The FX science fiction horror series, Alien: Earth, scares, convinces, and shines the most in this week’s episode 5, as we are taken to the past for the entirety of the episode, except for a few minutes at the very end, and a whole lot of depth is added to the backstory. Following the plotline of Morrow successfully corrupting Slightly’s mind into making the hybrid work for him, which we saw in the previous episode, the show now takes us back to the incidents aboard the USCSS Maginot that led to this dangerous situation in the first place. Alien: Earth episode 5 also provides an insight into why Morrow had let Zoya Zaveri, the executive officer, die aboard the spaceship, and into what his plans at present are.
Spoiler Alert
How had chaos erupted on the Weyland-Yutani spaceship?
Alien: Earth episode 5 begins 17 days before the USCSS Maginot crashed on Earth, from the perspective of the ship’s security officer, Morrow. Waking up from cryosleep, Morrow thinks that it is already time for a changeover of shifts, but is confused to hear the alarms blaring. Clem, the young man who wakes him up, explains that a fire has broken out on the ship, and more concerningly, some of the alien specimens have escaped and even attacked two crew members. With extreme fear and worry, Clem reports that the captain of the ship, Dinsdale, has been killed. While this means that there is naturally a race to become the new captain, or leader, for the crew, Morrow is not interested as of now, and he lets Zoya Zaveri, the executive officer, play the role.
As Morrow reports to the medical bay, he learns that Captain Dinsdale and another crew member, Bronksi, had rushed to the containment area after a fire had mysteriously broken out, where they were attacked by two facehugger aliens. Although both of them were still technically alive, despite their faces being covered by the alien bodies, when they were brought to the medical bay, the actions of the medical officer, Rahim, had led to Dinsdale’s death. With the sole intention of helping his crewmates, Rahim had tried to cut the alien off the captain’s face, but in turn, it had bled acid all over the man’s face, killing him instantly. It is for this reason that the team decides to not do anything to Bronski, who is still alive, but simply follow the company protocol of putting anyone attacked by aliens into cryosleep so that more research, and possibly treatment, can be carried out when back on the home planet.
But this plan had ultimately worked against the crewmates, as killing the alien, along with Bronski, would have actually been the best way forward. This was never an option, though, considering that Bronski was quite popular among his crew members, and also because he had been having a romantic affair with Zaveri, the acting captain at present. Therefore, she ordered him to be put in cryosleep, and she often visited his cryochamber out of the genuine feelings she had developed for him. But contrary to the beliefs of the crew members, and the beliefs of all humans in general, the facehugger is not affected by the freezing temperatures of the cryochamber, and it continues doing what it is supposed to do—putting the alien embryo inside the human host so that it can grow into a chestburster and have its own life.
Thus, the next time the crew comes to check on the cryochamber, they find a massive hole in the glass and Bronski dead, as the chestburster has left the host fully grown into the menacing Xenomorph. Soon, the creature tracks down and kills Teng, the seemingly perverted crew member of the Maginot. Over the next few days, absolute chaos erupts on the spaceship, as the crew get killed left, right, and center. Chibuzo, the science officer regularly observing the various alien specimens, is evidently very affected by the strange occurrences, and she leaves one of the jars uncovered, leading to an alien insect crawling out and laying eggs in her bottle, contaminating the water in it.
When Malachite, the young engineer’s mate, drinks this water, he is contaminated as well and ends up on the verge of dying after coughing up blood a few minutes later. As his body is brought in for an attempt to diagnose and treat him, Rahim tries to pull out the numerous insects crawling inside his body, which results in the aliens letting off dangerously toxic fumes, which do not only kill Malachite but also Rahim and Chibuzo as well, as the gas spreads throughout the medical bay very quickly. Shmuel, the lead engineer, gets taken over by the T. Ocellus alien and killed soon after, ultimately leaving Morrow and Zaveri as the only surviving crew members towards the end of the episode.
Who was the saboteur aboard the USCSS Maginot?
