Alien: Earth | New teasers unveil more unearthly monsters besides the Xenomorph

by Ryan Lambie | April 28, 2025

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A pair of new Alien: Earth teaser trailers show glimpses of “five different lifeforms” – four of them seemingly separate from the Xenomorph.

The arrival of Alien Day over the weekend (the 26th April to be precise) didn’t yield a firm air date for FX’s Alien: Earth series, but it did see the release of two new teaser trailers.

We’ve already had several promos for the forthcoming TV spin off, created by Noah Hawley, but these offer something subtly different. The first, titled Crate, tells us that the series will contain additional alien threats besides the expected Xenomorph. A sequence of shots show some unholy-looking critters moving around in murky containers. Meanwhile, a voiceover tells us:

“This ship collected five different lifeforms from the darkest corners of the universe. Each one a unique, deadly species. Monsters!”

Sure enough, the camera soon reveals five crates, each carrying a number. The crate numbered 005 -3 appears to be significant in some way, because it’s front and centre in both the teaser and its accompanying poster (see above), which shows a Xenomorph loitering on top of it. Does this mean there’s a facehugger inside? Whatever it is appears to have caught the fully-grown Xeno’s interest.

Another crate, marked 008 -4, also appears to be important to the show’s plot. A second teaser trailer, revealed by IGN, shows some sort of creature growing over the course of around three minutes. Its skeletal shapes and fleshy protrusions look like other stages in the Xenomorph’s life cycle, including the suggestive chrysalis introduced in last year’s Alien: Romulus. But the resulting creature doesn’t look like the traditional Xeno, exactly.

We can only guess at what it is or how it’s likely to act when it sees a human.

The crates are stashed aboard a ship called the Maginot, a Weyland Yutani vessel of a similar vintage to the Nostromo from the original Alien – which makes sense, given that Alien: Earth is a prequel to that 1979 movie. At some point on their mission, the crew of the Maginot picks up a quintet of alien specimens, at least one of which wreaks havoc on board. The Maginot eventually crash lands on Earth, and everyone lives happily ever after. Or not.

A new, slightly longer synopsis – again emanating from IGN’s entertainment space hulk – again suggests that the show’s characters will contend with other creatures as well as the Xenomorph:

“When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in the sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth. As members of the crash recovery crew search for survivors among the wreckage, they encounter mysterious predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined. With this new threat unlocked, the search crew must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it.”

The arrival of multiple deadly creatures only deepens one of our long-standing questions about Hawley’s new series. If it takes place two years before the events of Alien, how will it dovetail with existing lore? Does Weyland Yutani successfully contain and cover up the outbreak before it kills everything on the planet? It’s not as though anyone mentioned Xenomorphs visiting Earth when Ripley woke up from hypersleep in Aliens.