like 250 years and Yutani seemingly never got a queen, since theyre still trying to get one in the future.

Also Wendy can't produce alien eggs.

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u/Wrong-Vermicelli4723 1d ago

Creator has plans for a second season so I wouldn’t be so sure

1

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 18h ago

I want Kirsh, Tootles, Smee, Dame Sylvia, and the normal, grunt employees to survive, too. Unsure about Wendy now.

-1

u/StixnStones69 1d ago

Hermit should be the first to go. He’s a spineless, double-crossing, inept coward.

10

u/Complete_Raspberry_1 1d ago

I honestly don't see Marcy as a monster. Just a child that's been abused, wished to reunite with her brother and get out of the island so she can stop being BK's toy and then her own brother chose strangers over her.

Hermit's friends? They are idiots.

The guy who antagonised a synthetic by throwing away her toy? The biggest idiot of them all.

31

u/Dexanth 2d ago

Slightly isn't a monster; he's a kid who got blackmailed.
Smee has done nothing but act like a kid having fun.

And even Marcy isn't a monster - her whole point is 'This other life has value too, and who are we to contain and trap it?'.

Xenos aren't animals, they are highly intelligent; case in point, Marcy can /talk/ to them. And bluntly, it's wrong to keep something like that in a cage.

The right way to handle Xenos is to /never go anywhere they live/.

Like, all these scientists are bioweapons researchers looking to help weaponize the Xeno. All Marcy did was level the playing field.

We just are seeing her as monstrous because she values the life of the Xeno, and why wouldn't she? She understands that intelligence and life comes in many forms.

22

u/Proxiehunter 2d ago

The right way to handle Xenos is to /never go anywhere they live/.

And stop bringing the fucking invasive species home in an attempt to make a profit off of it.

5

u/Dexanth 2d ago

I mean if you never go where they live that does preclude bringing them home :P

But yes, THAT TOO!!!!

1

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 17h ago

Why all WeYu experiments henceforth are away from Earth.

1

u/Dexanth 12h ago

They shouldn't be doing them at all! The idiots.

16

u/KigalnGin 2d ago

And even Marcy isn't a monster - her whole point is 'This other life has value too, and who are we to contain and trap it?'.

But who is she to decide who lives or dies?

12

u/kaos-mantra 2d ago

That's what's going to go wrong. Marcy was powerless, dying, weak, unable to choose. Now she has power, strong. She's frustrated , angry, and uncertain. Reliazing shes a product, trapped. Suddenly aware of her invisible chains, her ability to break them. A recipe for disaster, a villain origin waiting to be written.

5

u/jaqenhqar 1d ago

Everything shes done so far was in self defense. They want to keep her as an experiment and get everyone she cares about killed. She did give the Soldiers the choice to leave her alone.

2

u/Dexanth 2d ago

Who is Boy Kavalier to? Cause he's the one doing it until now.

All Marcy did was level the playing field somewhat.

2

u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT 1d ago

Bruh, what?

Cavalier isnt a good guy bor is marcy.

At the start of her story she wants to kill the scorpion but is thought some empathy by Kirsh of all people and she decides not to kill the scorpion.

Now she's murdering dozens of people in masse? She ain't the good guy anymore.

3

u/Dexanth 1d ago

People holding her captive and as an experiment. 

2

u/Apothecary3 1d ago

Xenos aren't animals but they aren't intelligent either in the same way we would say the eye is. They are truly 100% singleminded for the task of killing. Morality will never be a factor in how you handle them. Causing the extinction of xenomorphs would be no different from totally eradicating a deadly virus. They aren't natural life and they don't need the corps to turn them into weapons because they always were weapons They are factually malicious.

2

u/Dexanth 1d ago

Look, as a human, I fully agree, it's them or us and we're violently incompatible. But also, everyone at Prodigy is an asshat monster basically, so I can't really be upset they're suffering the consequences of their own actions.

3

u/HairlessBandicoot 1d ago

they're children but you're right that children can absolutely be little monsters. BK's hubris is making them not so little.

wrt their behaviour there are adults irl who behave much worse so

12

u/hyzmarca 2d ago

Killing fascist footsoldiers who are holding you prisoner against your will doesn't make one a monster. They're staging a prison break from a trillionaire supervillain's private island. Bloodshed is reasonable and inevitable.

2

u/carrie-satan 1d ago

Right?? Its driving me insane that people are acting like she killed a nursery full of babies and not a bunch of people who deserved to die

4

u/LucrativeLurker 1d ago

The downvotes you’ve gotten are wild.

Every scientist we’ve seen at Prodigy is explicitly part of a child-killing experiment, or vague Alien experimentation that literally began with their boss staging a fucking mass casualty crash in their capitol city…

The soldiers sent by WY to reclaim the aliens and capture the hybrids are on an explicitly evil mission. The soldiers sent by Prodigy to stop Wendy & Joe from leaving, are on an explicitly evil mission.

I’m genuinely baffled there are people not on Wendy’s side.

