Alien: Earth Trailer Confirms Show Actually Takes Place Just Two Years Before the First Alien Movie

A new trailer for the upcoming Alien: Earth TV show has finally confirmed its exact place on the increasingly busy Alien timeline.

FX’s Alien series was reported to be set at the end of this century, a few years before Prometheus (2093) and some 30 years before Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror Alien, which is set in the year 2122.

But the new trailer confirms this isn’t the case. Rather, Alien: Earth is set in 2120, well after Prometheus and just two years before Alien and the unfortunate events that befell the crew of the Nostromo. "In 2120, Mother Earth is expecting," the trailer voiceover says, before typically creepy Xenomorph sounds and images kick in.

Alien: Earth is set just two years before Alien. Image credit: FX Networks / YouTube.

Fans are already trying to work out what this means for the overarching Alien story as well as Alien: Earth itself, while pointing to the potential for the show to depict the Nostromo leaving Earth or even how evil megacorp Weyland-Yutani found out about the Xenomorphs. As a reference point, the recently released interquel Alien: Romulus takes place between Alien and Aliens.

Alien: Earth sees a mysterious space vessel crash-land on Earth, with a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers making “a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”

That's not much to go on, but the trailer shows the Xenomorph we can expect to see in the show. There are glimpses of other creatures too, although they’re hard to make sense of. The cast also includes Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille, and Moe Bar-El.

In January, showrunner Noah Hawley explained why he is not using the backstory provided in Prometheus for Alien: Earth, saying he likes the "retro-futurism" of the original films. Hawley said he spoke to Alien chief Ridley Scott about "many, many elements" of the Alien series, including its ties to the prequels, but ultimately decided to cut loose and move away from the bioweapon backstory because he preferred the lore of the original films.

FX's Alien: Earth hits Hulu in summer 2025. Alien: Romulus 2 is also in the works.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.