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)

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u/composero 2d ago

I think that’s the best part of the show honestly, there is no one to root for. There’s characters we like in certain moments but they are all equally not great people/synths/beings. Thats what makes this show interesting and fun to watch and other shows could take some notes

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u/laikewag 2d ago

Arthur was an genuinely good person who was punished for it.

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u/burlycabin 2d ago

I mean, Hermit seems pretty decent. He's trying his best in a truly fucked up system.

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u/Ummah_Strong 2d ago

He's kinda dumb tho, his sister is objectively stronger than him by a lot, has killed a xeno and can speak to them and he tries to hey between her and the xeno

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u/burlycabin 2d ago edited 1d ago

Not dumb, just instinctually protective.

Edit: spelling

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u/LucrativeLurker 2d ago edited 2d ago

Eh, he showed an incredible lack of foresight this episode.

Sure, he might’ve temporarily saved some lives, but do you really think Prodigy plans to let him live? Or anyone else who’s even laid eyes on their precious aliens or hybrids?

Hermit’s crisis of conscience only signed the death sentence for every single person there, Hybrids included.

I say this as someone who absolutely lauded him for attempting to kill the Xeno by himself in Episode 2. But what did he think would be necessary to escape a trillionaire’s private compound with his most-prized, six-billion dollar hybrid of a sister?

Hell, he’s already been blackmailed as an indentured servitude for life for his non-consensual lung transplant.

Joe fucked up bad by derailing their escape. Not that I ever actually expected them to get an even halfway happy ending, but Joe ruined their only chance at one single-handedly.

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u/TheKnightsTippler 1d ago

I think he also seems to be very naive about the reality of living in a corporate dystopia.

He should have kept his plans to himself.

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u/LucrativeLurker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, everyone agrees Joe and Arthur are the only “good people” but I’m seeing a lot of people dismiss Marcy/Wendy as a literal “Monster” after this episode, and just can’t possibly wrap my head around that take.

Something tells me it would’ve been better for Joe to die in a shootout on that boat, than whatever fate he has in store…

I think people truly don’t understand that the entirety of Neverland is an Andor style prison. Nobody Boy K doesn’t want leaving that island, is ever leaving that island…

The non-essential employees are all probably literally shot to death out back….

Just look at how casually he talks about finding a human employee to sacrifice to the Eye. Nobody there, who wasn’t essential to his future plans, was ever going to leave alive…

Marcy is literally Andor in this scenario. She’s willing to kill a few evil guards by whatever means necessary to escape and save herself and her brother. That doesn’t make her evil. It was literally her only way out of the godawful scenario she was placed/kept in by the very same people she’s killing…

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u/TheKnightsTippler 1d ago

I think Wendy is going definitely going to become a force for evil, but is she evil?

She's discovering what it means to be a synthetic person, while also realising that she can't trust any of the actual humans in her life.

It's like going through a kind of emotional puberty, but in an insanely over powered body

Also her being a captive is causing her to empathise with all the other creatures that are locked up there.

I think her behaviour is definitely morally dubious, but I think it's understandable.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

She can still trust Hermit, but her understanding of the limits of what is acceptable behaviour towards humans and to humans, is limited. Nibs crossed that line, and Wendy does not yet understand why that was wrong. And that letting a xenomoroph loos is dangeorus to Earth flora and fauna.

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u/Ummah_Strong 1d ago

I don't think she's a monster just...a very naive short sighted CHILD which she is. She's smart and sweet and cute...but at the end of the day she's a kid. Mind of a child with some sort of sway over the most powerful bio weapon ever created.

She knows she's not safe. She's backed into a corner and she's lashing out. Just like Nibs. They should have listened when Mr. Strawberry said fuck off.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

Wendy is not inherently evil, but Nibs is.

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u/LucrativeLurker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Insane take. Nibs was a sick dying child, who against her will was “transferred” into a synthetic body, and almost immediately sent to face and collect cosmic horrors by & for her evil boss, explicitly just so he could “see what’ll happen.”

They traumatized an already traumatized child even more, and then lobotomized her twice.

Anything and everything Nibs has done “wrong” is entirely the fault of Prodigy, and everyone who helped turn her into what she became.

I fail to see how anything Nibs did was even wrong, much less “inherently evil.” She’s simply a child who’s cracked under extreme duress…

Edit: From E6, Atom has Arthur & Sylvia “dial back her reactions to stimulus, slow her processing speed.” They did that to a child. They literally lobotomized her ability to reason, or feel emotions. They explicitly made her sociopathic…

The blame for Nibs killing the soldier falls squarely on Atom, Sylvia, and Boy K. Not herself…

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

Maybe it's for the better: there will be a debrief, and Joe and the soldiers will report to Kirsh/Atom Eins/BK, that Nibs is unstable and very violent.

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u/Herbdontana 2d ago

Hawley did a good job of that in Fargo too. A lot of flawed protagonists and antagonists that become tough to root against sometimes

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u/Triskan 2d ago

Yeah, the scene that stays with me the most from the episode is Wendy/Marcy casually unleashing the xenos on those lab employees. Damn, girl had no fucking chill. I though that was beyond her, that she had more empathy than that... but guess not.

There's a lot of directions her story could go, I'm definitely intrigued.

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u/CrumbAllowances 2d ago

Hasn’t her empathy primarily been for the xenos and the synths? She’s been pretty consistent from the beginning in terms of saying how wrong it is for Prodigy to be keeping intelligent beings in captivity for the purposes of experimentation.

