Ridley Scott once had a chilling vision for the end of Alien – one that never made it to the big screen. In his original concept, the xenomorph would have killed Ripley, then hijacked her voice over the ship’s comms to trick Earth into letting it approach. 
According to Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley, that idea still sends shivers down the spine.
Hawley, who created new alien species for Alien: Earth, sees the horror in such psychological invasions. One of his new creatures takes control of its victims through their eyes, a concept he says taps into primal fears. “Ridley told me he wanted the xenomorph to kill Ripley and then mimic her voice to head for Earth. He didn’t do it, but there’s something about that ‘body snatchers’ idea that’s really scary,” Hawley explained.
In the final cut of Alien, Ripley survives, kills the creature, and leaves a final log as Nostromo’s sole survivor. Scott’s scrapped ending would have replaced her with the alien recording that log, setting up a whole new – and much stranger – franchise direction. The ability for a xenomorph to speak has never appeared on screen, and Hawley agrees that the silent, relentless hunter we know might have been lost if the idea had gone ahead.
Alien: Earth takes place just a few years before Alien and is the first in-canon appearance of a xenomorph on Earth. The series follows the USCSS Maginot, which crash-lands in a city owned by the Prodigy corporation. Wendy (Sydney Chandler), the first human-consciousness hybrid, teams with soldiers to face both familiar xenomorphs and grotesque new alien lifeforms. The setting shows a world ruled by five mega-corporations, where cyborgs and synthetics walk alongside humans – and immortality is an active corporate pursuit.
Hawley has chosen to sidestep the Prometheus backstory, instead embracing the retro-futuristic aesthetic and lore of the original films. It’s a move that keeps Alien: Earth firmly rooted in the unsettling, claustrophobic terror that made the franchise a classic – even if Scott’s most bizarre ending twist stayed locked away in the archives.