Alien: Earth Showrunner Jokes About Alien vs. Predator Possibilities
Noah Hawley has a withering response to SDCC attendees who want to see a xenomorph battle the Yautja.
If you love both xenomorphs and the Yautja, then you’re loving this summer. Not only is the Hulu and FX series Alien: Earth finally bringing the xenomorph to our home planet, but we’re also getting a heroic Yajuta in Predator: Badlands. For some fans, only one thing would make this embarrassment of riches better: getting to see them fight.
Unfortunately, showrunner Noah Hawley isn’t so enthusiastic about the idea. When an attendee at the Alien: Earth SDCC panel asked him about teaming with Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg, Hawley simply asked, “Can’t we all get along?”
Honestly, the response shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Hawley’s work in the past. The iconoclastic showrunner made his name with offbeat takes on established franchises, making a surreal psychodrama about the son of the X-Men’s Charles Xavier in Legion, and riffing on the entire Coen Brothers oeuvre for the anthology series Fargo.
Alien: Earth promises to continue that tradition, and not just because Hawley has announced that he’s ignoring the continuity established by Ridley Scott‘s previous two returns to the franchise, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. No, Alien: Earth also differs from previous entries by taking place on a planet that other movies have tried to avoid, the planet Earth.
Set in 2120, just two years before the events of the original Alien, Alien: Earth introduces viewers to Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a twelve-year-old girl put into a synthetic adult body by Prodigy, one of five mega corporations on the planet, along with the familiar antagonist company Weyland-Yutani.
Wendy isn’t the only synthetic person on Earth. There’s also Kirsh, played by Timothy Olyphant, a synthetic more in line with those we’ve seen throughout the franchise. Even though synthetics such as Bishop in Aliens and Andy in Alien Romulus have shown that pretend people can be trusted, Olyphant warned SDCC attendees against putting much faith in Kirsh. “There’s something about that guy… I dunno,” he said with a rueful smile.
As the emphasis on synthetics suggests, Hawley will be talking some of the same questions that Scott wrestled with in the now-irrelevant Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, questions about what constitutes life and the meaning of human existence.
And while the pilot episode featured plenty of thrills and scares, Olyphant insisted that its those big questions and small-scale relationships between characters that will keep viewers interested in Alien: Earth. “By the time you get to the third or fourth episode, those things that keep you up at night and you’re thinking about the next day are just scenes between two people,” Olyphant promised.
Maybe if the next Alien Vs. Predator is a quiet kitchen sink drama in which the two creatures discuss the meaning of life and acid blood, then maybe Hawley would be more interested.
Alien: Earth comes to FX and Hulu on August 12, 2025.
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Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!