Alien: Earth episode 5 is like a miniature, contained Alien movie, taking us back aboard Weyland-Yutani's doomed Maginot spaceship and showing us exactly what went wrong in the build-up to the crash.
All of which is simple enough, but what about that slightly jarring ending with Morrow (Babou Ceesay) speaking to the Weyland-Yutani boss (Sandra Yi Sencindiver)? What exactly is said, and what does it tell us about Morrow's backstory and what he may do next? Let's unpack it.
How does Alien: Earth episode 5 end?
After the now familiar sequence in which Morrow seals himself in the Maginot's impact room just before the ship enters its crash course with Earth, we suddenly cut to the Weyland-Yutani headquarters where Morrow stands waiting to meet the Weyland-Yutani boss — the granddaughter of the woman who was in charge when he first departed on his mission. This is a time jump back to the present day, in which Morrow has clearly managed to sneak his way back to Weyland-Yutani territory to report in.
We've transcribed the key part of the exchange between him and Ms. Yutani below:
Ms. Yutani: My grandmother was very fond of you, you know.
Morrow: I'm grateful. She had no reason to take me in. A feral boy with a palsied arm begging in the street.
Ms. Yutani: She always said you were the fiercest thing she had ever seen.
Morrow: I told her I'd bring the specimens home. And I will. And then I'll kill the one called Kavalier.
Ms. Yutani: He agreed to arbitration. We meet tomorrow. Maybe the lawyers can fix this.
Morrow: Unless lawyers means soldiers, we're gonna have to do this my way.
At this point Ms. Yutani leaves the room, but not before she mutters the following comment to a guard on her way out: "Whatever he wants, he gets."
What does the ending tell us about Morrow?
The letters Morrow reads earlier in the episode tell us about his daughter and hint at his importance in the corporation, but this final scene sheds light on his origin story. Morrow, it turns out, isn't just someone that randomly applied for the job as head of security on the Maginot — the company's former boss saw something in him when he was a homeless child, took him in, and then trained him up to be the adult he is today.
Morrow's comment about having a "palsied arm" also presumably explains why he has a robotic arm in the present. Maybe Weyland-Yutani made him into a cyborg as a gift, but the price was the 65-year mission that Morrow had to leave his young family to embark on?
Either way, it's clear that Ms. Yutani, like her grandmother, respects Morrow. If his plan is to wage war against Prodigy in order to get the specimens back – which is looking more and more likely – then her final comment suggests he has her full support.
Alien: Earth episodes drop Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Hulu and FX.
