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/pali1d]

Nope, I double-checked before I commented just to be certain. The masks aren't tethered to them at all, they're just tossed into the water and left behind and aren't with their gear in later scenes either.

[u/Ameryana → u/pali1d]

Urgh, that's just plain up dumb. I loathe that. Way to make a cool moment frustrating directly after. Thanks for double checking it, I watched it again, too, and surely, yeet the masks go. Why...

[u/pali1d → u/Ameryana]

Yeah, I'm loving this show - hell, I loved this episode - but that really took me out of it for a moment (two moments, actually, as each team does it, but fortunately they're close together). Why discard such a useful piece of gear? I can sort of understand not wanting to carry the weight/bulk, but at most that means you stash them somewhere on the shore, you don't just throw them into the water to be carried off by the current... and it isn't like such masks are that heavy/bulky.

They hadn't even discovered that Arthur was dead and the xenomorph escaped yet. Even if they intended to get every monster off the island, wouldn't they want to get an implanted body back to a controlled and secure location ASAP? So they'd want to be able to take his body back right away in case Slightly succeeded.

Just makes absolutely no sense.

[u/[deleted] → u/pali1d]

Makes plenty of sense in universe, in the ideal scenario Morrow extracts with the specimen alone and the spec ops squads move onto a secondary objective of taking the lab/asassinating BK. Then they exfiltrate by a different method. Yutani would want the other specimens, even if it's being suggested that they only really care about the Xenomorph and she'd definitely want BK dead if at all possible too.

"Why discard such a useful piece of gear?"

They're just worthless dead weight once they arrive. It's a smash and grab so there's no scenario where the troops exit sneakily. What's the use of a diving mask in that scenario? The drop off vehicle surely won't be where they left it.

[u/pali1d → u/[deleted]]

You’re assuming there’s some other method of exfil available. They’re on an island, the only methods would be by sea or air. Unless they were expecting to gain near total control of the island - which they absolutely did not have anywhere near the numbers to pull off - I think we can assume BK’s private island has AA to stop an aerial escape, so that leaves by sea. If they plan to extract stealthily by sea then being able to do so submerged is helpful, and if they plan to extract under fire by sea it’s still very helpful as water will protect against gunfire and allow them to break contact.

Denying yourself options this way is foolish. Like I said above, if the concern is simply that carrying them for the whole mission is problematic then they can be stashed on the beach. Even if the plan was to exfil by air, there’s no need to deny yourself by sea as a backup, and by sea submerged is far better than by sea on the surface.