Wendy and the Lost Boys are incarcerated in a cell deep in the Neverland research facility, but can they turn the tables on Boy Kavalier?

I guess whether you’re going to enjoy The Real Monsters­, the eighth and final installment of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, is down to where you stand on season finales. Personally I like a season to have its own dramatic unity, with just a hint of intriguing things to come, perhaps one or two subtly unanswered questions. Perhaps it’s my age but when the finale is just one big set-up, I find it frustrating, distracting and disappointing – largely because when the next series kicks off at least a year later, I can’t for the life of me remember where we left things.

In the case of Alien: Earth despite generally favourable reviews, there’s still no definitive word on whether the show will be renewed, which makes it all the more frustrating that some terrific reveals and plot turns in this last episode will only have value should we finally get a season 2. The longer the delay, the longer the gap between series, and the greater my confusion will be.

To be brutally honest, it annoys me. Wendy’s battle to wrest power from the increasingly unhinged Boy Kavalier is certainly dramatic, but because Hawley desperately wants another bite of the cherry, he has to leave all his options open in terms of characters and story, so that by the end barely anything is resolved at all. It annoys me because who does this narrative manipulation serve? The characters don’t behave as they should. Audience members like me are left frustrated and cheated. It’s all about making a bid to the platform for more cash rather than being true to the narrative we’ve spent eight episodes investing in. It’s fine if you definitely know you’re coming back, but I think that if you haven’t had your next season confirmed, your first responsibility should always be to the audience and the integrity of that season’s narrative arc.

It’s a shame because the ingredients are terrific. I’ve written at length about why the child hybrid Lost Boys are a brilliant foundational idea. The cast are giving it everything. It looks great. It has a great score. There are some genuinely thrilling set pieces.

Where the show has struggled, especially in its later episodes, is through a lack of focus, with important characters coming and going seemingly at random. Morrow (Babou Ceesay), for example, was set up as a fascinating and conflicted character whose motives were intriguingly hard to read. Sadly as the show has progressed he has become increasingly monochrome and I was left at the end of The Real Monsters not knowing or caring what was really driving him.

There’s also an issue around whose side we’re supposed to be on. With the Xenomorph reduced to little more than a rather obedient XL Bully it feels as if the titular Alien has lost its mojo. The goggly-eyed thing has turned out to be a lot more interesting, but it’s as if Hawley only discovered its potential midway through the creative process. Boy Kavalier is a sort of villain – Samuel Blenkin is a terrific screen presence – but even that dynamic is dissipated because there’s the threat beyond him of Yutani, who we’ve only met briefly and who is apparently about to attack the Island for the tenuous reason that she wants her aliens back, although why the story needs this additional layer is yet to be fully justified. There’s just too much ‘stuff’ going on, pulling in different directions. Hawley seems to have skipped the class in writing school about being prepared to ‘kill your darlings’.

Verdict: Alien: Earth has been a hugely enjoyable ride, and I very much hope there will be more, but next time I hope that Noah will remember why these stories exist and who they’re for.  

Episode score: 7/10     Series Score: 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com