It's been a long wait for diehard fans of Ridley Scott's Alien franchise, but we finally have a fittingly sinister official trailer for the spinoff prequel series, Alien: Earth, coming this summer to FX/Hulu.
As previously reported, the official premise is short and sweet: "When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat."
The series is set in 2120, two years before the events of the first film, Alien (1979), in a world where corporate interests are competing to be the first to unlock the key to human longevity—maybe even immortality. Showrunner Noah Hawley has said that the style and mythology will be closer to that film than Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant, both of which were also prequels.
Chandler's character is named Wendy; she's a human/synth hybrid described as having "the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child." Timothy Olyphant plays her synth mentor and trainer, Kirsh. The cast also includes Alex Lawther as a soldier named CJ, Samuel Blenkin as a CEO named Boy Kavalier, Essie Davis as Dame Silvia, Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, Kit Young as Tootles, David Rysdahl as Arthur, Babou Ceesay as Morrow, Jonathan Ajayi as Smee, Erana James as Curly, Lily Newmark as Nibs, Diem Camille as Siberian, and Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins.
In January, FX/Hulu released a surprise short teaser during the AFC Championship game. It was shot entirely from a Xenomorph's point of view as the creature raced through a spaceship's corridor while a "containment breached!" warning repeated. The final shot showed the spaceship headed on a crash course with Earth.
This latest trailer opens on a seemingly idyllic terrestrial setting in 2120: Neverland Research Island. That's where we're about to see the creation of the first hybrid synth, with a young human test subject who is clearly dying of cancer. "You're going to be the first person to transition from a human body to a synthetic," the doctor explains, because she's "very, very special." The operation is a success, and Wendy is "born"—just in time for the aforementioned crash landing of an alien spaceship in Prodigy City.
What's on board is a mystery, but Boy Kavalier wants it, and Wendy volunteers to retrieve the cargo. ("We're fast. We're strong. We don't break"). They find pure carnage inside the ship, and we learn that the ship had collected five alien life forms "from the darkest corners of the universe." So naturally, they bring those life forms into the lab for further study and discover one is a particularly predatory invasive species. Could it be... XENOMORPHS? Needless to say, all those fallible human beings have no idea the horrors that are about to be unleashed.
Alien: Earth premieres on FX and FX on Hulu on August 12, 2025.
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