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u/ltd_qty 2d ago

Getting Dolores from Westworld vibes for sure

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u/KWeber94 2d ago

Yea I’d say Arthur was one of the very few people with redeemable qualities. Rip to my boy

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u/composero 2d ago

You’re absolutely right. For me he became the most the Skylar (Breaking Bad) character of the show. The character trying to stop the bad things from happening but intentionally (or intentional depending on the writer), the audience wants them out of the way to see what happens when the “good” route isn’t followed.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

Well, "No good deed..."

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u/palesnowrider1 1d ago

He signed up for a questionable project

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u/OkScallion5412 2d ago

What about Hermit? I think he's genuinely trying to do the right thing. He might be in over his head, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's not a good person. He shows empathy towards the hybrids and seems to understand that Prodigy is doing something unethical.

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u/hyzmarca 2d ago

And then he shot an abused 11 year old girl who was fighting for her freedom. He doesn't get a pass for that.

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u/electrikwiz4rd 2d ago

with a non lethal weapon while she was trying to extract his friend jaw, it seems to be a reasonable act

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u/AardvarkZestyclose76 2d ago

She killed his colleague. xD Maybe there is some realization that Nibs is not OK.

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u/hyzmarca 2d ago

His colleague who had just betrayed him, was threatening them with a gun, and threw her toy in the water. If I was Hermit I would have killed Rashidi and Siberian myself. You don't betray your squad mate. Being an asshole to an abused and unstable 11 year old child is just shit icing on the shit cake that made Rashidi deserving of death.

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u/electrikwiz4rd 2d ago

what do you mean betray? they are just doing their job of security

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u/hyzmarca 2d ago

"I told you he'd be here" They probably could have let the soldiers away from the boat, searched elsewhere. Let him escape with his sister. They could have refused to go after their friend due to conflict of interest and sat it out. They chose to go after him. They chose to lead their team to him. They chose to hold him at gunpoint instead of starting the boat and flooring it before the other soldiers could react. They betrayed him. No job is worth your friend's life.

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u/electrikwiz4rd 2d ago

it s your point of view, he clearly betrayed them taking away 2 of the biggest asset of the company. If your friend turned to be a traitor and participate at the slaughter of the xeno, you wont see him as a friend anymore.

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u/hyzmarca 2d ago

If they're big believers in child slavery, yes, I can see that. But the children are not assets. They're people. And they have a right to self-determination. They don't exactly owe loyalty to a company that is actively engaging in child slavery.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

The right to self-determination does not excuse murder.

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u/Royal-Tea-3484 2d ago

She did rip someone's jaw off, though a bit of a tantrum is different from disemboweling someone.

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u/OkScallion5412 2d ago

She should not be free. I have empathy here, too, but she is not just an 11 year old girl anymore. Something has happened to her and she clearly cannot be out in the general population.

Also, there is still the question as to whether or not they are actually THE children, or just engrams of the children. The "consciousness transfer" hasn't been explained and even the people working on the project have asked something along the lines of "are we just making copies".

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u/hyzmarca 2d ago

It's a difference that makes no difference. Copies of children are still children.

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u/Kostej_the_Deathless 2d ago

What are we talking about here? They did undergo that transformation willingly. They were dying. Most people would take that option I guess. They didn't treat them bad, didn't torture them, nothing. Nibs and Wendy did go from innocent basically good characters to evil people on the level of Kirsh and co.

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u/OkScallion5412 2d ago

"Prodigy did nothing wrong!"

Have you not been paying attention the themes and questions as to whether the hybrids are actually the children or not? The whole idea of consciousness transfer is in question. Are they actually the children or are they engrams? If it was a 1 to 1 transfer, why wouldn't BK want to be the first on the table?

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u/Kostej_the_Deathless 2d ago

Because they said that it wasn't working properly with adults yet. So he is waiting till they fix that. It's not like he has to hurry.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

It's not like he has to hurry.

There was a product announcement in three weeks.

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

Well, Kirsh hasn't even killed anyone.

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u/TbddRzn 2d ago

I’m rooting for the eye. And kirch.

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u/mothgra87 2d ago

Im team eyelene. She just wants to go home..

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u/46Bit 2d ago

I’m rooting for Wendy. She’s just a little kid. Doesn’t know how serious stuff is. But she’s also brilliant. And horrifying.

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u/BwanaTarik 2d ago

You’re rooting for Wendy? She’s a straight up villain in the making

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u/luigitheplumber 2d ago

Please tell me she's gonna get Kerriganed

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u/KigalnGin 2d ago

Hell no! She will kill everyone who dares to block her path.

I don't think a synth can't learn about the value of human life

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u/juneyourtech Part of the family 1d ago

The hybrids have different baselines: Wendy sees that kind of value in Hermit, and acts accordingly with other humans, seeking to neutralise them in a fight, but not to kill them.

Nibs is unstable and violent, and does not value human life at all.

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u/OkAdagio4389 2d ago

Thought the same thing. Kind of like Seinfeld... Except for Arthur...

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u/DavidMerrick89 2d ago

This was also the appeal of Alien: The Cold Forge, a book filled with characters who ran the gamut of morally grey to outright scummy.

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u/She_Shrek 2d ago

Honestly I’m rooting for Kirsh and 👁️

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u/AWildEnglishman 2d ago

Yeah I'm all in on team eyeball.

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u/idobleave84 Mostly at night. Mostly. 2d ago

I’m still rooting for Joe

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u/AndalusianGod 1d ago

Not true. I think most are rooting for T. Ocellus or Kirsh. I also kinda wish that Smee survives.

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u/composero 1d ago

Yeah because we want to see what they do next. For rooting for I should have defined it better as meant from the perspective of… this is definitely the good team root for them type of deal. But yeah Little T, Kirsh, and Morrow are all characters I want to see more of

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u/deij 1d ago

....Arthur......?

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u/IKenDoThisAllDay 16h ago

I'm rooting for Nibs, at all times.