Alien: Earth (Episode 3)

Picking up exactly where the premiere left off, episode three of Alien: Earth begins with Joe and Wendy fighting to survive against a Xenomorph.

And, much to my surprise, that sequence ends with Wendy successfully killing the alien! I definitely didn't expect the creature to die so early on in the season; but I suspect that we'll be seeing other Xenomorphs rather soon. And that we haven't even seen the last of this dead Xenomorph, since it's body is taken into one of Boy Kavalier's laboratories, where I'm sure some alien shenanigans are bound to go down.

But, even though she's able to kill the Xenomorph, Wendy does take some fatal damage herself. I think she even technically dies from the altercation. Thankfully, she's in a synthetic body, so Kavalier and his scientists can have her up and running again in no time.

Meanwhile, Morrow downloads data from the crashed ship into his body, when he comes across Smee and Slightly. He then manages to get bits of vital information out of them - even plants a tracker on Slightly's body - before Kirsch shows up to get them both out of there.

Now, I didn't actually mention Morrow in my review for the premiere, and that's because I wasn't exactly sure what kind of role his character was going to have in this series. By the looks of it, he may be a minor - or major - villain of sorts. After all, he did spend a good chunk of time antagonizing some children. So I think he'll make for a great villain! Especially since Babou Ceesay did an excellent job of playing the character.

With Joe and Wendy spending most of this episode incapacitated, episode three spends its time focusing on the side characters. Which is an incredibly wise thing, in opinion. Because, in order for the audience to be invested in the overarching story being told, it's important to have them care about all of the characters; not just the main ones.

So I liked getting to spend time with characters like Smee and Slightly. Because, while they may have synthetic bodies that are worth millions of dollars, they're still scared and naive children; a fact that Morrow can definitely take advantage of in the future.

On the topic of children; all kids vie for their parents' attention. And Boy Kavalier's hybrids seem to be no exception. Which is exactly why Curly admits her frustration with Wendy's status as Kavalier's favorite hybrid, especially since she prioritized her own brother over Kavalier's mission to capture the alien specimens. Which, ironically enough, may be a discussion that Kavalier may finally consider to be an "interesting conversation."

Back at the lab, Kirsch gets to perform some interesting research on the Xenomorph eggs, a facehugger, and an alien larvae. I don't know what kind of research he's performing - or how it seems to connect with Wendy's health - but I'm sure that'll all be revealed in due time.

And since the show has plenty of time to spare before getting to any major plot reveals, I'm glad that it took the time to allow for some necessary world building. Because, now that some of the tertiary characters feel a bit more fleshed out, it'll be easy to care about all of these characters when alien shenanigans do start to go down. Especially since everyone in the cast did an excellent job of bringing these characters to life. 

So, episode three did a great job of focusing on the world and the smaller characters who inhabit it, and I can't wait to see how that setup will pay off in future episodes. But I guess we'll see what'll happen on the fourth episode of Alien: Earth, once it gets released on Tuesday.