Despite it’s rave reviews and season 2 renewal, Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth is actually worsening a problem Alien has had for over a decade. Alien: Earth has done a lot of good for the franchise. It’s a big hit with critics, scoring 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and viewers liked it enough for Disney to renew Alien: Earth season 2. Earth also continued the revitalization of the franchise that Alien: Romulus began and breathed new life into Alien.

For all the good it has done, however, Alien: Earth also has some problems. For example, Earth mostly ignored Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, it completely contradicted the Alien vs. Predator movies, and it fundamentally changed our understanding of Weyland-Yutani. One of the show’s worst problems will only get more severe in season 2: its effect on the wider Alien timeline.

Alien: Earth Season 2 Will Continue To Make The Alien Timeline More Complicated

The timeline of the Alien franchise has long been a bit of a mess, but Alien: Earth only makes it worse. The first four Alien movies were quite spread out, but they mostly kept the timeline in tact. There was plenty of space between films, and all the horrors Ripley and her clone were subjected to mostly made sense. Even the Alien vs. Predator spinoff movies fit into a mostly sensible albeit very broad timeline.

Alien: Earth, however, takes place just two years before the events of Alien, in 2120. In that short time, Earth has introduced Xenomorphs on the human homeworld, four new corporations fighting for dominance of the planet, an “arms race” to secure human immortality, cyborgs, and godlike synthetics running amok with a Xenomorph attack dog. Earth has added so much lore to the Alien franchise at a point in the timeline that was already bursting with huge events.

That’s also not considering the new additions to the franchise Alien: Earth season 2 will make. There’s no telling how Wendy and the Lost Boys’ war with Weyland-Yutani will play out. Earth season 2 could easily introduce another huge development to the Alien franchise even closer to the events of the original Alien that will make this two-year period more eventful than the nearly 200 years between Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.

Don’t Try To Fit Prometheus And Covenant Into The Alien: Earth Timeline

The problems Alien: Earth has introduced to the franchise’s timeline only get worse when you consider Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Though Ridley Scott’s prequel movies were supposed to tell the origin story of the Xenomorphs, they take place far too closely in time to the original Alien to actually explain the ancient eggs the Nostromo found on LV-426 (even though there’s a lot of evidence to indicate Xenomorphs existed before David).

It was bad enough when Prometheus and Covenant only had to fit in before the original Alien, but now Earth takes place even earlier. The voyage of the USCSS Maginot also took 65 years round trip, meaning Morrow and his crew found Xenomorph specimens approximately five years before Michael Fassbender’s David even saw an Engineer. Prometheus and Covenant simply don’t fit into Alien: Earth‘s timeline.

Alien: Earth Is Better Perceived As Its Own Thing

Patrick Brown/FX

The only way to reconcile the havoc Alien: Earth has wreaked on the Alien timeline is by viewing it as a spinoff, rather than a fully canon addition to the franchise. There was already some evidence that Alien: Earth isn’t canon, in the same way Noah Hawley’s Fargo series isn’t canon to the Coen brothers film of the same name. It’s better to think of Alien: Earth as a separate story inspired by Alien rather than a fully fledged installment in the franchise.

Related

How Alien: Earth Fits Into The Movie Franchise Timeline

Alien: Earth is set to take the franchise in never-before-seen directions, but how does the new TV series fit into the wider narrative?

If you consider Alien: Earth just a spinoff, all these timeline problems disappear. Prometheus and Covenant still make sense as an origin story, even if they don’t have a real conclusion, and the two years before the original Alien aren’t weirdly over-eventful. Plus, the addition of new companies, new alien species, and the race for immortality can be written off entirely if you don’t like them. Alien: Earth should be considered a very fun spinoff, and the timeline issues should mostly be ignored.

Release Date

August 12, 2025

Directors

Dana Gonzales, Ugla Hauksdóttir, Noah Hawley

Writers

Bob DeLaurentis

• 

•