Earth Reveals Nostromo’s Doomed Fate from the Start

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Alien: Earth season 1, episode 5.After 46 years, Alien: Earth just proved that Ripley and the Nostromo were doomed from the start in the original Alien. Alien: Earth episode 5 already had some strong ties to the original Alien. It was basically a secret Alien movie, the crew of the USCSS Maginot was very similar to the crew of the Nostromo, and it obviously featured a classic Xenomorph running rampant on a spaceship.

Alien: Earth episode 5 wasn’t just similar to the original Alien, however, it actually changes the 1979 classic a bit. Alien: Earth isn’t entirely canon, but it still has a lot of great new lore for the franchise. One of its newest pieces of lore adds even more texture and information to the facehuggers, and it proves that the Nostromo was doomed as soon as it landed on LV-426.

Alien: Earth Shows That Xenomorph Facehuggers Stay Awake In Cryosleep

Alien: Earth episode 5 included a crucial new detail about facehuggers: they can stay awake in a cryosleep pod. Initially, after a facehugger had latched onto Bronski, the crew of the USCSS Maginot decided to follow security protocols and put him into hypersleep. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep the facehugger from impregnating him and the chestburster from emerging, even in subzero temperatures.

Normally, a cryosleep chamber in Alien puts humans into a hibernation state due to low temperatures. After the chestburster emerged, however, the crew of the Maginot hypothesized that the facehuggers’ metabolism doesn’t work the same as humans, and that the low temperatures weren’t enough to put it to sleep. They also noted that Xenomorphs can survive the vacuum of space, meaning they can withstand extremely cold temperatures.

Even If The Nostromo Crew Did Everything Right, Ripley Would Have Had To Fight The Xenomorph

The Xenomorph attack on the Nostromo seems like it should have been avoidable. After Kane was brought back on the ship with a facehugger, Parker actually suggested putting him in cryosleep, but no one listened to him. It seemed like it might have worked, too: the doctors back on Earth may have had a better chance to save Kane than Ash did.

Alien: Earth episode 5, however, just proved Parker wrong. Freezing the facehugger wouldn’t have saved anyone. Once Kane got onto the ship with the facehugger latched onto him, the entire crew was doomed. Quarantining Kane on the ship, putting him in cryosleep, or any other solution would have still released the Xenomorph.

The only two ways the Nostromo‘s crew could have avoided the Xenomorph attack were by never going to LV-426 at all or by killing Kane and leaving his dead body behind on the planet. Neither of those were going to happen, though, so the crew was doomed as soon as they woke up from hypersleep. Weyland-Yutani forced them, and no one was going to kill Kane without knowledge of what the Xenomorphs could do.

Alien: Earth episode 5 really turns the original Alien into a tragedy in the classical sense. Even if they had done everything right, if they had followed every security protocol and taken every precaution, everyone but Ripley was always going to die. Putting Kane and the facehugger into cryosleep was the last possibility, and Alien: Earth just proved that it wouldn’t have worked either.