Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for A Quiet Place: Day One.

One of A Quiet Place: Day One’s most peculiar and fascinating scenes creates a nagging question—what are the alien pouches? The third installment of John Krasinski’s popular franchise A Quiet Place was released in theaters on June 28, showing the first day the aliens landed on Earth. This movie focuses specifically on “The City That Never Sleeps,” New York City. The commotion of the alien landing is just as big and terrifying as imagined after the flashback in A Quiet Place Part II.

While slightly below the first two movies in ratings, the third movie has a high Rotten Tomatoes score due to the incredible performances of the A Quiet Place: Day One cast and the great scares. The action-based fear is ramped up because the aliens play a more central role in the movie, a diversion from A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II. In addition to keeping the franchise fresh, this change allows A Quiet Place: Day One to explore the background of the aliens, revealing shocking details.

A Quiet Place: Day One Shows Multiple Alien Pouches In New York

Eric Finds The Pouches While Saving Frodo, The Cat

The movie A Quiet Place: Day One provides many answers about how the aliens take over the world as well as how they survive on Earth. One of the only scenes focused on the aliens instead of humans comes towards the end of A Quiet Place: Day One. When Eric goes to the pharmacy, he doesn’t realize that Frodo, the cat, is following him. After the cat runs off, he enters a building to save him, where he finds the aliens congregated in one area surrounding a bunch of seemingly organic pouches.

These round sacs likely came down on the meteors that brought the aliens. The pouches look slightly like egg sacs, but the aliens tear them apart. When opened, the pouches look stringy and seem to be made of organic material. Because Eric has to get out of there safely, the movie doesn’t linger too long on the pouches. Still, that doesn’t make them any less significant to the world-building in A Quiet Place: Day One. Eagle-eyed viewers will gain a better understanding of the creatures tormenting humans.

Are The Pouches The Alien’s Food Or Babies?

The Answer Comes From An Interview Not The Movie

Because the origins of A Quiet Place’s monsters are mysterious throughout the first two movies, the pouches in Day One are the first big hint about the creatures’ biology. The most obvious explanation for the pouches is that they are food that sustains the aliens until they acclimate to their new food chain on Earth. The aliens tear the pouches apart with their sharp teeth. They also don’t have an established food source, as they aren’t shown eating the humans they kill.

The other primary theory about the pouches in A Quiet Place: Day One was that the sacs were related to the aliens’ reproductive process. The pouches already have visual similarities to arachnid eggs, and then the scene parallels Ripley discovering the Xenomorph eggs in Aliens. This gives the theory some credence. Luckily, the director, Michael Sarnoski, answered the question when speaking with BJ Colangelo (via /Film).

According to Michael Sarnoski, the first guess is partially correct, but in a much more disturbing way than it seems. The aliens in the A Quiet Place universe farm these pouches to eat, fertilizing the sacs with the bodies of the humans they kill. This explains why they aren’t shown eating their human prey. Additionally, this fits with the sci-fi narrative of the franchise. While using humans as fertilizer is generally risky, there’s nothing to say the aliens in A Quiet Place would be susceptible to human pathogens.

The Pouches Answer A Major Alien Mystery In A Quiet Place: Day One

A Quiet Place: Day One Continues To Expand The Lore Of The Aliens

The pouches shown in A Quiet Place: Day One add fear and suspense while answering a large mystery in the franchise – how the aliens eat. Humans are likely the easiest prey to fertilize their farms because they are located on almost every part of the planet. However, if the aliens killed off all the humans, they could still rely on other animals to keep their farms going. They simply need organic matter to fertilize their sacs, which is abundant on Earth. This answer in A Quiet Place: Day One continues to grow the franchise’s lore.

The glimpse of the aliens’ food source also potentially provides an exciting jumping-off point for a future movie. If Krasinski wanted to make another movie within the universe, he could provide a closer examination of the aliens from a human perspective, in the same vein as the Alien franchise. Alternatively, he could give an origin story for the A Quiet Place aliens, starting from their planet and leading up to their arrival on Earth.

Source: /Film