Editor’s note: The below contains major spoilers for the Alien: Earth finale.
The first two Alien films are among the most terrifying sci-fi horror movies ever made, but then the franchise lost its way by trying too hard to be different or getting bogged down in mythology. Alien: Romulus was a nice return to form, but Noah Hawley‘s FX series Alien: Earth has been even better. The Fargo creator has found the perfect way to do something new with compelling characters, while also giving us plenty of xenomorph action. What’s surprising is that the iconic alien monsters aren’t the scariest creatures on the show. That distinction goes to the creepy crawly little octopus eye known as T. Ocellus. In the season finale of Alien Earth, the eye found a human host, and it’s the most horrifying choice you could think of.
T. Ocellus Is the Scariest Monster in ‘Alien: Earth’
Even the worst of the Alien movies (we’re looking at you, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem) could still be a fun time because of the practical effects of the xenomorphs. No matter how bad a plot they were put in, those bug-like aliens were terrifying. The fact that they weren’t in Prometheus when Ridley Scott returned to the franchise is the reason why so many fans were disappointed, but Fede Alvarez made them scary again in Alien: Romulus. Hawley recognized their importance to the action for Alien: Earth, but he wasn’t content to just do the same old thing. Instead, when the Yutani-owned Maginot crash lands on Earth, it doesn’t only contain the xenomorph but several other alien species. We’re introduced to other creatures that will make your skin crawl, like alien flies, ticks, and plants, but it’s the smallest of all, the T. Ocellus, that steals the show.
The octopus-like eye is the most riveting alien of all because it’s something we haven’t seen before. It’s like a parasite in how it kills its prey, then buries itself in an eye socket to take over their form. Never has a sheep ever been as scary as the one in Alien: Earth. Many times, it’s shown to be especially smart. It doesn’t operate on a predator’s instinct in the way a xenomorph does; instead, it thinks and takes its time, planning out what to do next.
Boy Kavalier Wants To Put T. Ocellus Into a Human in ‘Alien: Earth’
Trillionaire genius Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is a bored young man desperately seeking something that will challenge him at an advanced level. He hopes to earn that with the Lost Boys, a new creation made from the consciousness of sick children transplanted into synthetic bodies, but the hybrids quickly prove inferior in his mind. Boy Kavalier needs more, and he is immediately drawn to the alien eye. Riveted by its capabilities, he decides to have the eye implanted into a sheep. Then, rather than being scared when it stares him down, Boy Kavalier is in awe.
Over and over, Boy Kavalier tells the sheep that he wishes it could talk, especially because he knows it can understand him. This is proven when the boy genius asks the sheep to name the next number in Pi and the animal stomps out the answer. If it’s already able to show so much intelligence in such a simple animal, imagine what it could be inside a human being that can actually talk back.
This idea creates one of the biggest mysteries of Alien: Earth’s last three episodes, as Boy Kavalier lets it be known that he’s going to find a human host for T. Ocellus. The horrifying question is who it could be. While Boy Kavalier wants to put it into someone weak and dumb to see just how smart this alien really is, there are several potential teases, like a poor Prodigy bodyguard standing in the background, or Atom Eins (Ade Edmondson). In the season finale, Kavalier chooses Joe (Alex Lawther) as the eye’s next host, but thankfully, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) shows up in time to save her brother from the alien looking to rip his eye out.
‘Alien: Earth’ Sets Up Arthur Sylvia as a Terrifying Host in the Finale
Arthur (David Rysdahl) looking scared in ‘Alien: Earth’.Image via FX/Hulu
In the finale’s closing moments, T. Ocellus chooses its new human host, and it’s a choice you most likely weren’t thinking of. With the alien eye having escaped and on the run, it ends up outside and on the beach of the Prodigy research island. There lies the rotting corpse of Arthur (David Rysdahl), who was sacrificed by Slightly (Adarah Gourav) to the facehugger. He’s decaying, with a hole in his chest from the xenomorph’s birth that has now become the home for a crab, but the moment the alien eye sees the body, it crawls right into his eye socket. We’ve seen the eye briefly in a human before, and it lived in the sheep immediately after killing it, but will it be able to reanimate a body that’s been dead for much longer and falling apart from the inside out? That question is answered when, after a few tense seconds, Arthur sits up. We don’t get a good look at him in his new form, but it’s enough to be pretty scary.
Arthur, as the new host, works to perfection on two levels. For one, the horror has just been taken to a new level. It’s one thing for this alien to live in a human body, but to walk around in one who has been dead for so long takes this into zombie territory. Will Arthur shamble around like the living dead and continue to decay with a massive hole in his chest, and how will he sound? It sends chills down your spine to merely envision the T. ocellus using rotting vocal cords to speak.
Arthur, as the alien’s newest host, is not only scary but heartbreaking, but he was a good character worth rooting for. He cared about Wendy and the Lost Boys, and lost his job at Prodigy when he refused to wipe Nibs’ (Lily Newmark) memory. When Joe wanted to get Wendy out, Arthur showed him the way. He may have been a scientist, but he also had a compassionate soul above all else. Now, something evil has taken its place.
Speaking with Collider about the finale, Rysdahl said he drew inspiration for the character he’s readying to play in a potential Season 2 from Men in Black. That might have been a comedy, but remember how scary Vincent D’Onofrio was when his character’s body was taken over by an alien? Hawley, meanwhile, focused on the tragedy of the character and what this choice will do to the audience’s emotions, telling Collider:
“He really is the moral center of the show and has, on some level, the worst death of everybody — and in this sort of insult to injury, now taking this incredibly kindhearted, moral person, and turning them into a vessel for something that seems pretty evil, it complicates your feelings about him.”
The alien wouldn’t have been as terrifying if it had planted itself in some guard or worker we had no attachment to, but having it live inside Arthur makes us sit up and pay attention even more. If Hawley’s FX show secures a renewal for Season 2, Alien: Earth is about to try to make you feel sorry for an alien zombie.