Long before absolute chaos broke out on the spaceship, Morrow had figured out that the fire, along with the alien species getting mysteriously released, must have been the actions of a saboteur. Being the security officer of the expedition, he had access to all the security camera footage, going through which, Morrow spotted someone sneaking into the containment bay and setting a fire, along with releasing a few of the alien specimens. Incidentally, the fire had also damaged the Maginot’s navigation controls, and the massive spaceship was now hurtling through space towards Earth, meaning that a crash was imminent.
There was already the glaring possibility that the saboteur must have intended this to happen as well, and when Morrow finally went through the communication tapes, he realized that causing the Maginot to crash had been the primary intention of the saboteur. The communication tapes contained all the conversations that the crew members had with people outside the spaceship, essentially being a call log. From this log, Morrow found one of the crew members, named Petrovich, having regular conversations with Boy Kavalier, the CEO of Prodigy. This confirmed that Petrovich had sabotaged the Maginot, since Prodigy was the rival corporation to Weyland-Yutani, and no crew member would have had conversations with any Prodigy worker, let alone their CEO, otherwise.
Incidentally, Petrovich’s wife, who was most probably a part of the Weyland-Yutani expedition as well, had been infected by aliens on one of the planets when alien creatures had crawled into her eye, leading to her death. Petrovich had not only lost his wife to the aliens, but he was also unable to keep her body for a proper burial later on, as the corporation took away the dead body for further research, as per protocol. This had made him turn extremely vengeful against Weyland-Yutani, which led to him seeking a connection with Kavalier and hatching a plan of sabotage with him. Petrovich had promised to steer the spaceship off its set course and lead it to crash at New Siam, the city controlled by Prodigy, so that Kavalier would get all the alien specimens collected during the expedition. In return, he had been promised enormous amounts of money and immortality through Prodigy’s hybrid program, although whether Petrovich would have actually received any of it is doubtful.
Around the same time that Morrow discovered this truth, he had also realized that one of the crew members supposed to be in cryosleep was actually awake, as suggested by Teng. This crewmate was actually Petrovich himself, and he had avoided any suspicion at first because he was supposed to be in a sleep state. As soon as Petrovich realized that his secret was out, he launched an attack on Morrow and successfully killed Clem as well. However, he was no match for the cyborg, and Morrow killed Petrovich, meaning that his plan of sabotage had ultimately not worked out. Despite not being able to get the immense wealth and immortality, though, Petrovich must have considered himself to have succeeded, as he did manage to get revenge on Weyland-Yutani by crash-landing the spaceship in Prodigy territory.
What had happened in Morrow’s past?
Episode 5 of Alien: Earth provides a backstory to Morrow, gradually turning the character less villainous and one-sided than he had earlier seemed to be. Despite not being fully human, per se, Morrow does experience human feelings of loss and anger, which are particularly seen when he sits down to look at some of his personal belongings aboard the Maginot. Unlike most of the other crew members, who still had family and friends on Earth to regularly talk to through the communications network, Morrow can only stare at some old letters for the same effect. When he had left for the expedition, Morrow had left his young daughter, the only family that he had, all alone at their house. However, when the girl was just 19, a seemingly accidental fire at their house had taken her life.
Morrow had not been able to help his daughter, owing to the fact that he was already on the expedition at the time, and he could not even attend her funeral to bid her goodbye for the last time. There is also a sense that he could have definitely saved his daughter or avoided the fire completely had he been on Earth at the time. It is possible that the fire that Petrovich intentionally causes on the spaceship reminds Morrow of the fire that killed his daughter, which is why he turns so angry and cold during his pursuit of the saboteur. Whether the girl’s death was really accidental can also be something important for Alien: Earth to look at in the upcoming episodes, as Morrow might have actually been a victim of conspiracy as well.
Was the T. Ocellus trying to help the humans?
