Note: This story contains spoilers from “Alien: Earth” Season 1, Episode 8.
Wendy finally had her fill of the Neverland adults controlling her and shifted the power dynamic thanks to her xenomorph friend in the “Alien: Earth” finale.
After trying to pull off an escape with her brother Joe (Alex Lawther) and Nibs (Lily Newmark) in Episode 7, Wendy and the Lost Boys were all rounded up and put in a cage as Neverland went under siege by Weyland-Yutani. Feeling betrayed by everyone from Joe for hurting Nibs to Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) for the obvious reasons, Wendy begins to lean into her connection with the xenomorph to take control of the island.
Sydney Chandler told TheWrap that Wendy’s decisions in the finale are her falling “deeper into the mechanics of her body,” as the question of how human or how synthetic these hybrids really are gets raised.
“I think she’s compartmentalized herself completely,” Chandler said. “I think post-seeing her grave, and seeing her brother mourn the skeleton in the earth further separated her from Marcy. I think as a protective measure as well, she’s fallen deeper into the mechanics of her body, with its weight and its stillness and its lethal abilities. So I think if she started off hot, she’s gone quite cold.”
That coldness comes in the form of working with the xenomorph. The two had been able to communicate since early in the season, but now they’re working in tandem to get off the island. Her decision to lean into that connection with the alien, and how easily she allows it to kill for her, was what Chandler believed was the flipped switch for Wendy’s new coldness.
“It’s the moment where she opens the doors and lets the alien out in the lab, because she’s murdering right,” she said. It’s a very scary aspect to her, that she can be so black and white that she’s deemed these people bad, and they’re an obstacle, and they don’t deserve to live anymore.”
Chandler added: “I think deep down, subconsciously, she is drawn to power as a protective measure. I think she’s been a very isolated kid, and so I think she’s slowly been leaning into it this entire time.”
Wendy’s growing connection with the xenomorph culminating in the finale, with it hunting down Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy soldiers alike and helping to capture Boy Kavalier, had Chandler a bit worried. She wanted to make sure that the alien never felt like Wendy’s pet because it would blunt the terror felt.
“I had multiple conversations about wanting to keep the respect and if not fear/hesitancy towards the alien,” she said. “I really didn’t want it to go down the route of being a pet. There’s obviously a connection, and the way the scripts go, they have these very close ties. By the end, she is able to deploy it. But I really wanted to make sure that there is a mutual respect and still a massive question mark about this creature, because it’s very dangerous. When it comes out of the jungle after killing all those people, the goal is to protect Joe. It’s not a dog coming out of the grass. It’s like a lion.”
Season 1 ends with the Lost Boys in control of Neverland and their biggest tormentors — Boy K, Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), and Morrow (Babou Ceesay) — locked behind bars. In an episode drenched in blood, Wendy chose to keep the ones most responsible for her treatment alive rather than killing them. Chandler thinks it’s because she wants to draw out their misery and maybe even witness what Wendy and the Lost Boys plan for their “rule.”
“I think there’s a kind of sadistic enjoyment in seeing them as helpless as they’ve been and being able to tell Dame Sylvia ‘you put six children in the ground,’” Chandler said. “I think especially with Boy K, to kill him would be too easy. She’s kind of called checkmate on him, and wants to see what he would do with that. There’s a lot of rage underneath her that you forget that she’s a kid who has been so horrendously hurt. The betrayal is so strong that she doesn’t want to just flip the switch yet.”
“Alien: Earth” is now streaming on Hulu. The show has not yet been renewed for Season 2.
