The wait is over! The first ever TV series set in the Alien universe just dropped on Hulu, following news that the streaming platform is being absorbed by Disney, the current owner and operator of all things Alien. The new Alien: Earth will include eight episodes in its first season, with a two-episode premier that dropped last night.
And while the M41A Pulse Rifle from Aliens (1986) is still the coolest gun from any Alien installment, we got a look at some interesting and new-to-us future guns in the first eps of Alien: Earth, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+ and airing Tuesdays on FX.
The series brings the nightmarish creatures made Hollywood staples by the likes of Ridley Scott and James Cameron down to earth, literally. For the first time (not counting the two Alien vs. Predator movies), the most terrifying alien creature ever put on film isn’t confined to some distant spacecraft or barely inhabited planet — this time, it could become the new apex predator on our planet. In many ways, the new series brings the franchise back to its roots both in terms of look and feel, and via the fact that Alien: Earth is firmly in the horror genre (see the cat scene).
Alien: Earth - The Story
First, the setup. This series takes place between the events of Alien: Covenant (2017) and the events of the original Alien (1979), so that means its essentially a prequel to Alien, and audiences have been treated to a lot of aesthetic similarities to the movie that started it all, from the uniforms the spaceship staff is rocking to the tech they use, including simplistic computer displays and a very familiar computer terminal room used by the eternally surly cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay).
On Earth, the Prodigy Corporation, a business rival of the mega corporation we know and love Weyland-Yutani, is ushering a new era of android technology in a secret test trial under the supervision of CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) that allows the minds and consciousness of terminally ill children to be transferred to adult android bodies, giving them a new, and potentially unlimited, lease on life.
The first person to undergo this process is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who is soon joined by more children-turned-androids hybrids.
In space, the USCSS Maginot is returning from a mission, which cost a number of lives, to collect five alien species from the darkest corners of the galaxy for research and development purposes — presumably. The crew rotates into hypersleep at the beginning of the first episode for the last four-month leg of the trip home. That’s when something goes wrong, some of the specimens escape, and the ship is badly damaged.
The ship’s cyborg security officer, Morrow, is shown hurriedly interacting with the ship's computer as a xenomorph we know so well takes out a crewmember desperately banging on the door asking Morrow to let her in. He ignores her, finishes what he’s doing, logs the crew as deceased in the computer, and hides in a crash chamber beneath the room’s floor as the xenomorph tries to claw its way in.
The Maginot ultimately crash lands on Earth in a sector of a city owned by Prodigy Corp., which sends in a bunch of soldiers to secure the site, including Joe Hermit (Alex Lawther), a medic for Prodigy’s Security Force and Wendy’s brother. Wendy also convinces Kavalier to send her and her fellow hybrids to the crash site as a test of their capabilities, with the ulterior motive of reuniting with her brother, who believes she is dead.
The hybrid team is led by Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), the company’s synthetic Chief Scientist. As you can imagine, when the humans and synthetics run into the xenomorphs, face-huggers, and other nasties brought back from space by the Maginot, hilarity and blood-letting ensues.
The Guns of 'Alien: Earth'
Bullpup Assault Rifle
The Security Force soldiers are primarily armed with bullpup assault rifles as their primary weapons. Some people online are saying the guns are built on Steyr AUG A3 bullpup rifles with a big carry handle added to the top and a red digital round counter on the side, along with some other embellishments. From the shape of the stock, that's very likely.
However, after looking at some stills, I'm convinced the production team mashed up a AUG A3 with an old French FAMAS bullpup rifle. The angle of the cutlass-style trigger guard is almost identical, and you can see the FAMAS top charging handle in several shots. Or, they could have just dressed up an AUG to the point where the silhouette looks a bit like a FAMAS.
We can presume that, since both Alien: Romulus and Aliens take place more than 50 years after this story, the Pulse Rifle and its predecessor, the F44AA Pulse Rifle, are still decades away from development. But....
Submachine Gun and Alien: Earth Pulse Rifle?
Some of the Security Force members are carrying submachine guns built on one of Hollywood's favorite "future guns," the KRISS Vector. The gun has hardly any embellishments, just an M-LOK forend with a weapon light attached to it.
In this still from one of the Alien: Earth trailers, you calso see what looks suspiciously like an M4A1 Pulse Rifle from Aliens being carried by the soldier in the background. So maybe the Pulse Rifle is, in fact, a thing already in this timeline. We'll see!
Pistol Sidearm
Some of the Security Force personnel, including Joe as a medic, are armed with pistol sidearms. It’s unclear if they’re all the same, but we get a really good look at Joe’s when he draws it to face an alien in the ceiling, and it’s clearly a SilencerCo Maxim 9 integrally suppressed pistol.
Alien Taser Gun
On the Maginot, Morrow carries a handgun that appears to be a Glock 17 with an aesthetic underbarrel attachment, but after the crash, he has a pretty wild “firearm.” What he’s carrying is clearly a Kel-Tec KSG pump-action bullpup shotgun.
It’s fitted with a big top rail loaded with an EOTECH-looking optic and flashlight. Beneath the barrel and mag tubes is some other kind of high-tech add-on. From what we’ve seen in the first two eps, this gun doesn’t function as a shotgun at all — yet.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
At one point, Morrow uses the gun to first Tase a xenomorph with some kind of electricity bolt that knocks the creature out. Then, he uses the same gun to spray the alien down with some kind of liquid latex material that dries into a sort of bag. He then drags the xenomorph away.
When it wakes up soon after, the alien is able to easily rip out of the material, but that might be impossible for a human, meaning this gun is some kind of less-than-lethal police action type of weapon rather than a dedicated anti-alien gun. However, considering the creature’s highly acidic blood, this would be the right kind of weapon to use against them. Maybe it also works as a shotgun, too.
Hybrid Weapons
Wendy and the hybrids aren’t carrying weapons yet (come to think of it, synthetics in the Alien universe rarely do) save for Wendy’s small sword that she keeps magnetically attached to her back.
We can only guess what kind of new weapons we’ll see in the coming episodes, and what other space-born nasties we’ll see doing horrible things to people. We’re strapped in and ready!
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