The season finale of "Alien: Earth" has arrived, and it truly delivers on multiple fronts. We witness an exhilarating clash between synths and cyborgs, featuring standout performances from Morrow (Babou Ceesay) and Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant). The narrative unfolds with a growing army of Xenomorphs loyal to Wendy (Sydney Chandler), hybrids taking control of the Prodigy Neverland facility, an escaped eyeball monster, and an impending confrontation with a large contingent of Weyland-Yutani soldiers.
While the finale sets the stage for an exhilarating second season, there’s one aspect that leaves me perplexed and frustrated. Yes, I’m once again addressing the character I find most disappointing in "Alien: Earth": Boy Kavalier.
This so-called "boy genius" embodies the Peter Pan archetype within the show’s broader fairy tale metaphor. He’s portrayed as a corporate overlord who shows up to work in pajamas, wanders around barefoot, and treats everyone around him with the arrogance typical of someone who considers themselves a prodigy. Throughout the season, I held out hope for a deeper character development that might make him more likable, or at the very least, an explanation for how someone so young—barely older than the age of the Maginot voyage that brought the Xenomorphs to Earth—managed to establish a business empire that controls about one-fifth of the planet.
The explanation we receive in the season finale is not only underwhelming but also contradicts the very rules that the show has set within its cyberpunk universe. Boy Kavalier claims to have built Prodigy simply by being exceptionally intelligent and having a positive attitude. Yes, you heard that right: in a world where most individuals are born into servitude, where corporations monopolize all resources, and where starting a business typically takes decades, it seems that the classic bootstrap narrative still applies if you’re a quirky little genius.
Kavalier’s backstory is baffling. In the finale, he recounts how, at the tender age of six, he constructed his first synth, which he then commanded to eliminate his abusive factory worker father. This narrative veers into the realm of fantasy. To create something as complex as an artificial human, sheer intelligence must be paired with education and resources. How could a child, barely old enough to attend school, manage such a feat? And in a working-class household where his father labored in a corporate factory? If he truly did this, where did he find the materials to build a synth, let alone the knowledge to do so? How did he keep such a project hidden while still a child?
The absurdity continues as he claims that after escaping with his new synth father, he used the android as a facade to start building his empire, all while a child was actually pulling the strings. This raises significant issues within the cyberpunk framework of the show. In this universe, every material resource is controlled by a select few corporations. Moreover, throughout the season, we haven’t seen Kavalier engage in any real scientific work; instead, the experiments at Prodigy have been led by characters like Kirsh, Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), and Arthur (David Rysdahl).
The notion that a child could somehow navigate the complexities of corporate ownership and amass a significant portion of Earth’s resources is not just implausible; it undermines the intelligence of the audience and contradicts the political themes that the show has established.
Could it be that Boy Kavalier is fabricating his backstory? The only way I can reconcile his narrative with the reality depicted in "Alien: Earth" is to consider that he might be lying. He comes across as inherently untrustworthy, seemingly intoxicated by his own self-importance. He perceives himself as the smartest person alive, destined to lead humanity, which is a classic trait of narcissism and often accompanies a propensity for deceit. Given the established rules of the show, it seems far more plausible that he acquired his wealth and corporate status through other means.
However, the show provides no textual evidence to support the idea that his story is false. We don’t see him caught in a lie at any point during the season, nor do we encounter any conflicting origin stories. His character is peripheral enough to the main plot of "Alien: Earth" that a potential twist in season 2 revealing his deception would likely leave viewers questioning why the show chose to mislead them in the first place. For now, I’m left to accept that this is indeed the true account of Boy Kavalier.
As I mentioned earlier, nearly every other aspect of the "Alien: Earth" finale excites me for what’s to come in the next season. It’s just unfortunate that the primary antagonist has not been able to match the high quality of the rest of the series.
