The ending of Alien: Earth episode 3 was centered around the surgery that Kirsh was performing on one of the Facehuggers retrieved from the eggs on the USCSS Maginot in order to [Spoiler Alert] put a tadpole extracted from it into Hermit’s lung. So, while everyone was busy retrieving all the extraterrestrial organisms that were on the crashed spaceship, Hermit and Wendy were fighting a Xenomorph. During that plot-armor-heavy battle, Hermit got seriously injured, as he began vomiting blood, and Wendy sustained damage to her system, which caused her to shut down. While Arthur worked on Wendy, Hermit was taken to the emergency room so that he could be stitched up—or so we thought. Because from the looks of it, Hermit had gone from being a part of a rescue mission to being in need of some good old rescuing. Whether or not he’ll be himself anymore by the time Wendy finds out what the Prodigy Corporation has done is the big question. That said, what do Kirsh and Boy Kavalier wish to achieve by putting a Xeno-tadpole in Hermit’s lung?
As per my knowledge of the world of Alien, the process that leads to the birth of a Xenomorph requires a live host. You have the egg and the Facehugger inside it. A biological organism has to approach it. The Facehugger hugs your face and lays a parasitic embryo in your body. The Facehugger chokes out your respiratory system, and its own flaps act as the temporary respirators. Once the embryo starts growing, the Facehugger dies. The host doesn’t feel anything going on in their body, and eventually the Chestburster bursts out of their chest, and the Xenomorph is born. Now, I guess there has been speculation about where the parasitic embryo goes once it has been implanted. Does it just sit in the chest cavity, or does it develop in one of the lungs? Well, Alien: Earth episode 3 posited the theory that it’s the lung that’s essential to the growth of a Xenomorph. Since Kirsh had read the USCSS Maginot’s manifest, he knew about the birthing process, but I doubt that the scientists who were working on the eggs had a complete idea of what happened once a human was impregnated by a Facehugger. So, I think he is spitballing a little here. Hence, he’s trying to create the Chestburster through a lung that’s detached from Hermit’s body. Which brings us to the question: will it actually create a chestburster? We’ll get the answer to that in the next episode. Until that comes out, here’s my speculation:I am not really sure it’s going to work. Yes, we saw the embryo getting access to blood, muscle, and everything else that it needs to grow. But what if Kirsh is wrong and the embryo doesn’t just need access to the host’s respiratory system but its digestive system as well? Just a lung that’s being kept “functional” artificially won’t give it everything that it needs.
So, yeah, I think this experiment of Kirsh’s is going to fail, and Prodigy is going to inevitably turn towards the population of the city to harvest for guinea pigs. Yes, yes, they’ll first try it on the animals, but Boy Kavalier has seen the Xenomorph’s corpse. He won’t be satisfied with tiny Xenos, and he won’t stop until he gets the real deal. Prodigy City is anyway a fascist state where the people are struggling to make ends meet. If Boy Kavalier says that one’s family will never need to fight for money again if they give up a live host for their Xeno-experiment, they’ll fold within seconds, thereby allowing the Prodigy Corporation to make their own Xenomorphs. That brings us to the topic of Xeno-monopoly. To a sane mind, creating a Xenomorph seems dumb because it’s just too powerful to be controlled. But capitalists and fascists think otherwise, and they think every diabolical thing in the universe ought to be under their thumb. They want to wage wars and colonize planets, and the Xenomorph is the ultimate weapon. So far, I think Weyland-Yutani has had a monopoly on creating Xenomorphs because of David’s work on the black goo in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. I am not sure if the company’s competitors had been aware of their secret project so far, but now they do, and Boy Kavalier will do everything to let them know that he can make deadly aliens with acid blood too. However, there’s an issue. Weyland-Yutani has access to eggs, embryos, and more; Prodigy doesn’t. Hence, the goal here is to make a Queen Xenomorph, because then you have an infinite supply of eggs. After that, as long as you have humans, you can keep creating Xenomorphs and have your own little Xeno-army. But how does one get a Queen Xenomorph? The lore on that is a bit sketchy. A queen is either born via a queen-hatching egg, or one of the Xenomorphs, also referred to as drones, turns itself into a queen in the absence of an actual queen Xenomorph. So, whoever achieves that wins this inhumane race, which’ll probably lead to the destruction of Earth unless Wendy learns how to control the Xenos.
Yes, episode 3 of Alien: Earth provided more proof that there’s something in Wendy’s system that allows her to tap into the frequency that Xeno-eggs use to communicate. How can she do that? Why can she do that? I am not really sure. But I feel that that’ll be integral to the survival of the planet once all these companies go haywire in their pursuit of creating a Xenomorph or a Queen Xenomorph. Will that make her the leader of Earth? I don’t think humans will ever allow a hybrid to be their ruler. I suppose she’ll be requested to be the Pied Piper who’ll use her powers to take the rogue Xenomorphs over the proverbial cliff and rid the planet of this acidic plague. In exchange, maybe she’ll get her brother back. Yes, Hermit is alive. Yes, humans can live with one lung. So, Hermit can breathe just fine. However, I am afraid that he isn’t completely out of danger. If the artificial lung impregnation process doesn’t work, Kirsh and Boy Kavalier are certainly going to turn Hermit into their first Xeno-host. Wendy will protest against that, and maybe she’ll be forced to bring in human hosts in order to keep Prodigy from turning her brother into a Xeno-incubator. Initially, she’ll oblige, but once things get out of control, I suppose she’ll design a rescue mission that’ll allow her and her brother to just live peacefully, free of the burden of capitalist, self-destructive corporations. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Alien: Earth episode 3. What are your thoughts on the same? Feel free to let me know through the comments section below.
