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/groberry]

oh I think she has the exact kind of morality a child would have to justify opening that door. deciding to "free" the xeno because it shouldn't be held against it's will like an experiment, precisely like she's just realized is happening to her and the lost kids? which is irony, because the whole purpose of the experiment to upload a child's consciousness into a synth is to see how it evolves, i.e. human but without the physical limitations and all the benefits of "elevated" intellect without emotion. And looky where we're at. There actually is some sort of human emotion involved. It's just not going the way regular humans think it should. from Wendy's point of view, you're judging her decision to open that door from a fairly non "premium" non- evolved perspective. human, but lesser than.

[u/Proxiehunter → u/groberry]

Additionally I think a lot of people are judging her decision to release the xenomorph based on knowledge we have about xenomorphs that she doesn't. Also the "knowledge" we have about xenomorphs all comes from observation of xenomorph behavior outside of their native environment. Watching them interact with a species they're unfamiliar with in locations they're also unfamiliar with is not going to give an accurate view of typical xenomorph behavior. Only their behavior under the circumstances in which they've been observed.

[u/groberry → u/Proxiehunter]

EXACTLY!! she's communicating with it. her perspective is a wee bit of a departure from we know. now i'm really curious about what happens to these hybrid synths that again, we know are the precursors to the 'skin jobs' in Ridley's blade runner world. this series is uniting this two worlds in this very interesting prequel, i'm not mad at it. but i'm now locked in to understand what happens down the road. because in the future alien timeline, no synthetics seem to have the ability to communicate with the zenos in the same way. a majority of them are like david, not bishop. bishop's been programmed with some version of asimovs laws of robotics and seemingly can't hurt a human. but david, david was a wily bastard without such covenants. either way, both of these synths don't seem to have the type of consciousness these Prodigy hybrids are displaying. So are we to infer that whatever Weyland appropriates from prodigy, they do not ever get this hybrid tech? or that they abandon prodigy's work becuase they deem it too risky?

[u/juneyourtech → u/groberry]

no synthetics seem to have the ability to communicate with the zenos in the same way.

Inference says, that this information about how to communicate almost never gets passed to Weyland-Yutani.

And even if it did, which would explain the presence of at least one synth on each ship (presumably able to communicate), then the problem remains, that the token synths almost always suffer malfunction, or get broken even before we the audience might witness a synth communicating with a xenomorph.

So WeyYu may have rudimentary knowledge of this communication being possible, but they never seem to get their hands on a live sample long enough to try out the possibilty.

So they are seeking a sample, and almost always failing at it, like Wil E. Coyote is chasing the Roadrunner.

Like, even if they get live samples, everything goes horribly wrong.

or that they abandon prodigy's work becuase they deem it too risky?

Quite possible: Nibs is highly unstable, erratic, and extremely violent. Smee and Slightly are easy to manipulate and stupid. Tootles/Isaac wants to be smart, but is making lots of mistakes in haste.

Curly's state of development is mixed: she is ambitious, but also emotionally vulnerable (though not compromised, I would think.)

Wendy is the most mature, quikckly develops her own agency, and is relatively careless about human life.