EARTH Gave Us the Franchise’s Grisliest Synth Death

In the Alien franchise, the grisly deaths are usually reserved for the flesh-and-blood humans. But a few of the synthetic beings in the franchise have met horrible and gory ends too. In Ridley Scott’s original Alien, they decapitated Ash (Ian Holm) and then immolated him. In Aliens, the Xenomorph Queen ripped Bishop (Lance Henricksen) in two. In this universe, synths are pretty close to human. So even though they’re robots (for lack of a better term), it’s all still pretty gross. Their “blood” is milky white and not red, but it’s still icky. Now, Alien: Earth just gave us our nastiest demise for a non-human synthetic yet, in episode six, “The Fly.”

Technically, the death in this episode is not of a synth, it’s one of the Prodigy Corporation’s new hybrids. Hybrids are what Prodigy calls human consciousnesses downloaded into synthetic bodies. All the hybrids, nicknamed by Samuel Blenkin’s CEO character Boy Kavalier as “the Lost Boys,” are children who had terminal illnesses whose parents volunteered them for this experimental procedure. One of the main hybrid synths we’ve met on Alien: Earth is “Tootles,” portrayed by Kit Young. Tootles was the oldest of the children downloaded into a new body, on the verge of adolescence. He’s the big brother of the group, and the one tasked with the most adult responsibilities.

In episode six, the Prodigy synth Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) tasks Tootles with “feeding and watering” the alien specimens when he’s on a mission away from the Neverland facility. Tootles jumps at the chance to have some adult responsibilities, and goes to feed the creatures alone. As he’s tending to the alien specimens, he enters the so-called fly alien’s habitat. Then things go terribly wrong. He accidentally rips off the door hatch to the feeding slot for the fly specimens with his superior robotic strength. So he enters the habitat, and that’s when the eye octopus/T. Ocellus alien, now living inside a very menacing sheep, bumps his head against the glass to startle Tootles. This forces him to lose his footing, locking him inside.

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Once Tootles finds himself accidentally locked in, one of the bloodsucking bugs emerges out of the hive built on the cell wall. Two of the giant-sized insect aliens attack Tootles, spitting a form of corroding acid onto his face. He doesn’t scream out in pain, however. It seems synthetics don’t have pain receptors or a true nervous system the way humans do. But we see his skin slowly melt off, exposing his synthetic musculature underneath. This occurs as his system shuts down as he shakes and convulses, spitting up his nutrients. Despite not being human, the flies begin feeding on his corpse, drinking in his juices. It’s pretty disgusting, despite poor Tootles not being an organic human.

Episode six closes with the judgiest sheep gloatface huggering over his handiwork, as the five specimens attempt their escape from captivity. The facehugger attaches to Prodigy scientist Arthur Sylvia, and we know how that always goes. As the corpse of poor Tootles lies on the floor, we hear a voice-over from Boy Kavalier paraphrasing Peter Pan, reminding the viewers that in the story, the Lost Boys were of no use to Peter once they became adults. As the oldest mind of the hybrids, Tootles became a liability to Prodigy, and they were more than willing to sacrifice him. Now, we must wait and see if the rest of the humans and other synths and hybrids can survive the combined terror of five predatory alien species on the loose.

Alien: Earth drops new episodes on FX and FX on Hulu every Tuesday.