Episode 6 shifts the story back to the present after the tense flashback of episode 5, which detailed Maginot’s tragic final hours and its devastating crash. Titled “The Fly,” this chapter functions as a classic setup episode, carefully positioning every major character for the battles and revelations still to come in the season’s second half. Yet even as it arranges the pieces on the board, the show makes clear that the tension is escalating. The danger feels sharper, the atmosphere heavier, and in true Alien fashion, the rising stakes demand sacrifice.
The long-teased fly, the final creature of the five captured specimens, finally makes its entrance, and its arrival is nothing short of deadly. While Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) escorts Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) to a tense meeting with Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver), the responsibility of tending to the monsters falls to young hybrid Smee (Jonathan Ajaji). Eager to demonstrate his growing independence, Smee takes on the task alone.
He is monitoring the containment cell with the flies, whose nest is disturbingly built from scraps of metal, spare parts, and jagged debris. The Eye-octopus quickly takes note of their unusual diet. When Smee carelessly leaves the cage door ajar, the creature manipulates the sheep it controls to slam the wall, locking him inside with the swarm. Trapped, the young “Lost Boy” barely has time to register the danger before one of the insects attacks and latches onto his arm, spraying a corrosive substance across his face. His death is agonizing and bewildering, his brain and flesh liquefying into sludge.
The second casualty in Episode 6 is Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl), one of Prodigy’s leading scientists on the hybrid program and husband to Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis). His downfall begins when he challenges the decision to erase Curly’s mind in hopes of repairing her psychotic break, a defiance that costs him his position at Prodigy. Before leaving, Arthur quietly aids Hermit (Alex Lawther), slipping him the codes needed to escape Neverland with his sister Wendy (Sydney Chandler), while also disabling the trackers embedded in the “Lost Boys” hybrids. Yet this act of rebellion has tragic consequences. When a tracker alert reveals that Smee is no longer active, Arthur makes the fateful choice to investigate the quarantine lab, walking straight into danger.
Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), forced into serving as a double agent for Weyland-Yutani’s cyborg officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay), has been ordered to smuggle out a xenomorph hidden within a human host. Arthur’s sudden arrival in the lab creates the perfect chance to complete that mission. As Arthur frantically pleads for him to open the door before a facehugger attacks, Slightly steals himself, having already come to terms with the devastating choice.
The choice of “Keep Away” by Godsmack to close the episode might be the most direct musical cue Alien: Earth has used so far, but it lands with striking precision. As the camera lingers on the sheep responsible for nudging Tootles toward death, the distorted opening riff kicks in, followed by lyrics that almost feel written for the scene. Lines about sickness spilling through eyes take on an eerie weight when paired with the image of the eye-octopus puppeteering a sheep’s carcass. More importantly, the refrain underscores the creature’s nature as a chilling symbol of lost autonomy, a theme central to both the episode and the franchise. Alien has always been about humanity’s arrogance in thinking it can master these beings, and strangely enough, Godsmack provides a raw and fitting soundtrack for that timeless warning.
Overall, “The Fly” pulls the story back to the futuristic present on Prodigy’s Neverland Island and sharpens one of the show’s central questions: just how much humanity remains inside these altered beings? It is a theme the series has touched on before, but this episode tackles it with more precision and weight, making the repetition feel purposeful rather than tired. Director Ugla Hauksdóttir and writers Noah Hawley and Lisa Long lean into the parallels between Wendy, the Lost Boys, and the alien specimens in the lab, while strategically pairing characters for the season’s final stretch.
‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 6 Review: One Lost Boy Down
Episode 6, “The Fly,” pulls the story back to the futuristic present on Prodigy’s Neverland Island and sharpens one of the show’s central questions: just how much humanity remains inside these altered beings?
