Alien: Earth Episode 8 “The Real Monsters” doubles as the FX series’s first season finale, meaning it comes packed with all of the cathartic showdowns and chaotic fight scenes that showrunner Noah Hawley has been teasing since the start. However, in talking with Alien: Earth stars Alex Lawther and David Rysdahl, it seems that one of the most exciting twists — concerning the Eye Midge — wasn’t decided until the very last second.
**Spoilers for Alien: Earth Episode 8 “The Real Monsters,” now streaming on Hulu**
We finally get to see Wendy (Sydney Chandler) overthrow her maniacal creator Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the mysterious Orchid devour a human being, and, of course, the Eye Midge attack poor Joe Hermit (Alex Lawther).
For weeks on Alien: Earth, Hawley has been seeding a bitter rivalry between Boy K and Wendy’s human brother. While the head of Prodigy sees Wendy as his shiniest toy, Hermit sees her as the last remnants of his sick little sister Marcy (Florence Bensberg). Boy Kavalier wants to possess Wendy while Hermit wants to protect her.
So when Boy Kavalier learns just how intelligent the Eye Midge is, he desperately wants to see what the alien does in a human host. You know, one he can talk to. The problem is that the Eye Midge instantly murders its hosts, so Boy Kavalier needs to find someone he sees as expendable, like Joe Hermit.
“We got given [Episode 7] and it was Boy Kavalier, Sam [Blenkin], being like, ‘I know the perfect person!'” Alex Lawther said. “And I thought to myself, ‘You motherfucker, is that going to be me? Am I the person?’ I was like, ‘I’m going to get killed by a small octopus in Episode 8.'”
Lawther also revealed that Hermit’s ultimate showdown with the Eye Midge “developed” during production of the show.
“We had all the episodes, but then [Episodes] 7 and 8 got changed quite drastically,” Lawther said. “Then Episode 8 got released and I was relieved to find out that I made it out alive.”
Alien: Earth fans who have seen the finale already know that while Boy Kavalier does attempt to serve Joe Hermit up to the Eye Midge, Wendy arrives just in time to save her brother from a grisly fate. The Eye Midge eventually chooses the corpse of Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl) as her human host.
David Rysdahl told DECIDER that, like Lawther, he didn’t know his ultimate fate until the day before the final version of Episode 8 was sent out. “[Noah Hawley] texted me, he’s like, ‘I’m not done with you yet,’” Rysdahal said.
Up until then, Rysdahl thought that Arthur’s storyline ended after getting chest-bursted in Episode 7.
“I did not know what was gonna happen with the Eye Midge,” Rysdahl said. “When I signed on, he told me Arthur’s arc, and I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, beautiful.’”
“The Eye Midge, I think, is a fascinating character,” Rysdahl said. “I think she’s so intelligent, and then also has an absurdity to her. You know, she has jokes.”
Alex Lawther told DECIDER that the practical process of filming his showdown with the Eye Midge was also “so silly.”
“I actually found that scene quite hard because my other experiences with the creatures were Xenomorphs…they were all physically there,” Lawther said. “The Eye Midge is there, but it’s static. A guy is the creature handler with like a retractable bat on with an image on the end of it, sort of wobbling it around in your face, and it’s so silly and unlikely.”
Lawther also confessed to DECIDER that he was “very curious” to see how the final CGI of the Eye Midge on his face was “going to turn out.”
“I have not watched episode eight in its full VFX yet, so I’m curious to see how believable my hand/Eye Midge acting is,” he said. “I’ll be hopefully relieved.”