Noah Hawley returns to the director’s chair in the fifth episode of Alien: Earth, and I’d argue this episode is not only the best of the show so far, but one of the best entries in the Alien franchise.

The whole episode served as one giant flashback aboard the Maginot, showcasing what happened to the crew before the ship crashed down in Prodigy City. I think the biggest takeaway was that Morrow wasn’t the architect behind the fall of the crew, contrary to the impression we had of him after the premiere. He may be a hardass and even unlikable at times, but he did seem to have the best interests of the crew in mind until it was obvious the crew had fallen. Could he have saved Zaverni, the ship’s acting captain? Potentially, but he could’ve just as likely been a victim of the Xenomorph at the same time. The move seemed more calculated now, not as cold and ruthless as it appeared initially.

So what did happen? As the ship made its way back to Earth, two of the Xenomorph eggs hatched and latched onto the faces of two of the crew, including the captain. When trying to remove the facehugger from one, they learned about the acid blood, which killed both host and parasite. A better question was who released the creatures from their containment? As it turns out, there was a Prodigy double agent on their crew, who was only pretending to be in cryosleep. In exchange for helping Boy Kavalier, Petrovich was hoping to join the Hybrid program, which, in turn, is information that Morrow, as head of security, collects, tying this arc back to Slightly’s. I really love the idea that megarich corporations would still hire incompetent employees because they only look at the numbers. Petrovich should’ve been properly vetted and cleared, but like most of the crew, was likely a largely nameless and faceless entity working for Weyland-Yutani.

The exception, of course, is Morrow. We learned a lot more about him this week, from his willingness to join the Maginot despite being a loving father. As a child himself, Morrow was a street rat with only one working arm, but as he was begging on the streets, he caught the attention of Yutani herself, who took the child in. So we can understand why he’s so dedicated to the company. He owes them quite a bit and likely feels he owes them a debt for pulling him out of the gutter. So when they said it’s time to pay back that debt and send him off to space to recover alien samples, he could hardly say no. In fact, he likely relished the idea of proving his worth to Yutani and the company and explains his fanatical loyalty to the company in the present storyline and his fascination with the Hybrid concept, which would be a cherry on the cake should he be able to deliver the samples as well.

Of course, everything that could go wrong en route to Earth did go wrong. Not only was there a facehugger incubating, but a saboteur destroyed part of the ship, turning it from a ship to a missile to an arrow. On top of that, octoeyeball also escaped after seeing the space leeches make their own escape, contaminating a water bottle, which would later kill another member of the crew via leeches on the vital organs (which in turn released a toxin in the air when forcibly removed). Talk about a series of unfortunate events. We then see more of the Xenomorph rampage from the opening episode. It’s a great costume, but I can’t help but wish they did more animatronic work like they did with Romulus, as the obvious-guy-in-a-suit can be a little distracting and clunky at times.

The fifth episode kind of feels like a remix of the original Alien film, without ever feeling like a remake of it. It tips its hat at the source material by having alien lifeforms kill basically everyone on board a spacecraft, but manages to do its own thing and progress the plot at the same time. It was wonderfully paced, with plenty of intrigue, gnarly moments, and character moments to keep us hooked.