Alien: Earth takes place before the first Alien movie chronologically, at a time when the globe — and some of space — is ruled by five different corporations.
Some of these are names we’ve heard before in the Alien universe, while others are brand new. Some appear to be more relevant to the story Alien: Earth is telling than others. To help you keep track, we’ve broken down the five corporations, and everything we know about them so far.
What are the five corporations in Alien: Earth?
Although only three of the corporations have been mentioned so far in the show, the names of all five have been revealed in the official Alien: Earth press release. These are:
Weyland-YutaniLynchDynamicThresholdProdigy
We get a brief glimpse of the people who presumably run these five corporations near the start of episode 1, during an impromptu politics lesson given by Maginot engineer Shmuel (Michael Smiley) to his apprentice Malachite (Jamie Bisping).
What do we know about the corporations?
We know quite a bit about a couple, and basically nothing about some others. The two corporations that have been key to the Alien: Earth story so far are Weyland-Yutani, which owns the USCSS Maginot deep space research vessel that crashes on Earth carrying the alien specimens, and Prodigy, a newer corporation that owns Prodigy City in New Siam, where the ship lands, and the “Neverland” research island where the hybrids are based.
Prodigy is owned by Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blevin), the “youngest trillionaire ever” who we learn founded the company around a decade ago — Alien: Earth is set in 2120. Prodigy is known for synths and AI, but as we discover in episode 1, they’re in the process of pioneering something new: hybrids, which are essentially synths with a downloaded human consciousness.
In terms of the other corporations, we know basically nothing about Lynch and Threshold — these haven’t been mentioned in Alien: Earth yet — and the only thing we know about Dynamic is that they control the moon, thanks to a passing comment by Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) in the Maginot canteen. As Shmuel explains further in the scene, Weyland-Yutani has control of both North and South America and Mars and Saturn.
As we already know from the Alien franchise as a whole, Weyland-Yutani has an obsession with Xenomorphs, and acquiring alien species for its own shady purposes (often at the expense of the humans involved with said acquiring). Given the lengths the corporation has already gone to to gather the specimens onboard the Maginot, what lengths might they go to to try and get them back?
Alien: Earth premieres Aug. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on Hulu and FX with two episodes, then weekly on Tuesdays.