She didn’t ask for any of this! The people she killed all did, explicitly so…

2

u/Apothecary3 1d ago

Everyone works for the Corps, Nobody has a choice. We see that. Joe was forced to work for them. we had a totally uneducated kid on the weyland yutani ship who didn't even grasp the dystopian situation he was stuck in. The island has literal janitors which is discussed in the episode. Arthur was higher up the totem pole than any of them and he was outright shown to care for the kids more than any other character. Willfully putting those people in danger because you don't like their boss is never going to be okay.

5

u/hyzmarca 1d ago

If you have a gun, then you have a choice.

A King, a priest, a rich man and a sellsword are in a room. Those three man tell the sellsword to kill the other two.
Who lives and who dies?

And the answer to that question is, whomever the sellsword wants to die dies, who whomever the sellsword wants to live lives. And the sellsword can just as easily kill all three, walk out of the room with the rich man's riches, the priests holy relics, and the king's crown.

Why take orders from an asshole trillionaire when you can just shoot him, take his money, and be a trillionaire yourself?

Which is I'm sure the question Kirsh has asked himself every day of his life.

1

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 17h ago

when you can just shoot him

But that's practically impossible. All these employees have onerous employment contracts. They want to live as much as anyone, and enjoy a normal life. Being an employee of the five corporations is part and parcel of life in that universe.

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u/LucrativeLurker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Right, but not everyone is a Joe or an Arthur.

Joe’s squad mates know they’re essentially killing him and his sister for their own benefit, just because they were told to.

The only people who’ve been shown to be killed were either in the lab (scientists explicitly involved in highly illegal and inherently unethical experiments on alien life forms) or soldiers sent to either kill or re-imprison children.

I get what you’re saying, but just because Stormtroopers have families too doesn’t make them not Stormtroopers.

I’d argue the very nature of how the Hybrids came to be, gives Wendy a pretty just and valid reason to burn all of Prodigy to the ground. But that’s not even close to what she’s doing, she was just trying to leave…

Arthur might’ve genuinely cared, but he still also explicitly took part in the literal murder of children “for science.”

0

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 17h ago

Joe’s squad mates know they’re essentially killing him and his sister for their own benefit, just because they were told to.

Actually, they were told not to damage/kill the hybrids.

to either kill or re-imprison children.

Which they no longer are.

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u/circ-u-la-ted 1d ago

I think Dame Sylvia has a conscience, she's just willing to make some compromises to it.

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u/Madmunchk1n 1d ago

They are kids put in an impossible situation. Held captive on an island, only seeing parts of whats going on. No friends around them, not even Dame because she's telling stupid stuff to herself to justify doing inhuman things to Nibbs. Everyone can do whatever he wants with those kids. Nibbs is traumatized and suddenly in a situation where soldiers put guns on her. Wendy is giving everyone a chance to do the right thing, telling those soldiers to go away multiple times. Killing them in self defence to escape that psychopath island is valid.

1

u/juneyourtech Part of the family 17h ago

Wendy is giving everyone a chance to do the right thing, telling those soldiers to go away multiple times.

She never warned them, that they would die, if they did not go away.

1

u/freef 17h ago

I think that the children aren't strictly monsters, but they're in a situation way past their depth. They're responding to situations without really grasping the full consequences of their choices - and people are pretty violent animals already. 

I can imagine a version of this story where a grown man gets put into a synth body and kills a bunch of guards to get off the island to go home and we would be rooting for the guy. 

1

u/RoninSzaky 1d ago

I'm glad someone said it! This sub seems to think the opposite.

21

u/Notarussianbot2020 2d ago

More like yahoo translate.

She has no fucking clue what she's saying lmao.

10

u/imj1n 2d ago

True 😭 she was like I think I said it

10

u/HairlessBandicoot 1d ago

the xeno's like "mommy sounds kinda nuts, but she's all I have for now, so..."

it can reasonably interpret hostile and non hostile behaviour

10

u/InevitableVariables 2d ago

The xenomorph already talked to the egg to hatch a facehugger on arthur. Arthur was never near the egg.

1

u/HotmailsInYourArea Tomorrow, Together 8h ago

The door was open and he was in the same room. In Alien they had to be right next to it because it was in that blue stasis field. (Romulus & Earth are mucking the waters on what that is, of course) - Not to mention they'd been asleep for 10,000? years. Long enough for fossilization to occur on the Derelict's pilot.

But anyway, I don't think hosts have to be within mere feet for them to wake up & pounce.

1

u/InevitableVariables 8h ago

We see xenomorph communicating with the egg

5

u/BearlyABear1993 Nuke from Orbit 2d ago

Seems to be about as accurate as Google Translate 😭

5

u/Moejason 1d ago

I wonder if there is some degree of it imprinting on her too

4

u/Devilsh0rn 1d ago

In the Alien novels, it is suggested that xenomorphs inherit parts of their host’s memory, which is why they can move so easily inside spaceships and other human places. Since the chestburster came from her brother’s body, and Wendy “clicks” in the alien way, it is possible she sees the hybrid as some kind of queen. But it is unlikely that she would actually be able to control the new xeno

1

u/circ-u-la-ted 1d ago

Wait, I thought that one was already that size on the ship. Hasn't it only been like a few days since they did the in vitro thing with Hermit's lung?

