ALIEN: EARTH Gave Us the Franchise’s Grisliest Synth Death

In episode six, the Prodigy synth Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) tasks Tootles with “feeding and watering” the alien specimens when he’s on a mission away from the Neverland facility. Tootles jumps at the chance to have some adult responsibilities, and goes to feed the creatures alone. As he’s tending to the alien specimens, he enters the so-called fly alien’s habitat. Then things go terribly wrong. He accidentally rips off the door hatch to the feeding slot for the fly specimens with his superior robotic strength. So he enters the habitat, and that’s when the eye octopus/T. Ocellus alien, now living inside a very menacing sheep, bumps his head against the glass to startle Tootles. This forces him to lose his footing, locking him inside.

Once Tootles finds himself accidentally locked in, one of the bloodsucking bugs emerges out of the hive built on the cell wall. Two of the giant-sized insect aliens attack Tootles, spitting a form of corroding acid onto his face. He doesn’t scream out in pain, however. It seems synthetics don’t have pain receptors or a true nervous system the way humans do. But we see his skin slowly melt off, exposing his synthetic musculature underneath. This occurs as his system shuts down as he shakes and convulses, spitting up his nutrients. Despite not being human, the flies begin feeding on his corpse, drinking in his juices. It’s pretty disgusting, despite poor Tootles not being an organic human.

Episode six closes with the judgiest sheep gloatface huggering over his handiwork, as the five specimens attempt their escape from captivity. The facehugger attaches to Prodigy scientist Arthur Sylvia, and we know how that always goes. As the corpse of poor Tootles lies on the floor, we hear a voice-over from Boy Kavalier paraphrasing Peter Pan, reminding the viewers that in the story, the Lost Boys were of no use to Peter once they became adults. As the oldest mind of the hybrids, Tootles became a liability to Prodigy, and they were more than willing to sacrifice him. Now, we must wait and see if the rest of the humans and other synths and hybrids can survive the combined terror of five predatory alien species on the loose.

Alien: Earth drops new episodes on FX and FX on Hulu every Tuesday.