In this week's episode of Alien: Earth, the inevitable finally happened: One (well, technically two... but more on that later) of the dangerous extraterrestrial species being held on Neverland Island managed to escape, resulting in our first significant casualty.
Major spoilers follow.
Towards the end of "The Fly," an eager-to-please Tootles, aka Isaac, decides to venture into the containment unit to feed the aliens by himself, making the fatal mistake of ignoring Kirch's (though something tells us the scheming synth knew exactly what would happen) strict instructions to be as careful as possible.
When Isaac enters the cell holding the fly creatures with a plate of yummy metal for them to eat (you can probably guess where this is going), the sheep being controlled by The Eye, aka our old pal T. Ocellus, in the next pod rams the glass, causing the startled hybrid to fall forward, locking the door behind him.
By the time poor Tootles realizes just how royally screwed he is, he's already fly food.
The hybrids are clearly a lot more powerful than a human or (seemingly) a regular synth, and can probably survive quite a bit of damage. However, actor Kit Young has confirmed that it really is toodles for Tootles (sorry).
"You always play this tricky thing... when you're revealing something to an audience, whether it be on-screen or a live performance, you don't want the audience to be behind you, saying, 'Please catch up,' because they might miss the thing, and you're trying to be overly complicated," Young tells Collider. "You need to just say what it is, but you also don't want it to be the other way around, where they can see it coming, and therefore it's not compelling. There's a fine line where you want to be at the same level, but actually, in this case, I think the audience gets it before Isaac does."
"When the locking of the door happens, and he's pushing the door, because it's actually in a wide shot, he's just mildly irritated by it. He's like, 'Oh gosh, how am I gonna get out? Do I have to call someone? They have to come down, the key, how's that gonna work?' He hasn't yet clocked that it's game over. When he turns around and sees the food that he's given, he realizes that if he were in any other container, he'd be fine — but the container he's in, that creature eats what he's made of. It's really the classic horror moment where it's the look-up and the panic, and it's only there where he thinks, 'Okay, I'm in trouble here.'"
Tootles' demise wasn't the end of the drama in this episode, as Slightly capitalized on the accident by setting Arthur up for a Facehugger attack. It looks like Morrow is going to get his specimen after all.
You check out a teaser for episode 7 below.
“When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”
“In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named “Wendy” marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, “Wendy” and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”
Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille, and Moe Bar-El.
The show's supporting cast includes Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge, Andy Yu, Enzo Cilenti, Max Rinehart, Amir Boutrous, Victoria Masoma, Tom Moya, Michael Smiley, Jamie Bisping and Tanapol Chuksrida.