Alien: Earths game-changing ending, explained

After eight episodes of terrifying new creatures, Alien homages, and existential questions about the future of humanity, Alien: Earth Season 1 has come to a close. And what a close it was.

The finale, titled “The Real Monsters,” flips the power dynamic that’s been in place for the entire season. By the end of the episode, the hybrid Lost Boys, led by Wendy (Sydney Chandler), have gained total control over their keepers, including Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) and Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis). This power shift has been in the cards since Alien: Earth‘s first episode, but how do we get here? Let’s break it down.

Alien: Earth‘s hybrids finally realize how strong they are.

Alex Lawther, Sydney Chandler, and Lily Newmark in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Patrick Brown / FX

From the first moment Alien: Earth introduces Wendy in her super-strong, super-fast, super-durable hybrid body, it’s clear that she and her fellow Lost Boys could absolutely wreck Prodigy‘s Neverland security team if they wanted to. That idea doesn’t cross their minds, though. Instead, the Lost Boys are still children in consciousness, and they believe Neverland to be a safe paradise for them.

However, this idea erodes over the course of Alien: Earth‘s first season, as the Lost Boys lose confidence in the people they’ve been told to trust. They’re endangered and experimented on. Nibs’ (Lily Newmark) traumatic memories were manipulated. Isaac (Kit Young) died while tending to the alien specimens. Morrow (Babou Ceesay) threatened to kill Slightly’s (Adarsh Gourav) family. Each horrifying incident wears away at the Lost Boys’ childlike innocence, turning the idyllic Neverland into a hell on Earth.

Ironically, these incidents only increase the Lost Boys’ feelings of powerlessness, even though they’re the most powerful beings on Prodigy’s remote island. But it’s also in one of those scenes of powerlessness — when Prodigy forces corner Nibs, Wendy, and her brother Joe aka Hermit (Alex Lawther) on their escape boat in episode 7 — that the Lost Boys begin to realize their power. Nibs fully rips a soldier’s jaw off, leaving Hermit to shoot (but not kill) her. Here, a horrified Wendy learns two things. First: Humans, including her brother, are terrified of the hybrids. Second: They have good reason to be. The hybrids are extremely dangerous. So why not embrace that?

That’s the realization Wendy comes to in Alien: Earth‘s Season 1 finale. “All this time, we’ve been afraid of them,” she tells the Lost Boys as they sit trapped in a Neverland cage. “But I think they should be afraid of us.”

The Peter Pan allegories come to a head in the Alien: Earth Season 1 finale.

Sydney Chandler and Alex Lawther in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Patrick Brown/FX

Embracing the Neverland staffers’ fear of them is the final stage in the Lost Boys’ loss of their childish innocence. Or, in terms of Boy Kavalier’s relentless Peter Pan references, this is them finally “growing up.” However, that’s exactly what the Prodigy founder and the rest of Neverland don’t want to happen. As Wendy puts it, “We’re all in this cell because we can’t be kids anymore, but they won’t let us be adults.”

Nibs has another suggestion for what they are, one that’s especially fitting after seeing the graves of their dead human bodies. “We’re all ghosts,” she says.

So what do these ghosts do? They turn Neverland into a haunted house, with Wendy using her in-built connection to the facility to manipulate video feeds, elevators, and doors to terrify every last soldier and scientist. Of course, having a Xenomorph at your beck and call helps too.

The entire episode serves as both a liberation for the Lost Boys and an identity crisis for Wendy, otherwise known by her human name, Marcy. She tells her brother, “I don’t know what I am. I’m not a child. I’m not a grown-up. I’m not Marcy. I’m not Wendy. And I can’t be what everyone wants me to be.”

(Earlier in the season, Joe even questions whether Wendy truly holds his sister’s consciousness, yet another blow to one of the pillars of Wendy’s identity.)

Wendy’s statement reflects the binaries in the world of Alien: Earth. Child and adult. Human and synthetic. Hybrids exist somewhere in between, blurring boundaries and creating a new kind of personhood. Wendy and the Lost Boys have spent the entire series having not just new names but entirely new identities imposed on them by exterior forces. Now, they get to make their own. Fellow hybrid Curly (Erana James) embraces her former name, Jane, as Wendy reminds each of the Lost Boys of theirs — a move the late Isaac, formerly Tootles, only enjoyed for an afternoon.

Wendy’s identity crisis also explains her affinity for the Maginot aliens, whom she considers “honest.” These creatures are wholly themselves, unlike liars such as Boy Kavalier. As Wendy points out, he considers himself Peter Pan, but he was never truly a boy. He was always a “mean, angry little man,” just like his abusive father. Ouch. I’m not sure he’ll be picking up a copy of Peter Pan any time soon after that.

“Now we rule.”

Sydney Chandler in “Alien: Earth.”
Credit: Patrick Brown / FX

“The Real Monsters” ends with Wendy and the Lost Boys holding all of the authority figures in their lives hostage in the same cage they were formerly incarcerated in, prompting Wendy’s declaration that, “now, we rule.” Even Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), their Prodigy synth senior, and Morrow, their cyborg antagonist, now answer to them.

The hybrids finally taking control is undoubtedly worthy of Alien: Earth‘s last hard-rocking needle drop. But it’s certainly not the end of the Lost Boys’ story. After all, the Weyland-Yutani forces are still encroaching on the island with numerous Prodigy forces still left, hinting at more conflict ahead. Plus, the alien orchid is loose, and T. Ocellus has found a new host in the chestburst corpse of Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl). That’s a lot of threats for these still-young hybrids to deal with. How will they be able to fight off their enemies and learn how to rule their island?

That question of what it will look like for hybrids to “rule” hints at an intriguing new literary reference point for a possible Alien: Earth Season 2. If Season 1 was the Lost Boys growing up in the style of Peter Pan, then Season 2 might just see them learning to survive on an island in the vein of Lord of the Flies. With that in mind, who’s Piggy, who’s Ralph, and will the Xenomorph’s head somehow wind up on the end of a pointy stick?

Alien: Earth is now streaming on Hulu.