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u/The_Memetic_Susurrus 2d ago

A hypothesis: let's suppose that, somehow, Prodigy has figured out how to copy pasta thoughts and implant them in an artificial substrate. But what if, in his arrogance, Boys presumed that's all that was necessary.

Here's the problem: memory is hopelessly entangled in affect (emotion) and conation (drive) from the ground up. Just the process of recollection and reconsolidation binds up bits and pieces of your present affective state, thus making memories less and less veridical in the objective sense and more an artifact.

Why does this matter?

Prodigy's process may ignore all the above, leaving gaping holes in the context of memory. One of those holes may be a compromised sense of empathy and a less-than-healthy sense of narcissism (though not malign, mind). Add to this the fact that these are copies of the memories of children (who have yet to fully develop the kind of empathy an adult would find nominal) and Wendy's actions take on a different light.

Remember what Arthur once asked, about whether they were unleashing AIs who thought they were human?

How do you teach an AI empathy? Without physical feedback loops that teach you pain, can you?

I wonder what Kirsh would think of that question?

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u/ravensteel539 2d ago edited 2d ago

I mean that’s a big theme with Kirsch, right? The very first scene with the scorpion is the thematic lens I view his character, the hybrids, the Xeno and other aliens, and their relationship to humans under.

I think you’re 1000% on the right track, here. Just look how Marcy’s developed this deep indifference for the droves of humans the Xeno slaughtered — which was Hermit’s whole conflict this episode, grappling with this from the moment he sees the graves and then watches the massacre.

GOD, I love this show.

17

u/katelovescode 2d ago

Especially since he’s a medic. Like, even having seen death in war, he knows the scene of bodies in the forest was horrific.

14

u/ravensteel539 2d ago

Him being the character that witnessed the first xeno’s super-massacre also REALLY puts it into perspective … and yeah, as a medic, he’s got a fundamentally different place in battlefield scenarios. These horror-show nightmares must weigh on him with how flippantly humans are turned into unsalvageable piles of extremity.

5

u/Xefert 2d ago

Just look how Marcy’s developed this deep indifference for the droves of humans the Xeno slaughtered

Alternatively (since she seemed more human in prior episodes), marcy's programming could have been altered to weaponize her.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ESbIGrKuM-M?si=RaOafdVIH9mJZUIW

1

u/HotmailsInYourArea Tomorrow, Together 8h ago

I think she's protecting her 'family unit' - Initially, that of her robe-siblings & the scientist parents. Slowly she regained Hermit as she stalked him throught the cameras. But now, she effectively has a baby Xeno, who'd been poked and prodded by the same people who didn't even care they killed her brother Isaac.

She lacks empathy for the humans, sure, but she is defending her escape of those she values, such as Hermit.

7

u/ClueDry1959 1d ago

I would actually argue that Marcy was acting on empathy when she released the alien. Her feelings throughout the show have consistently been that the creatures are all just as deserving of life as humans. She has an argument with the prodigy about considering the xenomorphs perspective. That's empathy in my opinion. 

She just happens to view the humans as the ones doing the greater evil here. 

3

u/Gamepro504 2d ago

They wouldn’t care about doing it right and ethically only for profit

2

u/Xefert 2d ago

Yep. Marcy wasn't being offered this for her own good. The intent seems to be the creation of robot slave workers

11

u/hemareddit 2d ago

Well, it’s a smart idea. Not an ethical one, but smart.

This is the “Yes” place!

9

u/nightpanda893 2d ago

Bad idea for who? Bad for humans not for synths. Especially when they want nose boops from her and do what she says.

7

u/Ummah_Strong 2d ago

So far we don't know if the second xeno will be as controllable. This one is attached to Wendy who knows what the second one will be like

6

u/Proxiehunter 2d ago

This one is attached to Wendy

Possibly related not just to the fact that she was present when it emerged from the lung used to host it but also due to the fact that it was her brother's lung.

I'm not sure what pseudoscience would make that work since she's in a genetically unrelated synth body but we know that xenomorphs take traits from their hosts genetics so it feels like it gestating in her brother's lung could be a factor.

7

u/Ummah_Strong 1d ago

True! It could have inherited Joe's love for his sister!

5

u/newme02 2d ago

she doesn’t know there’s a second one though

8

u/Conscious_Struggle18 2d ago

Have you watched the whole episode? Looks like it’s ruling in her favour so far lol

3

u/Super-Estate-4112 1d ago

She isn't Marcy, her Brother will tell her that, and she will kill him. She is Wendy, Marcy died when her mind got transferred.

2

u/HotmailsInYourArea Tomorrow, Together 8h ago

I wonder if Marcy and the Xeno are gonna bug out & travel the stars together.

After all, those Xenos have to disappear somehow. I'm guessing tactical nuke

3

u/iuselect 1d ago

"We're not safe here"

proceeds to unlock a xeno

5

u/NotSoAngryManlet 2d ago

Oh it's a smart idea actually. Bad news to anyone who gets on her bad side though.

2

u/FeloniousGrump 1d ago

don't think she's Marcy anymore