We found 6 Easter eggs in the ‘Alien: Earth’ shorts revealed at SXSW 2025… at least we hope they’re just Easter eggs

The Easter Bunny might not be quite ready for his annual springtime romp, but it’s not too early to check out a cool basket of Easter eggs for the upcoming sci-fi TV series from executive producer/showrunner Noah Hawley (“Fargo”) titled “Alien: Earth.”

Case in point is “The Wreckage,” an interactive promotional installation set up by FX Networks at the SXSW 2025 Film Festival in Austin, Texas over this past weekend to help stir up excitement for this summer’s “Alien: Earth” premiere. There, brave visitors stepped into the recreation of a downed spacecraft where they were issued clearance badges and instructions on how to wind their way through the ship as a recovery crew stumbles across alien specimens that may or might not still be alive!

In addition to stills presenting images of the event, FX revealed a series of cat-centric transmission clips recovered from the USCSS Maginot, the fateful spaceship that crash lands on Earth custodian of some nasty xenomorphs as seen in the previous teasers.

These shaky snippets offered fans a fascinating feline point of view, with a camera mounted on the cat’s collar showing us the claustrophobic interior of the doomed vessel and its crew. The kitty cam documents the ship’s final hours in orbit prior to its fiery plummet into our planet’s atmosphere, setting up the start of the ‘Alien: Earth’ series.

The Disney-owned studio was kind enough to compile a 3-minute video collecting all five clips into a cryptic supercut and we’re hatching it right here for all interested parties. As you might expect, there are a bunch of nods and references to the previous Alien movies for die-hard fans to salivate over.

Here are six Alien Easter eggs and references that we spotted:

1. Jonesing for the new Alien show

Probably the most on-the-nose reference here is the cat itself, an obvious call-back to Ripley’s cat Jonesey from the original Alien movie.

Our little feline friend here is called Rascal, and they’re the same type of ginger tabby cat as Ripley’s faithful companion. Here’s hoping that the little furball can replicate Jonesy’s fate and survive the Xenomorph menace too.

2. MU/TH/UR’s Priority One message

As revealed by Rascal’s “cat cam,” a mission objective order appears on MU/TH/UR’s computer screen that nearly matches the one viewed by Ripley on the Nostromo in the original “Alien:” “Priority One: Acquisition And Safe Return Of All Organisms For Analysis. All Other Considerations Secondary.”

Damn those soulless Weyland-Yutani overlords! There’s also the briefest of flashes on screen with a heading that states: “Specimens: Multiple Ovomorphs.” Eggs mean facehuggers and their inherent horror.

3. It doesn’t matter when it’s Arcturian, baby.

A crew member in a corridor discusses the fact that everyone he knows on Earth will be dead due to the lengthy space voyage and that his kids will be older than he is now.

When asked where he’d go instead of Earth he jokingly mentions Arcturus, which is a callback to Private Frost in “Aliens” saying “Hey, I sure wouldn’t mind getting some more of that Arcturian p******g!” and making wisecracks about that mysterious alien race not having traditional genders.

4. Eggs… Alien eggs

Two of the Maginot crew sit around playing gin in the mess hall and mention that they’re not sure if their alien specimens are flora or fauna and that they’re still doing tests.

Clearly, at this point on the mission, there’s only puzzlement as to what cargo they’re carrying. Other than xenomorph eggs there could be a new organism.

5. The perfect specimen

In the Zoo Lab, the ship’s female biologist notices Rascal peering into some murky liquid-filled glass chambers where perhaps some alien specimen or embryo is being kept or contained.

There are tagged and bagged samples of unknown content too … we can probably guess what’s in these containers and it’s not going to be good news for our ragtag crew.

6. Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite

And finally, in the Cryo-Chamber area, the cat’s curiosity leads it to a sleeping crewmember in a cryotube, like those that we’ve seen in almost every Alien movie at this point.

From here all hell breaks loose as a klaxon suddenly blares, red emergency lights flash, and all manner of drama kicks off. We see folks scrambling down a narrow corridor to safety, presumably running from a newly-escaped Alien menace.

This event likely causes the Maginot to come splashing down to Earth into a large body of water. We haven’t seen a swimming Xenomorph since “Alien: Resurrection,” but this aquatic touchdown could mean we see some underwater horrors again in Alien: Earth.

See anything else that might offer clues or theories? Let us know in the comments!

Set two years before the plot of 1979’s “Alien,” “Alien: Earth” lands on Hulu this summer starring Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, and Erana James.

Whether you’re a casual “Alien” fan or a card-carrying acolyte of the xenomorph, you’ll find something to pique your interest in “Alien: Earth” when it descends onto Hulu later this year (and on Disney+ internationally).

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.