EARTH Introduces Its Most Terrifying Creature, and It’s a Sheep

So far on Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley has introduced us to four new extraterrestrial species aside from the classic Xenomorph. But after episode four of Alien: Earth, we think the Xeno, designed by the late, great H.R. Giger, has been replaced by a new creature as the most terrifying. And it lives in the body of a very sinister sheep. Yes, you read that right—a sheep. We already clocked this judgy-looking sheep as a breakout star when the trailer for the series first dropped, but until it appeared in episode four, we had no idea what pure nightmare fuel this menacing sheep truly was.

The creepiest new alien that the Weyland-Yutani ship the Maginot discovered was what we call “the octopus eye,” whose official name is the T. Ocellus. We already saw in the first few episodes that this parasitic creature ripped out the eye of a cat right out of its socket, inserting itself and taking control of its higher brain functions. In episode four, Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier brings a sacrificial sheep into his lab, where the T. Ocellus yanks out the eye of the poor beast, taking control of it. The Prodigy synth Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) already knows that this alien is intelligent. With its large, bloody eyeball, it is very unnerving.

A self-aware, problem-solving alien would be a huge change for this franchise. While the Xenomorph is smart for an animal, there’s never been anything that indicates that it’s self-aware or sentient in any way. Everything it does is purely instinctual, like its need to reproduce by any means necessary. It might be a “perfect organism,” but it cannot do math equations. But if the octopus eye inside the unsuspecting lamb is sentient, then that represents a whole new kind of horror the franchise has never seen before. Perhaps one far more dangerous than the Xenomorph.

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The scene in episode four of Alien: Earth where the octopus eye kills and possesses (for lack of a better word) the sheep is absolutely horrifying. For a franchise with some truly iconic body horror moments, that’s saying something. It’s body horror of the best kind, even if the body in question is an animal and not a human. Once it takes over the sheep, its death stare evokes evil animals of horror movies past. Think of Black Phillip from The Witch. When it looks directly at the Prodigy scientists, it oozes pure destructive intent.

We’re not sure how long the octopus eye will stay living inside of the poor zombified sheep. But we doubt that if it ever makes it into an actual human, it will be as scary as it is while it lives inside that sheep. There are other scary new aliens, like the orchid, the “blood bugs,” and the flies. So as the show continues, one of those other aliens might become the new “most terrifying.” But right now, the MVP of Alien: Earth is that eye octopus that found a home inside a sheep’s skull. And we won’t soon forget how it stares at the camera like it’s very disappointed in you.