ALIEN: EARTH Showrunner and Star Break Down the Most Disturbing Scene on Television
This week’s episode of Alien: Earth delivered what might be the most disturbing moment we’ve seen on TV all year. The episode titled “The Fly” ended with a shocking death, and both showrunner Noah Hawley and star Kit Young have opened up about how the moment was crafted and why it hit so hard.
The episode saw one of the deadly alien species escape containment on Neverland Island, leading to the first major casualty of the season. The unlucky victim was Tootles, aka Isaac, who made the mistake of ignoring safety instructions and decided to feed the fly creatures on his own.
Things took a gruesome turn when a sheep under the control of The Eye slammed into the neighboring pod’s glass, startling Isaac and causing him to fall inside the cell. Once the door locked behind him, there was no way out. By the time Isaac realized he was in trouble, it was already too late.
Young, who plays Isaac, broke down how the scene was designed to catch both the audience and the character off guard:
"You always play this tricky thing... when you're revealing something to an audience, whether it be on-screen or a live performance, you don't want the audience to be behind you, saying, 'Please catch up,' because they might miss the thing, and you're trying to be overly complicated.
“You need to just say what it is, but you also don't want it to be the other way around, where they can see it coming, and therefore it's not compelling. There's a fine line where you want to be at the same level, but actually, in this case, I think the audience gets it before Isaac does."
He continued:
"When the locking of the door happens, and he's pushing the door, because it's actually in a wide shot, he's just mildly irritated by it. He's like, 'Oh gosh, how am I gonna get out? Do I have to call someone? They have to come down, the key, how's that gonna work?'
“He hasn't yet clocked that it's game over. When he turns around and sees the food that he's given, he realizes that if he were in any other container, he'd be fine — but the container he's in, that creature eats what he's made of.
“It's really the classic horror moment where it's the look-up and the panic, and it's only there where he thinks, 'Okay, I'm in trouble here.'"
As brutal as the sequence was, Hawley revealed that he fully intended for it to be one of the darkest scenes on TV this year.
“I sat down and I wrote what is probably the most disturbing scene that people will see on on television this year, you know, with the sheep. I had the sheep, that is not by design an evil creature, right? And there’s comedy to that, right? That it’s like an evil sheep.
“You know, goats, we get. Goats have a satanic history. This idea that the sheep, who are not known for their intellect, was a sort of mastermind was kind of irresistible to me.”
“I liked the idea that that it’s watching, it understands cause and effect, and that ultimately Isaac is killed because the sheep saw an opportunity and took it. You begin to realize, oh, this thing isn’t just like ‘animal smart.’ This thing is maybe a consciousness that has the potential to really take over.”
While Isaac’s fate was sealed, the fallout from his death only escalated the intensity. Slightly used the chaos to set Arthur up for a Facehugger attack, paving the way for Morrow to finally secure the specimen he’s been after.
Alien: Earth continues to prove that it’s not pulling any punches, blending grotesque horror with cunning alien intelligence in ways that are both awesomely terrifying and unforgettable.
Source: Collider