Here are Noah Hawley’s comments on the topic following the latest episode. It’s not really a spoiler, but I’ll hide it for those who don’t want to know the showrunner’s speculation.
Hollywood Reporter interview
HR: Timothy Olyphant seems to steal every moment he’s on screen. And maybe this question is too much of a spoiler that you won’t want to get into, but I’m constantly wondering: What does Kirsch want?
Hawley: Yeah, that’s interesting to me. And the question of how much is he in control? What are the rules of his programming? Part of what I feel made [Alien’s android character] Ash crazy at the end of that movie was that he had this countermanding programming — the crew’s lives were expendable, but, somewhere in there, he had been programmed to protect human life. Those two conflicting impulses caused him to malfunction. I think with Kirsch, there’s definitely this question of how much is he autonomous? How much is he controlled by the programming, and how much is his sense of identity? If he is a scientist and experimenting, he doesn’t seem to have the human morality that others have. He’s probably programmed that he can’t harm Boy Kavalier. He may be programmed that he really shouldn’t disagree with him, or argue with him. And in these moments where Boy Kavalier is super patronizing and dismissive, maybe been programmed to smile and bear it. And yet: Is he done?
I liked that Arthur was trying to help until the quick gestation.
I think Joe was dumb when he shot Nibs. Wendy compared the others to him. How did he think she would react? Really, this makes me muse on Wendy. She seems to be the most stable of the kids. Is that because she was alone first before the others? She got a lot of time with all of the scientists before the others would have split their time. Or is this due to Darcy herself? Did she have whatever “it” was that allowed the transition?
I am curious as to where the story goes from here. I don’t think it has to end in a nuke. I don’t know how the aliens, xenomorphs, create more facehuggers. Well, yes, a queen. Can one “drone” become the queen if needed? Really, this brings up so many questions about the xenomorph and their culture and lifestyle. They have some level of intelligence. Is it enough to survive? They don’t have a civilization, feeding off others to reproduce. Is that all they want to do? Use up every living thing to reproduce until … ?? As to the story, do we know that earth never had xenomorphs? To keep the timeline intact, we need the Nostromo to launch in a year? Then Ripley needs to be found by someone 57 years later, get back to earth, and then head to LV-426. Given the corporations covering things up and not caring about workers, thousands could have died. They don’t care. If the xenomorphs were destroyed, things would continue as they had. The other four megacorps would fight over clean up and other rights and that’s it.
This is one of the few times I might read fiction to learn some answers to all of our questions. I would love it if the showrunners had a book or notes of their ideas. I would be fine with a book that they oversaw. I don’t know that I want some random author’s take on it.
I thought the clear implication was Arthur, since he was still missing and they knew he had not left when he was supposed to and that he sabotaged the tracking. Everyone else seems to think its Joe though, which doesn’t make as much sense to me since it would seriously antagonize Wendy.
Yeah I crossed Joe off as too stupid a choice even for a genius to make. Arthur as his idea would make sense. I’m rooting to see security putz win the position though!
I started off thinking Arthur, but then remembered he wanted a non-scientist.
I also dismissed Joe for the reasons as you both, but changed my mind. I’m guessing Boy Kavalier thinks he can stage it so it looks like a terrible accident, avoiding Wendy’s anger. And with Joe out of the way, it makes it easier for them to control Wendy. Her relationship with Joe is still a big risk.
I hope that - by whatever accidental means - Ade Edmondson ends up being the alien-eyeball host. He has experience in playing swivel-eyed loons, so should make a good job of it.
I was going to comment on the recent episode where the hybrid kid goes into the creature cage and gets his face melted off with acid, then Arthur goes into the cage to try to rescue the hybrid kid. The completely lax quarantine procedures didn’t just exist on the ship, they’re every bit as lax at Prodigy.
But since that aspect of the show has been talked about profusely, I was also wondering how the corporations worked in this universe. So, there are 5 corporations that basically rule the world. It’s pretty much late-stage capitalism run amok-- a full-fledged corporatocracy. That makes sense so far, since we have corporations now that are absorbing other companies and becoming huge conglomerates, like Disney.
