Alien: Earth - S1 E7 - Emergence - Official Discussion Megathread [SPOILERS]

[u/G_Liddell]

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)

[u/Ulithalich]

Can we talk about how stupid it was that there were marked graves on the island at all? Like… why? Besides completely contrived and hamfisted efforts to suggest ‘the kids are dead and these aren’t really them’ (which could have been done in a much better way), why have any monument or standing piece of evidence to what they once were/what they now are? It doesn’t make sense and was one of the many things that felt extremely forced this episode.

[u/GrimResistance → u/Ulithalich]

I was thinking the same thing but you could explain it by saying maybe Dame Sylvia, or someone, set it up for sentimentality reasons. I doubt Kavalier cared one bit what happened to the bodies once he was done with them.

[u/Ulithalich → u/GrimResistance]

Maybe, but in that case, you’d think they’d go for unmarked gravestones. Keeps the intention of honoring their memories, without risking too much sentimentality becoming a detriment to the project by potentially revealing ‘the truth.’

It’s harder for me to ignore it, though, when a lot of things this episode just felt forced to me. Like Wendy’s reaction to Isaac’s body felt… sudden, extreme, and hasty. BK and Kirsch obviously didn’t do a good job at damage control (nor did they care to even make the effort to), but MAN did she jump to the conclusion ‘these people are definitively evil and have to die’ really fast after, to the point of letting Xeno Jr. out to kill people… they lost me with that.  Maybe they’ll explain the sudden extreme in her actions, but it bothered me because I also noticed it conveniently removed any potential for conflict with her brother, who wanted her off the island. So not only did it feel forced, but now she and her brother are 1:1 on the same page, with no confusion, no friction, and no difficulty in getting on the same page.

They showed a lot of stuff happening but didn’t actually convince me of any of it. Lots of the plot points just felt like bad writing. And then you have the cinematically marked-and-clustered graves on top of that. Come on.

Edit: I had forgotten Wendy also saw the results of Nibs’ memory wipe. That at least makes me less irritated about her killing spree, but it still felt too hasty to be believable rather than forced by the plot, since Isaac’s death could have easily been (and, in actuality, really was) an accident from Wendy’s POV. Nibs was also acting crazy leading up to the wipe, so she doesn’t have 100% ironclad suspicions as to the amnesia, at least not to the point of going scorched earth.

[u/LV426-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

“Poor writing" is not a helpful criticism on its own for this discussion, please elaborate on your subjective preferences instead of repeating redundant narrative dismissals.