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Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Alien: Earth season 1.The finale of Alien: Earth was a secret remake of this beloved 2014 sci-fi thriller from A24, and it’s just as thought-provoking as the original. The ending of Alien: Earth season 1 provided us with a great and suspenseful finale episode. The Lost Boys took control of Neverland Island, Wendy sided with the Xenomorphs over humanity, and it did a lot to set up Alien: Earth season 2.
There’s plenty to talk about and analyze in the final episode of Alien: Earth season 1, but one thing flew under the radar: the finale is essentially a remake of a classic A24 movie. While Alien: Earth is obviously part of the Alien canon, its final episode was apparently heavily inspired by a completely different science fiction movie.
Alien: Earth’s Finale Feels Like A Remake Of Ex Machina
The finale of Alien: Earth feels exactly like a remake of A24’s Ex Machina. Ex Machina follows Nathan, a tech mogul who has made an advanced artificial intelligence named Ava. He invites Caleb, a programmer at his company, to see if Ava has truly gained consciousness. Ava eventually manipulates Caleb and hacks Nathan’s house to kill him and escape into the world.
The plot and characters of Ex Machina are almost exactly the same as the finale of Alien: Earth. Boy Kavalier is Nathan, Hermit is Caleb, and Wendy is Ava. Wendy and the rest of the Lost Boys — themselves AIs, just like Ava — hack the Prodigy facility and manipulate the technology inside to escape, just as Ava did in Ex Machina, and take revenge against their creators and the people who were obsessed with them.
It’s also worth mentioning how similar Wendy becomes to Ava in Alien: Earth‘s finale. Like Ava, Wendy finally leans into her own agency and identity, not as Marcy or the Wendy Boy Kavalier wanted, but as the Wendy she decided to be. Like Ava, Wendy rejects the cruelty of humanity, though she does so in favor of the Xenomorphs. She also finally shows her creator that she can’t be controlled, and that she’s her own person, just as Ava did with Nathan.
Alien: Earth and Ex Machina even bring up the same existential questions. Both the show and the film ask us what separates an advanced computer from being a person, and what happens when that advanced machine would do with free will. They’re both cautionary tales about artificial intelligence and how humanity treats its creations, and they both deliver their messages very effectively.
Alien: Earth Has Now “Remade” Two Classic Sci-Fi Thrillers
Ex Machina, interestingly enough, isn’t the first classic sci-fi thriller movie Alien: Earth remade. Alien: Earth episode 5 was essentially a remake of the original Alien from 1979, complete with a Xenomorph running amok on a Weyland-Yutani vessel and all the slasher horror that goes along with that premise. While Ex Machina isn’t as iconic as Alien, Earth did tackle them both.
Alien: Earth‘s “remakes” of Alien and Ex Machina also have another thing in common: they’re not really remakes. Both episode 5 and 8 have significant differences from the movies they were clearly inspired by. Most obviously, there are several more aliens aboard the Maginot than the sole Xenomorph aboard the Nostromo, and Ava never had a Xenomorph as an attack dog in Ex Machina.
Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley said that he is hopeful the show will be renewed for a second season and that he’s already thinking about storylines in an interview with ScreenRant.
It seems that Noah Hawley, the creator of Alien: Earth, has a penchant for putting a new spin on some classic sci-fi movies. The new ideas he and the rest of the writers bring to the table do an incredible job of updating the movies they reference and adding a new spin on things viewers already love. It’s a wonder what new sci-fi movie Alien: Earth season 2 could take a crack at next.