But in the ‘Alien’ future one would think that these 5 corporations-- mentioned as ‘The Five’ in almost religious terms-- would be huge, long-established faceless corporate entities at this stage of the game. yet Weyland-Yutani is run by the granddaughter of the woman who ran the company 65 years before, who originally hired Morrow. A family company? Seems kind of small-time. And as for Prodigy, Boy Kavalier seems to imply at one point that the company was named after him, since he’s a prodigy. So Prodigy is like a fairly recent ‘Zuckerberg / Facebook’ kind of thing? How does that work-- was it ‘The Four’ until Kavalier came along?
Note that to recontain the flies a couple of guys in their normal uniforms sort of casually walked in the room with them and easily zapped them with cattle prods. The flies seem to be the one species there with no interest in humans. They paid no attention to Arthur. He probably would have been fine around them and fine with the rescue if nobody had released a facehugger from another locked cage.
I cannot be bothered to look for the footage this instant, but, yes, there was an article on screen to that effect (I think they referred to “The Three”, though?) , perhaps when Morrow was looking up information. It is a new, upstart, company and not a century-old dynasty. Unless I misunderstood.
According to a fandom site, Boy Kavalier started Prodigy when he was 6 years old. He’s now in his early 20s, so it’s been around 20 years tops, and probably a major player for even shorter.
This seems quite plausible to me. For Boy, it would be a sort of “two birds with one stone” situation–get rid of someone who’s distracting Wendy, and learn what the Eyeball alien is capable of when paired with someone smarter than a sheep. (But we’ll miss that sheep!)
Here’s where the world-building is inconsistent. If AI is advanced enough to produce a Kirsh, then why wouldn’t it have taken over most decision-making? Why would (at least) two of The Five be ruled by the whims of a single human?
Basically the Alien universe seems to assume a remarkably benign AI—incredibly sophisticated, yet content to remain the servant of humankind. (Except for David. And possibly Kirsh, too.) I’m not saying that’s impossible. But it does appear to be considered unlikely by many real-life informed observers.
I am not sure it is worth the trouble going frame-by-frame to capture all the text, but the article Morrow looks up on the Prodigy browser goes something like:
And that doesn’t make sense in-universe. If the 4 corporations had replaced all governments, why would they let a fifth take some of the pie? Weyland-Yutani or one of the other major corps would have bought out/enslaved/assassinated Boy Kavalier when they realized what he was on to, not let him grow into a competitor.
Yeah this is something I thought since the beginning of this: in a world where four Corporations run the world there would be no way to start a fifth. Once a new company started to do something that would make it grow it would get absorbed by one of the four others. That’s how Monopolies work.
The big corporations might not control everything - just enough to make them dominant, but also little enough that everyone else could still gang up on them and cause them problems. So they came to an agreement where they still have most of the power, but the smaller corps can still break out and get some power if they have some special success.
If that background article can be taken as canon, look at Lynch Corporation. It controlled South America even before it was admitted into the erstwhile Triumvirate. So it was at least a continental monopoly, not without its own resources.
Prodigy, we are given to understand, had a bunch of valuable A.I.-related IP (presumably even before it grew enough to rule over swathes of North America and SE Asia). Why was it not vulnerable to a hostile takeover in the early stages… perhaps Kavalier is/was a canny businessman? Maybe the big fish did not think the tech was that potentially valuable, to be acquired by hook or by crook?
I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but I wonder if Boy had the idea to put Eyelene into Morrow. It seems clear that Kirsh and Boy are working together, or at least Boy is in on part of the deception. Boy seemed to expect that they’d have the W-Y folks in custody and may have been thinking of them as the new host.
Neither Joe or Arthur seem to make sense.
We finally got a direct reference to Chekov’s Mold Scrubbers. I’m still wondering how they will become significant.
On another topic, were the Prodigy mercs waiting for Wendy and crew because of Kirsh/Boy or were they there on their own initiative? Joe’s old team definitely clocked that he was planning to escape, but Kirsh also could have reactivated the trackers and called in the squad.
I’m assuming that Nibs isn’t “dead”. Her fate might have a big impact on how Joe and Wendy get on together going forward.
Another thing I might have missed, why does Wendy’s pet Xeno have that strange discolored appearance on its dome? I can’t recall seeing anything like that in previous media. And I don’t remember anything that might have caused it.
I presume that it’s more or less a Jurassic World style device so that you can differentiate the “good” Xeno from the the bad ones later in the show when more eggs hatch.
was hilarious!