The first reviews for Alien: Earth, the new series set two years before the events of the original 1979 film, are in—and critics are calling it one of the best projects the franchise has seen in a long time. The show currently holds a score of 86 on Metacritic and an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Here’s what critics are saying:
Andor for Alien, Hawley’s series is a rare prequel that serves to enrich its source material, breathing new life into a once-tired franchise. This is the Alien resurrection we’ve long been waiting for.
“Alien: Earth” is the most satisfying entry in the franchise in a long, long time — and one of the best television shows this year.
A heady, sprawling, occasionally unwieldy but eventually thrilling epic about personhood, hubris and, of course, the primal pleasure of watching people get absolutely rocked by space monsters.
Simultaneously providing fans with the eggs (Easter and Xenomorph) they expect, and shedding concerns of fitting into continuity, Noah Hawley has made an amazing piece of science fiction on the strength of solid production and creature design, an incredible cast, and needle drops that make me want a cigarette.
Plenty of elements of this show are fun revisions on a classic, but Wendy's story is enough to make you wonder if science fiction will ever get a new gimmick.
The series is slower, dreamier, and hallucinatory than many of the Alien films outside of Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection, snapping the audience out of its hypnotic spell with either sudden, shocking bursts of violence, or with the well-curated ’90s alt-rock needle drops that end every episode.
To be fair, this is a series meant to be watched on a weekly basis rather than binged all at once, but the energy here is so flat that I imagine viewers might get fed up and abandon ship early rather than sticking with the entire mission.
The first two episodes of Alien: Earth premiere on August 12, with a total of eight episodes planned. The finale will air on September 23.
As a reminder, the new film Predator: Badlands is also set to release this November. You can watch the trailer here.