‘Alien: Earth’ Star Sydney Chandler on How Wendy’s Rise to Power Could Impact Her Bond With Brother Joe

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Alien: Earth, Season 1 Episode 8, “The Real Monsters.”]

Alien: Earth‘s season finale delivered a major power shift as the hybrids, led by Wendy (Sydney Chandler), rose up and rebelled against Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), among others, in the pivotal episode, “The Real Monsters.”

After they were briefly imprisoned, Wendy and the other hybrids, a.k.a. the Lost Boys, used their powers to take over various systems on Neverland, as they played tricks on Boy Kavalier, Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis), and eventually imprisoned them, thanks in part to Wendy’s connection with the Xenomorph.

But one heart of the show, since it debuted, was the sibling bond between Wendy and Joe (Alex Lawther), the latter of whom was startled to learn of his sister Marcy’s transformation from human into a hybrid. As viewers saw in the previous installment, the siblings hadn’t ended their escape attempt from the island on a positive note.

While Wendy went back and forth over the idea of freeing her brother from imprisonment, she was encouraged by the other hybrids to help him, and so she did. Still, the prison break left Joe face-to-face with the T. Ocellus, a.k.a. eye midge, which nearly took him over. Wendy was there to stop that from happening, and the siblings came to an understanding, even if they couldn’t agree on how to handle matters, as she rounded up prisoners and cornered them in a cage with the assistance of her Xenomorph friend.

Patrick Brown / FX

Below, Chandler opens up about tackling Wendy’s dynamic shift with Joe, her ambition to rule as she came into her power, and reveals an exciting update about Season 2 progress.

Wendy decides that the humans, synths, and cyborgs should be scared of the hybrids. Did you enjoy flipping the script, going from the imprisoned to the one imprisoning others by the end of the episode? 

Sydney Chandler: It was so fun to play a character who’s so much cooler than you. It’s a gift. I didn’t see it as her consciously thinking I need to scare them, but it was more of her just coming into her own and realizing her power. It made me think of a kid who, if anyone’s dealt with bullying, you wish you had a monster behind you to back you up, and you create those imaginary friends that give you that strength, but this is someone who really legitimately has that, and also her body is a weapon.

So there’s a turn in the tide as far as her realizing, “Oh, I don’t have to do anything. Holding this space with this guy behind me is enough,” which is really fun because there’s a simplicity to that, she doesn’t have to move, she doesn’t have to yell, she doesn’t have to do anything but be because she can reach out and kill you if she wants to and she knows that now. She accepted that now she didn’t accept that before, so she’s lethal, which is so much fun to play.

Wendy is encouraged by the Lost Boys to forgive Joe. What does it mean to have the hybrids’ support on her familial relationship, and where do the siblings stand by the end?

I think with Joe, he used to be the protector, the older sibling, kind of a father figure as well. We did a lot of background work together with our family, and he’s much older than Marcy was. So what happens to a relationship when you are no longer needed as a protector, as a teacher? I think objectively, as Sydney, he’s not nihilistic, but in Wendy’s view, especially when they’re talking together at the end, he’s got a sense of hopelessness, and she does not resonate with that at all.

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So there’s an acceptance that he is not who she’s been trying to make him be. He is not convinced of what she’s trying to convince him of, and she accepts that, for the first time. I don’t know where that leaves them. I think there’s a really uneasy quality there. I think she could go either way, and she’s very impulsive, so it’s kind of a scary notion that if she got too mad, I don’t know what she would do. Hopefully, we get a Season 2.

Speaking of Season 2, have you heard anything about the possibility of returning?

[Noah Hawley] keeps his cards close, so I have been trying to get anything from him as far as what happens, and he’s given me a few tiny words here and there that I’m just like, “What does that mean?” His mind is a genius explosion of color. I’ve never met anyone like him personally. I’ve never worked with a mind like his. He gives us so much space to explore on our own. He seems to trust the people he hires to do the job, and that’s scary at first and then really rewarding. It builds your confidence quite a bit. I know that he is ready for Season 2,  we’ve got the writers’ rooms going, so we’re just waiting to hopefully get a green light.

What future does Wendy envision for herself?

She listens to her gut, and she has a very strong moral compass, which is great and also can be a threat because once she makes up her mind, she’s very hard to convince otherwise, just like any kid really. She genuinely thinks that everything’s great, everything’s gonna be OK now because she trusts herself to make it better, which is a scary notion. Now you have a lethal weaponized child with an alien in power. It’s objectively a horror show. I don’t know where she goes with that. I think she could become quite authoritarian; she’s really swung on the pendulum from human to more isolated, synthetic, if you will. Maybe she finds a middle ground. She has a lot of growing up to do, [but] I don’t think she knows that.

Alien: Earth, Season 1, Streaming now, Hulu

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