It’s rare to see a tagline so perfectly summarize the heart of a show like, “We were safer in space.” FX’s sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth has put out its first full trailer, and those two-and-a-half minutes set this up as a contender for the scariest show of 2025.
The TV series is set before the original Alien films, and the trailer shows the early days of humanity’s lethal curiosity around otherworldly creatures. Down on Earth, we see an unidentified spacecraft crash land in Prodigy City in 2120, two years before the events of the original Alien film, and you already know things are going to be bad. Curly haired Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the CEO of an as-yet unidentified corporation (who could it be?!), wants whatever is on that ship.
We learn that the vessel is carrying five different lifeforms from the darkest parts of the universe, one of them looking peculiarly like the jellyfish-like metroid predators from the video game universe. We see this alien species use its extraordinarily strong tentacles to rip out someone’s eyes, then control their body after taking over their brain. That creepiness is cunningly contrasted in another sequence where we see a sick child, Wendy, have her human consciousness transferred into a synthetic adult body (Sydney Chandler).
We’ve had a few teases for Noah Hawley’s (Fargo, Legion) approach to the Alien universe over the last year, but this first proper trailer’s revelation that there are five different lifeforms on that ship could suggest we’ll be meeting extraterrestrial abominations never before seen in the Alien universe.
Alien: Earth is due to arrive on FX and Hulu on August 12, and if the show can keep up the pace of what’s promised in this trailer, we could be set for one of the scariest, most thrilling programs of the year.
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