‘Alien: Earth’: Is Nibs Really Pregnant? “These Children Aren’t a Blank Slate,” Noah Hawley Teases

Alien: Earth is a show designed to creep its audience out. Whether we’re talking about the terrifying Xenomorphs, four new alien predators, or even Boy Kavalier’s (Samuel Blenkin) barefeet, the FX show refuses to play nice and cute. However, one of Alien: Earth‘s most chilling storylines might not have anything to do with gore at all.

In Alien: Earth Episode 4 “Observation,” the hybrid girl who goes by “Nibs” (Lily Newmark) makes a disturbing claim to therapist Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis). It’s one that leaves the otherwise unflappable woman calling for security and one that might have left you wondering could an alien impregnate a synthetic body?

**Spoilers for Alien: Earth Episode 4 “Observation,” now streaming on Hulu**

In Alien: Earth, we learn that in 2120, the world has been divvied up to be controlled by five major corporations. While one of them, Weyland-Yutani, has been venturing into deep space to discover new alien species to study, another, Prodigy, is more concerned with pushing the limits of the human race. Prodigy becomes the first company to figure out how to transfer a human consciousness into an immortal, super-powered, synthetic body. So far, though, the process only works on children’s brains.

“What if adult minds are too fixed and so we have to start with children?” Alien: Earth creator and showrunner Noah Hawley explained during a Zoom call with DECIDER. “So now you have these bodies, these untested synthetic bodies.”

Prodigy not only has untested synthetic bodies, but the immature minds of the children they’ve used as guinea pigs.

We learn in the very first episode of Alien: Earth that Prodigy’s founder Boy Kavalier has been specifically using dying children for his big experiment. When we first meet Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, she is Marcy Hermit (Florence Bensberg), a little girl suffering from terminal cancer. Her family already believes she is dead, making her a perfect candidate to become the first ever hybrid.

After Marcy successfully transitions into life as “premium” Wendy, she is asked to play big sister to the next five subjects. She guides Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), Curly (Erana James), Tootles (Kit Young), and Nibs through the process. However, not all of the kids are cool with their new code names or the top secret lives that come with them. (Tootles literally renames himself Isaac this week.)

More worryingly, it seems that Nibs might have come to Prodigy with trauma beyond her illness. Trauma that’s only been exacerbated by her close encounter with the Eye Midge. She not only hallucinates the creature attacking her again, but tells Dame Sylvia that she is now pregnant with a baby she’s going to name Clarissa. When Dame pushes back, pointing out that Nibs is synthetic, the girl erupts, leaping across the room and physically threatening the scientist.

So what is going on? Is this just Nibs’s trauma manifesting itself? Or could the Eye Midge have actually impregnated the hybrid?

“Well, I don’t want to spoil anything for you other than to say, you know, these children aren’t a blank slate, right?” Noah Hawley told us during the Alien: Earth junket. “They come to this experiment with whatever pasts they had, whatever damage.”

“You know, they were all terminally ill and that has an effect, right, on the psyche? And then, you know, it’s hubris to think that you can put a human mind into a mechanical body that has no beating heart and no organs and that the strangeness of that isn’t going to send some characters around the bend.”

While Hawley understandably didn’t want to spoil any potential twists, he later told DECIDER during our aforementioned Zoom chat that he does want people to consider the repercussions of the experiments Boy Kavalier is, uh, cavalierly overseeing.

“I do think that part of the themes that we’re exploring is like this technology race where no one’s really taking the time they should take to figure out what could go wrong, right? Or to really beta test these products,” Hawley said. “Yeah, I can imagine that there’s both benefits and flaws to that.“

The benefit to the hybrid experiment? Potentially saving dying children? The flaw? Also saving their deep-rooted trauma.