Alien: Earth's Wildest New Idea Should Be Familiar To Terminator Fans

There are some gnarly things happening in the "Alien: Earth" trailer that was released this week, and we don't just mean the space beasties that don't resemble our favorite signature phallic-shaped horrors. Besides a blonde-haired Timothy Olyphant talking about the critical cargo on board the unfortunate shipwreck that we'll be investigating in Noah Hawley's new television series, there's an important additional feature that's being given to androids that could send the synthetics in directions we never could've imagined.

One big surprise teased in the new series is that Sydney Chandler, who looks to be playing the show's lead character, Wendy, is going through a wild transformation. At the Neverland test facility, Wendy (if that is her real name, given the name's connection to the title of the science base), a seemingly severely ill young girl, is having her consciousness transferred into an adult android body for reasons unknown, which reaches a successful outcome. What's interesting about this is that this very procedure is the same one used in another beloved sci-fi franchise — but unfortunately, it occurred in one of that franchise's least liked installments.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to a time when an almost Arnie-less entry to the "Terminator" franchise was made in 2009, by way of the McG-directed "Terminator: Salvation" (which, I'm sure coincidentally, is the one Arnie thought sucked). The film saw Christian Bale as John Connor, the leader of the human resistance, aided by his wife, Kate Connor (Bryce Dallas Howard), and a mysterious stranger named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington). Set in a post-Judgment Day world, the big twist of the picture was that Wright, who had no memory of the machines' attack on humanity, was in fact a former criminal who had donated himself to be transferred into a robot body, making him half-Terminator. The film even ended with Wright giving up his heart to save Connor after experiencing a near-fatal attack from a Terminator as well, proving that machines aren't all bad after all. Hurrah.

As far as daring franchise ideas go, this wasn't particularly terrible. But it was all a matter of execution, which wasn't that great, rightfully putting "Terminator: Salvation" as the best of the worst "Terminator" films. It's this wild advancement in nailed-down franchise lore that now looks to also be getting applied to the "Alien" series, which makes the idea of androids being used as surrogate vessels pretty interesting. In a franchise that has tackled the concept of life and brutal, wince-inducing deaths via xenomorph attacks, could the aliens' threat level get lowered if our heroes can simply come back from the brink?

Imagine that in the year 2120, Weyland-Yutani, exhausted from the efforts of discovering the meaning of life after the botched Prometheus mission, decides to take another route and use the androids it's been building as alternative methods of eternal life. Illness, injury, and aging are no longer factors for the likes of Wendy, who has a new body to run around with. In fact, not even xenomorphs are an issue anymore.

Taking the Chumbawamba approach, is there a possibility that even if Wendy gets knocked down, she can get up again in a brand new body should she get caught on the wrong end of an alien? We've already met multiple artificial humans that look like Ian Holm's Ash (who was last seen resurrected as a CGI'd Rook in "Alien: Romulus") and Michael Fassbender's David. Factoring in Wendy and all these connections with "Peter Pan," could the matter of multiple models for Sydney Chandler's character see her living an "Edge of Tomorrow"-like existence? One that sees her live, die, and repeat close encounters with one of the most terrifying space invaders in popular culture? We'll have to see if that's the case, and who makes it out alive with their rib cage intact when "Alien: Earth" lands on Hulu on August 12, 2025.