FX’s Alien TV Show Can Finally Answer One Of The Franchise’s First Big Questions After 45 Years

Noah Hawley’s Alien TV show is already set to be a fascinating addition to the franchise, but one aspect of its story can help address one of the longest-running mysteries in the series’ history. Although the details of FX’s Alien story are understandably shrouded in mystery, it has already been confirmed that the show will serve as a prequel to the 1979 film, set on Earth some three decades before the Nostromo’s encounter with the deadly creature. This places the show at a fascinating point in Alien‘s timeline, providing an opportunity to finally answer some questions about the franchise’s past.

Unlike some successful sci-fi series, the origins of Alien are a contentious and arguably mysterious topic. Even though the franchise’s originator Ridley Scott set out to tackle the Alien‘s backstory with his own prequels, the contradictory nature of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant‘s stories – not to mention their relationship with the earlier Alien vs. Predator films – has only made things more complicated. However, beyond competing accounts for how aliens were actually created and discovered, there are other pressing mysteries the franchise is yet to address – one of which can certainly be revealed in FX’s Alien.

FX’s Alien TV Show Can Answer How Much Weyland-Yutani Knew About The Alien (& How They Knew It)

A major question that lingers over Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien is how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation knew about the alien before the crew of the Nostromo discovered it. In Alien, the company serves as a potent metaphor for the worst excesses of capitalism and profiteering, rending the entire crew “expendable” and “all other priorities rescinded” so long as they can get their hands on the creature. However, while this revelation is a shocking development and makes Ash one of the film’s most compelling characters, it raises an obvious issue of exactly how Weyland-Yutani knew about the alien before anyone else.

The various Alien movies have already offered competing explanations for this mystery. One solution could be that, after the events of Alien vs. Predator, the company set out to investigate all unusual extraterrestrial signals, with the knowledge that one could connect to the alien. Another is that Covenant and Prometheus‘ stories hold the key. However, the debate over the canonicity of both storylines means that the real answer remains unclear. As such, addressing this point could be a key theme for FX’s Alien TV show.

What The Alien Movies Have Already Revealed About Weyland-Yutani’s Knowledge

The extent of Weyland-Yutani’s knowledge about the alien differs according to the conflicting Alien prequel stories. If, despite their generally poor reputation among the fanbase, the Alien vs. Predator movies are considered canonical, then it’s clear that both the Weyland and Yutani companies (then operating as separate entities) knew about the xenomorph’s potential as far back as 2004 – over a century before the events of Alien in 2122. While many other aspects of the AVP movies don’t add up, this detail at least explains how the company could be aware of the creature’s existence.

A second explanation is that David’s actions in Prometheus and Covenant and the fate of the ship’s colonists ultimately alert Weyland-Yutani to some sort of potential alien threat. Given that Alien Covenant – Advent (created for the movie’s home release) shows David sending the results of his experiments to the company, this alternate theory would indicate that Weyland-Yutani learned about the alien much later. However, this doesn’t seem to explain the specificity of MUTHUR’s protocols in Alien, nor how LV-426 itself entered the equation. Although later Alien films expand on the company’s role, Alien itself is deliberately vague on where the knowledge originally comes from.

Alien’s TV Show May Ultimately Contradict Prometheus & Covenant

Given that Ridley Scott’s plans for a third and final Alien prequel movie are unlikely to come to fruition, Prometheus and Covenant remain the only indicators of the director’s intended vision for the creature’s origin story. However, even from the limited information that’s available about FX’s Alien, it seems the show will completely rewrite the movies’ lore. For one thing, the show is set three decades before Alien, presumably in 2092. In the overall timeline, this places it just one year before the Prometheus lands on LV-223.

Theoretically, this provides FX’s Alien with the perfect opportunity to tie into Prometheus‘ story – albeit from a perspective from Earth. However, showrunner Noah Hawley has already been clear that he dislikes both Prometheus and Covenant from an aesthetic and design perspective and intends to alter the narrative. As he told KCRW’s The Business podcast in January:

“For me, and for a lot of people, this ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me.

“And in terms of the mythology, what’s scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies’ future. There’s something about that that doesn’t really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me.”

All this indicates that Hawley’s Alien TV show is keen to rewrite Prometheus and Covenant‘s prequel story entirely, rather than build on it. This, in turn, suggests that it may provide a totally new explanation for how Weyland-Yutani first learned about the creature, completely undercutting the idea that either the Prometheus or the Covenant somehow alerted them to its potential. Such an approach would have major ramifications for the whole series – not least of which would be the delegitimization of Ridley Scott’s contentious prequel films.

FX’s Alien Can Address Another Problematic Franchise Prequel

If FX’s Alien does indeed do away with Ridley Scott’s films as part of the official franchise canon, this raises the obvious question of whether or not Alien vs. Predator will be reinstated. Whatever the two films’ flaws, their story does at least explain how the company could be aware of the alien’s existence before the Nostromo’s arrival on LV-426. However, while building on Alien vs. Predator‘s story is one approach, it’s much more likely that the two movies are treated in the same way as Scott’s prequels.

Hawley’s comments about the more official Prometheus and Covenant indicate that he is unafraid to reshape the franchise as he sees fit, so long as it fits a more believable overall narrative. Given this, it seems unlikely that he would have any issue changing or completely ignoring the Alien vs. Predator films – especially as they are widely considered non-canonical by most fans. This, in turn, means that instead of trying to unravel the problematic elements of Scott’s films, FX’s Alien can be a genuine fresh start for the series after decades of confusion.