Alien: Earth Final Trailer Teases a Dark Prequel to the Original Film

FX and Hulu’s long-awaited prequel series Alien: Earth is nearly here. Set to premiere on August 12, 2025, the Hulu and FX streaming services are revving up with one final trailer—plus a more in-depth synopsis—suggesting that the series will be a chilly, contemplative one. Mixing somber, almost philosophical shots with more expected chunks of sci-fi/horror action, we see various alien ships drifting in space, corpses in dim-lit hallways, bloodied humans rushing to escape some unidentifiable threat, and in the background, a distinctive shape, the monster alluded to throughout the trailer: the xenomorph, hiding in the dark.

Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley, who is known for his meticulous narrative style, has previously stated that Alien: Earth’s overall tenor and mythology will be more connected to Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) than later prequel/prequel-quel Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant. The eight-episode series will take place in 2120, just two years before the events of the first Alien film, in an almost-future that looks an awful lot like the present in terms of the unchecked power of corporations, only those entities are feverishly racing to control the universe’s one—and only—prize: Life, and all of its potential to offer immortality.

A Power Corrupted by the Promise of Life: The Corporate Era

On Earth in 2120, humanity is no longer governed by nations but by five megacorporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. Welcome to the Corporate Era, a time where cyborgs and synthetics have become common. The former refers to humans with augmentative mechanical parts; the latter, humanoid robots equipped with advanced AI. The game changes when a young, prodigious Founder and CEO of the Prodigy Corporation (how’s that for symbolism?) makes a game-changing scientific leap forward: hybrids, humanoids that are robots animated by actual human sentience.

The first hybrid is a prototype that the series’ creators describe as “playing dress-up in her parents’ closet.” Meet Wendy, whom actor Sydney Chandler plays as having “the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child.” She will be the starting point of a domino effect that will have profound consequences for the species in the long run.

The peace is disrupted when a Weyland-Yutani spaceship smashes into the Prodigy City colony. In the aftermath, Wendy and several other hybrids encounter xenomorph organisms, and any alien organisms are unknown to humanity, but they’re still far more lethal than any humanity has encountered before, unleashing a new age of terror that’s as corporate and speculative as it is techno-ethical and terroristic.

Sydney Chandler will be joined by a notable ensemble cast that includes Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic trainer and mentor; Alex Lawther as soldier CJ; Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, an unscrupulous CEO; Essie Davis as Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gourav as Slightly; Kit Young as Tootles; David Rysdahl as Arthur; Babou Ceesay as Morrow; Jonathan Ajayi as Smee; Erana James as Curly; Lily Newmark as Nibs; Diem Camille as Siberian; and Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins.

In January, FX and Hulu dropped an unannounced short teaser during the NFL’s AFC Championship game. Shot entirely from the xenomorph’s POV, it shows the creature sprinting through a spaceship corridor as a spaceship approaches Earth from space, quickly growing in size as it hurtles closer to its target and impending doom. The point-of-view cinematic, which provided no real context for the event, quickly went viral.

Last month, the first official trailer filled in some of the story blanks. It opened with the making of Wendy’s animation and sentience in 2120, on Neverland Research Island, where her five companions were also conceived and assembled. When a strange alien ship made a hard landing nearby, Wendy excitedly asked to get its mysterious payload. What she discovered wasn’t scientific research and promise but horror: The bodies of the other five alien life forms, each an unknown species, but all of them in true Alien fashion, were brought back into the lab for dissection.

As the final trailer hints, Alien: Earth will be less about the pyrotechnics and more about the buildup of dread, with Hawley leaning into corporate cold-bloodedness and human hubris, making a pretty familiar and age-old mistake. His particular style of atmosphere-building and world-building, with its roster of morally ambiguous and ethically uncertain characters, bodes well for a series that’s more than just a monster story. By doubling down on the claustrophobic horror and ethical and corporate turpitude that made the original Alien resonate so long ago, Alien: Earth will be more science fiction and suspense, more philosophical.

With the premiere only two months away, Alien: Earth is primed to be both a loving homage to the original and an extension of the franchise. Whether Wendy’s childlike exuberance will survive the brutal and bloody ordeal ahead of her—and whether that ordeal will even survive humanity’s self-serving avarice—will be revealed when the show begins streaming on FX and Hulu on August 12.