What happened to Wendy, Joe, and the Xenomorph at the end of Alien: Earth Episode 3?

Alien: Earth anchors its third hour on a rescue, a reveal, and a lab gamble with human stakes. Alien: Earth Episode 3, titled Metamorphosis, follows Wendy (Sydney Chandler) as she hunts the Xenomorph that has cocooned her brother Joe “Hermit” (Alex Lawther) inside a refrigerated container.

The hour is written by Noah Hawley and Bob DeLaurentis and directed by Dana Gonzales, with key turns from Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsh, Samuel Blenkin’s Boy Kavalier, Erana James’ Curly, and Babou Ceesay’s Morrow.

Alien: Earth moves from New Siam’s wrecked ship to Prodigy’s Neverland lab, where the team returns with eggs and a corpse, and Kirsh takes control of specimen work.

The closing montage sets the season’s next problem: a facehugger parasite is placed into a tank holding Joe’s surgically removed lung, while Wendy staggers toward the lab and collapses. Alien: Earth leaves viewers with one dead Xenomorph, one unstable hybrid, and one human whose fate is now entangled with Prodigy’s experiment.

Ending explainer: How Metamorphosis closes its trap

The New Siam operation flips from rescue to retrieval. Boy orders Kirsh to bring home every usable sample. In the container maze, the Xenomorph uses Joe as bait. Wendy hits first, stabbing the creature and yanking it by a hook; acid sprays and the Alien drags her behind a sliding door.

Joe forces the door and finds the Alien decapitated and Wendy leaking white fluid, confirming what Alien: Earth has foreshadowed about her hybrid body.

The team secures eggs and carcass and heads for Neverland. Boy frames the haul as windfall. Boy Kavalier said,

“a trillion dollars of R&D just landed in our laps.”

Back in the lab, Kirsh opens an egg, removes a facehugger, then extracts a wriggling parasite and drops it into a tank with Joe’s punctured, removed lung. Across the compound, Wendy wakes, staggers as if “tuned” to the procedure, and seizes as Kirsh completes the cut. The cross-cut implies a link between alien biomatter and Wendy’s system while confirming Joe as the testbed for Kirsh’s next phase.

Did Wendy and Joe survive their encounter with the Xenomorph?

Yes, both survive, but neither is whole. Wendy kills the Xenomorph off-screen behind the retracting door and collapses, her white “blood” exposing synthetic components. Joe is freed but suffers internal trauma; surgeons remove a punctured lung.

In the aftermath, he passes out beside Wendy and the carcass, and later becomes the source material for Kirsh’s experiment when that lung is used as a host. Alien: Earth uses the survival to set long-term stakes: Wendy’s biological mystery and Joe’s compromised future.

What is Boy Kavalier really planning with the Alien specimens?

Boy’s plan is scale and ownership. He pivots Alien: Earth from triage to R&D, locking down the lab to synthetics and handing Kirsh the keys. His aim is to convert Weyland-Yutani’s biology into Prodigy’s intellectual property and power. Curly needles him about his fixation on Wendy and positions herself as the upgrade.

Curly remarked to Boy,

“I think I could be you one day … more than you.”

The structure is clear: Boy seeks breakthroughs; Kirsh wants answers. Curly wants ascent. The experiment with Joe’s lung shows Prodigy will use any organic vector to cultivate results.

Are the lost boys safe from Morrow and the Facehugger Eggs?

No. Safety is an illusion on Alien: Earth. On the ship, Morrow quietly plants a comms device in Slightly’s neck, giving Weyland-Yutani a whisper channel into Prodigy’s hybrids. At Neverland, Kirsh proves eggs respond to organic life, so the lab is sealed to synthetics and organics are treated as tools. Kirsh’s curt directive captures the power dynamic.

Kirsh stated,

“Look with your eyes.”

The Lost Boys are now assets within overlapping agendas, Boy’s ambition, Kirsh’s curiosity, Morrow’s espionage and facehugger biology is already in play.

Scene-by-scene recap

Wendy tracks the Alien through the meat locker corridors and finds Joe cocooned. The Alien reveals itself, lashes out, and drags Wendy behind a closing door. Joe forces the door to reveal a decapitated Xenomorph and Wendy down, bleeding white. Prodigy teams extract eggs and corpse, and the convoy returns to Neverland.

Boy celebrates the haul while Neverland’s scientists bristle at the risk to the hybrids. Kirsh, empowered by Boy, assumes control of the lab and limits access.

Morrow, meanwhile, has already seeded surveillance among the Lost Boys and exfiltrated data. Kirsh and Curly dissect an egg and facehugger, isolate a small “tadpole”-like organism, and sink it into a tank that holds Joe’s removed lung.

As the parasite burrows into the tissue, Wendy rises and staggers through the halls, seizing as the cut is made. The episode ends on that split image: a parasite claiming a human organ and a hybrid convulsing as if linked to it. Alien: Earth positions the next hour to answer whether that organ returns to Joe and whether Wendy’s biology is resonating with the Alien’s.

Kirsh snapped at Morrow during their ship exchange,

“Which country are you king of again?”

It's a line that underscores the corporate-war footing now surrounding the kids.

Credits and release

Metamorphosis is written by Noah Hawley and Bob DeLaurentis and directed by Dana Gonzales. Main cast of this hour includes Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Samuel Blenkin, Erana James, Babou Ceesay, Essie Davis, Jonathan Ajayi, Lily Newmark, and Adarsh Gourav. Alien: Earth Season 1 runs eight episodes, airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.

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