The Cutprice Guignol

Finally, after what has felt like three whole Prometheus-es worth of talk, talk, and more talk, there is finally something happening on this bloody island.

Emergence is an appropriate name for this episode, as the full plot of this season has finally (sort of) managed to make it out of its horrid alien chrysalis – an episode of tension, that both suffers and benefits from what came, before depending on which character we’re kicking around with at any given moment. Some things emerge (there I go again), both literally in the lot, and due to the plot itself to showcase the strengths – and not-insignificant weaknesses – of the show so far.

Let us begin with what is definetly the most controversial creative decision of this particular Alien story. Since episode two, Wendy (or Marcy, but that is another headache for another time) has been able to communicate with one of the Xenomorphs foetuses from the crashed ship. That Xenomorph, as it has grown to full maturity (with the help of her brother Hermit’s lung) has formed a relationship of sorts with Wendy. This relationship has coincided with various events that have shattered Wendy’s ideas of her and her fellow Lost Boys place in the grand scheme of things – whether it is how Boy, Kirsch and the scientists have treated the alien lifeforms as experiments and specimens, how Boy reacted flippantly to the death of Isaac with no apparent thought or care, and her own mortality along with that of her fellow children-turned-experiments. At least she can rely on her pseudo-parents, right? Wrong, as Dame is still trying to convince herself that removing Nibs’ memories was a healing choice and not a brutal destruction of agency.

Everything and everyone around Wendy is telling her that she and her siblings are not a special as they once were told. Even her brother, Hermit, only grudgingly helps her try and rescue the others – his reticence is more due to requirement than active disinterest, as his time to get his sister off the island is limited, but still. This leads to Wendy joining forces with her Xenomorph – I think, crucially, not actively controlling it, but asking it to protect her the way she has thought she was protecting it, allowing it an agency that she feels she and the Lost Boys have been denied. I’ve seen plenty of pushback against this choice to give Wendy such a connection with the Xenomorph but, I actually like where it’s going, provided it remains as a relationship between Wendy and this particular Xenomorph rather than a David-lite Queen of the Aliens storyline. The strength of this plot is simple – I understand Wendy’s journey from wide-eyed super-cyborg to becoming jaded in a very human way the more she sees of the world she was (re)born into.

The downside to this is that the Xenomorph action did come off as a bit flat. Wendy’s connection with the Xenomorph meant that she, and whoever she was with, were safe from an attack from that Xenomorph. Much of, if not all, the tension in the films of the Alien franchise is that this perfect and horrific killing machine is after everyone, with our leads in particular danger. Action-wise, Arthur’s death is the best moment of the episode – the glimpse we got of his interactions with Smee and Slighty, a fatherly instant before the whole thing is flipped on its head as he becomes a parent in a very different way, were downright inspired. They might have had a little more impact if we’d seen more of his interactions with the children throughout the series as a whole, but hey, that would have cut into vital Close-Ups of Boy’s Feet Screentime, wouldn’t it?

Speaking of – now, we finally start to see Kirsch’s long game take shape. It’s a good one, and one any synthetic of this franchise would be proud of. Kirsch allowing Morrow to manipulate Slightly into taking Arthur to his death by face-hugger, was not some 4D chess move on behalf of Yutani, or a way of screwing over Boy. Instead, it was a way to create and trap a Xenomorph that can be legally owned by Prodigy. A contingency plan in case of an attack like the one Morrow was making, or if the aliens managed to escape – it contextualizes a lot of Timothy Olyphant’s performance this season, and, honestly, makes a lot of it even better in retrospect.

Emergence is a great improvement on the trudging pace of the previous episodes, even if I can’t help but feel that some of these revelations might have been better spaced out over the rest of the story rather than fitted in to what seems to be functionally a two-part finale. The question is whether Hawley and company can stick the landing next week – or if the pacing problems are going to do them in at the final hurdle.

By Kevin Boyle

(header image via Variety)