Earth’ Episode 7 Recap: “Emergence” 

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

Since the very moment we met him, Boy Kavalier has operated with poisonous oligarchian arrogance. The drive to create Prodigy’s first line of human consciousness-loaded hybrids, with its massive investment in human lives and capital,  was mostly so this dude could have “someone smarter than me” to talk to. A corporate sabotage play that cost even more lives, untold sums, and literally dropped a starship on a city – its larger ramifications were not considered. And the lab attacks that destroyed a pricey Prodigy prototype and left one of Kavalier’s chief scientists facehugged are just another hiccup in his busy day of gaming corporate competitors and, like, designing AI pajamas or something. “What did we lose?” Boy Kav asks Kirsh in Episode 7 of Alien: Earth (“Emergence”), upon their return to Neverland. “Where are we on reboot and restore?” He can’t conceive of being wrong, of being harmed, of ever not being Kid Trillionaire, a life where setbacks are delegated and profound challenges – like engaging with an extraterrestrial lifeform – are just a quick Hungry-Man TV dinner for his attention-starved brain.

“This thing orchestrated the incident with Tootles, and I want to talk to it.” Once Kirsh shows him the tape, Kavalier is legit fascinated with Eyeball Tentacle’s tapping of the glass. And we do think this aggressive form of life, with its kaleidoscopic vision and strands of sinew for a body, is officially the sleeper VFX star of Alien: Earth itself. But we’ll also say it’s completely on-brand for Boy Kav to insult the lifeform’s intelligence while simultaneously giving it a test. He gets up close to the mobile containment unit where the eyeball resides in the sheep’s physical body and mindspace. He shows “3.14” scrawled on his palm. “We call this Pi,” Kav says, and reduces a foundational component of human thought to a schoolyard taunt. “All advanced civilizations would know this figure” – na nana boo boo – “so what are the next three numbers?”    

Eyeball Tentacle answers Boy Kavalier correctly, employing the sheep’s hooves and sphincter to count. But mutual fascination with Eyeball T is the only place where we agree with Boy Kavalier. As a constricted mess of sound emits from the sheep’s throat, understood to be a form of speech straining for language, the instant-gratification enthusiast exclaims “If only you could talk!” and immediately commits to live human trials. Careful containment of a smart, deadly alien entity that threatens all of humanity? Somebody else’s problem. Let’s put in a human being, and get this alien hooked on phonics. “Someone with a low IQ, so we can see the difference.” Boy Kavalier, with all his smarts and riches, is just a despicable person.

Wendy has been changed by Tootles’ demise, and Kavalier’s casual dismissal of the hybrid’s existence as simple product failure. Add her reaction to his laying dead in the lab – this can’t be; “But, we’re premium!”; what happened to immortality? – with “I don’t want to be people anymore,” her philosophical realization from Episode 6. Wendy was always a little wary of Boy Kav. But Tootles’ death proves the Neverland compound is unsafe, and no matter how motherly Dame Sylvia wants to appear, Wendy has learned she can’t trust anyone working for Prodigy not to burn out her memory like they did to Nibs. Their consciousness, the human spark that defines their manufactured bodies’ hybridism, is itself proprietary. “The Boy Genius is not your friend,” Wendy tells Nibs and Curly. “He owns us.”   

This realization aligns Wendy and Nibs with Hermit’s plan to get away from the island, and when they pass graves marked with their given names and filled with their physical remains, it’s a  further admission of their new forms and empowerment. Why wait around at Neverland just to serve selfish human whims?

No matter what Slightly and his forced accomplice Smee thought, Arthur was never gonna survive being facehugged and smuggled to Morrow. The hybrids attempt to drag the scientist down to the water for pickup, and the sequence generates some you-get-the-arms laughs like a 22nd-century Weekend at Bernie’s until the Baby Xeno inside Arthur decides to see the world. 

Morrow isn’t pleased to find a hollow corpse instead of a live specimen, once he emerges from the sea with a Weyland-Yutani kill team. But neither his mental trolling of Slightly nor how he intended to surf away with the alien matters, because the incursion at Neverland becomes the latest chapter in Alien: Earth’s battle inside the battle, that of Morrow the Cyborg versus Kirsh the Synth. “Are you the parent?” Morrow accused Kirsh in Episode 3, and by Episode 6, their elevator squabble defined the dislike. (Morrow with the burn: “I’ll see you soon, old toy.”) Two outmoded versions of upgraded human technology, hating on each other to maintain relevance. “This isn’t over,” Morrow says at Neverland, as Prodigy security overtakes his team. “Nothing ever is,” retorts Kirsh. And in a television series with big ideas about where immortality meets technology, maybe they’re right.    

The journey of Wendy, Nibs, and Hermit to the escape boat does not go well. When Siberian and Rashidi try to stop them at gunpoint, Nibs’ frustrations with human interference manifest in her ripping out the soldiers’ lieutenant’s throat. She’s about to crush Siberian’s head with her arms when Hermit ends the immediate threat – he gets a hold of a rifle and blasts hits with a blast of electricity. But while Wendy screams “What did you do?!”, her brother was only trying to protect his pals. To us, the implications of this journey are much bigger than one altercation, because we saw Wendy use her technological ability and connection to the xenomorph to harm. She touched a screen to hack a network, Big Xeno was suddenly free of containment, and we caught a glimpse of the carnage as random Prodigy scientists and security personnel were reduced to body parts and pink mist. It was equally bad for a random bunch of security types in the Neverland forest – Wendy spoke one coo-coo-command, and Big Xeno emerged from the trees to start up the murder train. An insulated rich guy like Boy Kavalier, surrounded by sycophants and consumed by his arrogance, never considered his creations might bundle their autonomy with the power to kill.

Specimens for Alien: Earth Episode 7 (“Emergence”):

• Alien: Earth finally cracks the 2000s guitar rock canon with its Episode 7 end-credits banger, “Song for the Dead” from Queens of the Stone Age. If Songs for the Deaf was a QOTSA concept record about driving into the desert with nothing but FM radio haze as accompaniment, then maybe a lyric like “If you’re hanging around/I’m holding the noose” is a message from Wendy and her new accomplice, Big Xeno. Get gone from Neverland, however you still can.

• And the large-sized Xeno is not alone. Eyeball Tentacle, yes, and that venus flytrap-like lifeform is still in a lab somewhere. And The Fly is still buzzing, too – Ep 7 of A:E includes a funny moment in the lab with Kirsh totally deadpan as the lifeform flies around all crazy and spatters control boxes with acid blood. But the Baby Xeno that bursts from Arthur’s chest is also contained by Kirsh with a net. Too simple by half, but we’ll allow it, because we want to see what it means for Wendy to have access to a growing xeno army.

• “I know just who to use!” This was Boy Kavalier after his demented lightbulb moment to put Eyeball Tentacle into a live subject with the ability to speak. For the upcoming season finale of Alien: Earth, we can only speculate who Boy Kav means. But like we’ve been saying, the island of Neverland is running out of available humans.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.