Alien: Earth Episode 5 “In Space, No One…” completely shifts perspective to take us back to the doomed USCSS Maginot to discover what exactly caused the Weyland-Yutani ship’s horrific crash. We knew from the FX show’s cold open that several of the alien species the crew collected from the far reaches of space escaped confinement during the mission. Security Officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay) became the lone survivor when he refused to let Zoya Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) into the ship’s communication portal. Last night’s episode of Alien: Earth reveals that wasn’t even the worst thing someone in the Maginot’s crew did during the ship’s breakdown…

**Spoilers for Alien: Earth Episode 5 “In Space, No One…,” now streaming on Hulu**

Alien: Earth Episode 5 was written and directed by series showrunner Noah Hawley. Taking place 17 days before the Maginot’s crash, the episode opens with Morrow being woken up from cryosleep. Both the ship’s captain and its science officer have been attacked by facehuggers. As Morrow investigates how multiple Xenomorphs escaped containment, he uncovers a bunch of troubling information. There is not only a saboteur on the ship, working for Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), but the crew has been fraying at the seams. Zaveri has been carrying on an illicit affair with Bronski (Max Rinehart), Chibuzo (Karen Aldridge) has been getting lax in the laboratory, and Mr. Teng (Andy Yu) remains a troublesome creep.

Over the course of Alien: Earth Episode 5, we watch the situation spiral out of control from bad to worse to absolute chaotic carnage. DECIDER was able to catch up with Noah Hawley to break down some of the episode’s most haunting moments, from that facehugger showing up in Zaveri’s sex scene with Bronski to the Ticks incubating their eggs in drinking water, and more…

Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley often takes over directorial duties on his shows, but what exactly is his reasoning for which episodes have to be directed by him vs. which can be entrusted in the hands of a long-time collaborator like Dana Gonzalez? What was it about Alien: Earth Episode 5 that demanded Hawley take over?

“The shorthand of it is world creation,” Hawley said. “Whenever there’s a moment of world creation — and often in the stories I tell, there’ll be a standalone episode — and what I find invariably is if I entrust that to somebody else, they don’t always focus on the details that I would focus on.”

“For whatever reason, the way that I’m wired, I’m looking at the background as much as the foreground, right? I’m paying attention to the characters who aren’t speaking as much as the ones who are.”

Hawley also revealed that he wanted to take on the challenge of channeling “classic Alien” in the middle of the series. “The degree of difficulty” is what piqued his interest.

“I mean, I wanted to do it. Of course, the moment I wrote it, I thought, ‘Well, I’m not going to let anybody else do this,'” he said. “The other reason, of course, was like, this is not the hour you want to fall on your face with it.”

“If you’re really saying, ‘All right, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Fincher and Mr. Scott, here’s what I’ve got.’ You know, you don’t want to fall on your face there.“

When DECIDER spoke with Alien: Earth Episode 5 star Richa Moorjani, she revealed that co-star Max Rinehart had to have the facehugger prosthetic attached to his face for that grisly sex scene jump scare in the episode.

“It’s kind of sexual. It’s kind of penetrative. I mean, it’s literally like implanting something,” Moorjani said. “So we were trying to show the contrast between that and lovemaking. I think that’s what helps to create the terror and the horror of the situation.”

Hawley described the quick cut as a “classic horror movie moment.”

“You feel silly doing it in the moment, right? Especially because you’ve just engaged the actors in this intimate act, which has its own awkwardness and all of it. Then to say, ‘Okay, well, now we’re going to put this thing on this guy’s face,'” Hawley said, before delving deeper into how the shot is meant for the viewers at home.

“I think in that moment, it’s directed primarily at the audience, right? We’re not even necessarily saying that she’s seeing it. We’re just saying this is the foreshadowing of where we’re going to end up. And it’s a shock, right?” he said. “The reason you do jump scares is because it fills your body with adrenaline and then you’re in that heightened state for the rest of the episode.”

One of the creepiest sequences in Alien: Earth Episode 5 focuses on the “Ticks,” the new alien species that blows up like a balloon after feasting on human blood. Last night’s episode of Alien: Earth showed us just how these suckers reproduce…in a bottle of drinking water.