The strange eye-octopus alien, officially classified as T. Ocellus in the Alien franchise, had seemed to have villainous intent in Alien: Earth so far, as it was seen burrowing into the eye sockets of humans and cats, replacing the real eyeball and taking control of the being in this manner. However, in episode 5, the movements and actions of the T. Ocellus seem to suggest that the creature might actually be trying to help humans, instead of harming them. It is first seen staring at Chibuzo in such a creepy manner that she even makes a snide remark at it, even though the alien is not supposed to understand humans. Then, when the Ocellus spots one of the insects crawling out of the jar, it repeatedly taps on the glass as if to warn Chibuzo of the matter. Minutes later, when it manages to free itself from the jar, the alien being once again seems desperate to help and protect the humans.
Eventually, the T. Ocellus takes control of Shmuel and puts up a crucial fight against the Xenomorph, which clearly shows that it sees the Xenomorphs as threats, and possibly as prey as well. However, this does not technically confirm that it is friendly towards humans; the T. Ocellus knows Xenomorphs to be enemies but might not have any stance on human beings, as it is surely encountering humans for the first time. Alien: Earth has been satisfyingly convincing in its world-building so far, and so the T. Ocellus might turn out to be just an alien being without any friendly feelings towards humans. Perhaps it was just desperate to free itself, and at the moment, its actions to protect itself from the Xenomorph ultimately work in favor of the humans.
Why did Morrow let Zaveri be killed by the Xenomorph?
The mystery behind Morrow having abandoned Zaveri and letting the Xenomorph kill her, which we had witnessed for the first time in Alien: Earth episode 1, is now solved, and while Morrow had come across as the ruthless cyborg antagonist at first, this is actually not the case. In reality, it is Morrow’s extreme loyalty towards the Weyland-Yutani corporation and his stern dedication towards the expedition mission that make him act the way he does, while a strong sense of vengeance works in him. While the backstory, about him losing his daughter while being on the mission, made it seem likely that Morrow would grow vengeful against the corporation that had physically taken him away from the girl, quite the opposite had actually happened.
At the end of the Alien: Earth episode 5, it is revealed that Morrow had been taken in by Yutani (the grandmother of the current head of the corporation) when he was just a young boy living a life of extreme struggle on the streets. One of his hands had been affected by palsy, and Yutani literally donated him a cybernetic arm, turning him into a cyborg, but also, more importantly, giving him a fresh shot at life. Therefore, Morrow remains ever grateful to the corporation, and perhaps even considers them to be his owners in a sense, which is why he felt personally betrayed by Petrovich’s sabotage. Besides, if Weyland-Yutani were to lose the aliens to Prodigy, then the whole expedition would have failed, which would mean that Morrow would have technically lost his daughter in vain.
With very strong human feelings and senses, Morrow never wanted such a situation to pan out, and he actively took the responsibility of not just securing the aliens but also destroying Prodigy. But he needed to survive in order to do so, and sacrificing Zaveri would give him the crucial time to feed wrong information to the Mother AI and climb into the escape pod. Zaveri was already expendable to Morrow, as he considered her to be a weak leader, who herself had broken the rules by getting intimate with a crewmate, Bronski. Therefore, he did not hesitate to sacrifice her life and calmly locked her out of the control room.
What is Morrow’s plan at present?
In Alien: Earth episode 5’s ending, we are brought back to the present time, when Morrow visits the Weyland-Yutani headquarters and personally meets with Yutani to stress his allegiance towards her. The fact that he remains loyal towards the corporation means that Morrow had been genuinely wanting to secure the aliens back in episode 2 so that he could take them back to Yutani. Therefore, he has now infiltrated Prodigy by bringing Slightly on to his side in order to get the aliens back for the sake of his corporation. But there might indeed be a different side to his plan, as he openly tells Yutani that he intends to kill Boy Kavalier and bring an end to Prodigy. Perhaps Morrow wants Slightly to take a human close to the Xenomorph eggs only so that a facehugger infects the human and eventually gives birth to an adult Xenomorph, which would kill everyone at the Prodigy facility on the Neverland island. How exactly this whole situation pans out will be interesting to watch in the upcoming episodes of FX’s Alien: Earth.
