FX’s Alien: Earth concluded its debut season run with a moment that almost felt like a stage-play curtain call: All the acclaimed sci-fi drama’s surviving broken toy characters (some, like Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsh, literally broken) together in one room — including the xenomorph. They didn’t quite take a bow for the audience, but their ambitions and murderous resentments were seeming put on hold — for now.
The uniquely staged cliffhanger was also rather practical. Showrunner and executive producer Noah Hawley arguably gave himself plenty of options for season two rather than box himself into one particular direction following a season that incorporated several different ideas, genre styles and threads.
Ahead of the finale, Hawley spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how the finale sets up a second season of Alien: Earth and how the vibe of the show’s final moment may be a bit deceptive in terms of what comes next.
So with Fargo being an anthology series with a story that wrapped each season, you could always do a finale on that show where you could just do anything you wanted. This felt like a finale where you kept all the chess pieces on the board. I know you have a long-term plan, but is there also some degree of, “Let’s see what the audience reaction is to these characters and these storylines before making any permanent decisions about them and the season two storyline?”
I think there’s an artistic answer to that, and there’s a commercial answer to that, right? Obviously, I had to plan and execute a story that that’s going someplace. And then, this whole thing is a proof-of-concept experiment to see if enough people on the planet want to watch an Alien TV show to justify the expense of a second and third season of an Alien TV show. So for me, I never hedged my bets. This is not a closed-ended season. This chapter is closed, but Yutani troops are landing. The balance of power has shifted. These children have no idea what’s coming. The last line of, “Now we rule” is triumphant and uplifting. But cut to 10 minutes later … what is going to be happening? So I like that it has that real-time urgency to it.
It’s also worth looking at some of the structural elements. I’m used to working with 10 hours and I had eight hours here. And because of the way the story unfolded, I had two-and-a-half hours at the crash site. Then I came back to Neverland for an hour and a half. Then I had a spaceship episode [the show’s fifth], and then I had three episodes to pay off the Neverland story. There was a lot that had to be accomplished in a constricted period of time. So there were a lot of structural challenges to make sure that it’s not only immersive on a character and thematic level, but that [the show] can set and pay off a story while setting up a future story. What’s gratifying to me from the critical response is that this high-degree-difficulty dive seems to have landed.
Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) seems proud of Wendy (Sydney Chandler) saying, “Now we rule.” Does it suggest that she passed some sort of graduation in his mind that he’s privately had?
I’m glad that you picked up on that. There’s this word that was coined in Northern California: Disruptor. Boy Kavalier has real anti-authoritarian issues from his father, and came into this world where there were four major corporations, and, in the span of six-to-eight, years became a rival to these people. Everyone else is invested in maintaining a status quo. And he is an anarchist, I feel like. So I think there’s something about this moment where he realized that not only has he created this immortality product, but that his best invention is this self-aware machine. If you’re Peter Pan and you want death to adults, how great is it that the children are going to rule now? Who knows what will happen? So I do think he certainly has a low point when Wendy holds up the mirror and shows him who he really is. But then there’s delight in the fact that she’s picking up the matchbook and is ready to burn it all down. It’s so exciting what’s going to happen next.
What is the latest on potentially getting a season two? Previously, you said the show could run first as many as five seasons, but I noticed you just referenced getting “a second and third season.” So it made me wondering if you’ve adjusted that ambition at all.
I wouldn’t read too much into that. I don’t have a destination in mind. I don’t know how long it will take me to get there. It’s been such an amazing act of play for me to enter this franchise and bring my own ideas to it. And just like with Fargo, I think, “Who am I kidding? As long as they let me tell stories in this tone of voice, I’m going to tell stories in this tone of voice.” Right now, I feel flush with enthusiasm for this hybrid show that I’ve made between Alien and looking at the future of humanity in a way that feels entertaining. So I don’t know. And look, there are artistic goals and the commercial goals. I think we’ve launched incredibly well. I’m certainly hoping that it’s not a long nail biter of “Can we do this again?” My hope is certainly in the next couple of months to get some kind of sign from them as to whether I should get another job or get back to work.
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