“Alien is so much about the gruesome discovery process of the life cycle of these creatures and what they eat and how they reproduce,” Hawley said. “So, you know, I would say that if you haven’t seen one of these creatures eat or reproduce yet, we still have things to show you, right?”

“You saw in that fifth hour that the Ticks lay their eggs in your drinking water and no one’s going to drink from a water bottle for a day or two after without looking at it, probably,” he said with a chuckle.

Of course, the reason why the Ticks are able to make it out of containment and into Chibuzo’s bottle of water — which is later taken by Malachite (Jamie Bisping) — is because the doctor has been getting a little lazy in the lab. While it’s understandable that the Hybrids stationed on Neverland could get sloppy in the lab since they’re literal kids, shouldn’t Chibuzo know better?

“I think what we see is that over time, people could get a little careless. They get a little casual about things,” Hawley said. “It’s a 65 year mission and they’re clearly not awake for all of it, but they’re awake for a few months at a time. Eventually you let your guard down.”

“Year in, year out, you’ve been doing these experiments on these creatures and there’s never been an issue before. So, you’re kind of like, ‘Well, I’m hungry. I’m just going to grab something and eat it in the lab,'” he said. “She’s got to eat and she’s a workaholic, and so she’s not going to take a break and all of that. But in hindsight, a terrible idea.” A terrible idea that eventually precipitates the deaths of multiple Maginot crew.

Maybe this is just us, but Mr. Teng might be the creepiest monster in Alien: Earth Episode 5. The way he stares at Sullivan (Victoria Masoma) while she sleeps and how withholds intel from Morrow are all hella sus. What’s with Mr. Teng? Garden variety gross dude or is the extremely unsettling character secretly a synth?

“Part of the fun of Alien is you never know. You know, because of the Ian Holm reveal, there’s always a part of you that’s suspicious of like, ‘Is that person a person?'” Hawley said. “It’s not my job to answer that for you.”

“I will say, in the old days, they used to say, ‘The army or prison,’ you know? And I think in this case, they might have said, ‘Space ship or prison,’ right?” he added. “Clearly he is a dangerous person to be on a spaceship with and just super creepy.”

The drama on the Maginot crescendoes with a vicious battle between Zaveri, the Xenomorph, the Eye Midge, and Morrow on the bridge. “Part of that whole end sequence is about the number of plates that you’re spinning, keeping the competing elements alive,” Hawley said.

“I think there’s a moment, after the surgery goes wrong, after they’re all dead, after the shootout, right after all that, that you go back to Richa and she’s having this emotional moment, and suddenly the Xenomorph appears for the first time and you go, ‘Oh, right. There’s also a Xenomorph on the ship,'” he continued. “From that moment on, everything speeds up and starts to escalate.”

Zaveri manages to escape the Xenomorph only to be stuck with the Eye Midge as it controls Shmuel (Michael Smiley). Zaveri is knocked out, only to regain consciousness as the Xenomorph and Eye Midge duke it out.

“I mean, literally, there’s a moment where a guy jumps on a Xenomorph and starts fighting it,” Hawley said. “You’re like, ‘What is happening right now in this show?’ If I could get that to work, then I think you’re going to feel a level of exhilaration from watching Alien: Earth where you’re back in that movie theater when you were 12 and watching James Cameron’s movie or whatever it was.”

But let’s circle back to the moment where the Eye Midge-controlled Shmuel jumps on top of the Xenomorph. Are the two species enemies?

“I don’t know that I could say at this point that there’s a historic enmity between them, because in that moment before, they seem to cooperate together, right? The Eye Midge calls out and the Xenomorph comes in, and now Morrow’s trapped between the two of them,” Hawley said.

“But then when it’s one on one, I mean, I can’t tell you how crazy it was to film that sequence where you literally have a man jump onto a Xenomorph and try to bite it. It’s like everything about that is wrong in our brains and that’s what made it super fun to do.”

Even more fun about pitting the Eye Midge against the Xenomorph? “The thing about the Xenomorph, it has no eyes,” Hawley said.