The new Alien prequel series has revealed a surprising weakness for the predatory Xenomorph. Alien: Earth takes place in 2120, two years before the original Alien movie, and explores a worst-case scenario when a ship containing a Xenomorph specimen crash-lands on humanity's home planet. With the Xenomorph (and some of its deadly friends) unleashed on Earth, humans must call on all resources to defeat the deadly extraterrestrial.
In Episode 2 of Alien: Earth, military teams are sent to the downed USCSS Maginot to evacuate the area and rescue any survivors. Little do they know that the Maginot was carrying several extraterrestrial species, including the Xenomorph, which has already killed the ship's crew and is now ready to make everyone on Earth its prey.
The only person with knowledge of the Xenomorph is Morrow, the ship's Chief Security Officer (and Cyborg), who is employed by the Weyland-Yutani company to retrieve the ship's cargo at all costs. Morrow survives the ship's crash landing and then goes about hunting down the Xenomorph before it can escape or be killed by one of the military teams.
However, the soldiers stand little chance against the dangerous Xenomorph, which has proven itself an almost unstoppable opponent in numerous prior films.
Throughout the second episode of Alien: Earth, the Xenomorph carves through various military teams and civilians housed in the apartment tower that the Maginot crashes into. In one apartment, the Xenomorph almost gets its tail into the trapped medic, Joe (Alex Lawther), until Morrow arrives to stop it. Morrow subdues the Xenomorph with a prolonged bolt of electricity from a taser, which renders it unconscious.
This is the first time electricity has been shown to be effective against the Xenomorph on screen. It's been used as a tactic in other Alien media like comics and video games, and was hinted at in Alien: Romulus when a character stuck a charged cattle prod into the Xenomorph's chrysalis. But Alien: Earth confirms canonically that an electric shock can temporarily put down the Xenomorph.
Noah Hawley (Fargo) created Alien: Earth, which premiered on Hulu and FX on August 12. New episodes debut weekly, and Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, and Essie Davis are some of the series' cast members.
What Are the Xenomorph's Other Weaknesses?
Bullets/Artillery
One of the main reasons the Xenomorph is so difficult to kill is the acidic blood that runs through its veins. While the alien's armored exoskeleton is not bulletproof or explosion-resistant, any blood from its injuries can quickly eat through a human's flesh or a spacecraft's hull.
With so many of the Alien films taking place in space, characters often resort to other methods to defeat the alien, lest its blood melt through their spacecraft and kill them all (as it did in Alien: Romulus).
Extreme Temperatures
One proven method of defeating a Xenomorph is to expose it to extreme temperatures. Multiple Alien instalments have shown the use of flamethrowers, fire, or extreme thermal heat to either injure or kill the alien species.
For example, in Alien 3, the prisoners enacted a plan to drown the Xenomorph hybrid in molten lead. While the Xenomorph survived this initially, exposing the scalding hot creature to the cold water of the fire sprinklers caused it to rupture and explode from thermal shock.
Space
Ejecting a Xenomorph from the airlock is a tried-and-true method for disposing of it. Ripley uses this method in Alien and Aliens, and it was also seen in Alien: Romulus and Alien: Covenant as effective against Xenomorph hybrids. The vacuum of space is a gravitational force that the apex predator cannot withstand, and the oxygen-less cold ether of space renders it useless.
However, Alien: Romulus confirmed that the coldness of space isn't enough to completely kill a Xenomorph, as the one that Ripley ejected in the original film, which was fossilized and collected by the Weyland-Yutani team, ended up reanimating after its long period of inactivity. Nevertheless, the airlock is a viable method for removing the Xenomorph from the vicinity.
