What to Watch Verdict
As Harry risks his life to complete his job as an alien, he contemplates his unexpected new life as a human.
Pros
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👽 Tudyk and Tomko do a fantastic job working through a lot of expository information, giving it emotional depth without making it feel like an info dump.
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👽 Wetterlund's Alice is literally the show's hero, saving the day for her, Asta and Harry in a great moment of redemption.
Cons
- -
👽 While the investigation of Harry by the government is a necessary and inevitable plot development, the characters involved are kinda flat.
This post contains spoilers for Resident Alien.
Check out our last review here.
At the end of Resident Alien's last episode, Harry (Alan Tudyk) rushed out to explore the site where his former nemesis Max (Judah Prehn) identified the last piece of the doomsday device, he, Asta (Sara Tomko) and D’Arcy (Alice Wetterlund) fell through the ice, landing on the lip of a crevasse. They’re passed out, and Harry’s leg is pinned beneath a massive boulder. The piece is just out of reach, but Harry has more immediate problems: the cold, and his injuries, seem to be impeding his ability to maintain human form. But when D’Arcy’s snowmobile collapses much of their perch, it at least momentarily solves a problem developing across the country, as the signal alerting David (Alex Barima) and Lisa (Mandell Maughan) to Harry’s whereabouts shuts off.
When Asta awakens, she is appropriately startled by the discovery of Harry’s true identity, but her compassion at the sight of his injuries prompts her to take care of him. He instructs her to cauterize his leg wound, insisting that his species has a high threshold for pain, but his screams awaken D’Arcy, hanging unconscious and injured above. While Ben (Levi Fiehler) and Sherriff Thompson (Corey Reynolds) get into a showdown across town over “taking charge” and “knowing what women want,” Asta interrogates Harry about his species and the life that he left behind, prompting an unexpected emotional response from Harry about his deceased mate and one of his more than 300 offspring. D’Arcy continues to struggle to climb out of the crevasse, as Liv (Elizabeth Bowen) enlists Ben to pack up her personal belongings in the Sherriff’s office.
Asta explains that she wants to help because she believes in the connections between living beings, but Harry tests her by forcing her to clean out his breathing duct, now a gaping, gooey hole in his alien chest. “Go slowly, and avoid the teeth,” he tells her as an extra pair of hands emerge from his torso. D’Arcy records a farewell video eulogizing herself as she shivers on a ledge, but a memory of when Asta visited her after her Olympic injury stirs her back into action. Back in town, David suggests that they give up on their search for their extraterrestrial target before Lisa spots one of Max’s flyers, a sign they are on the right track. And Ben gets into a minor showdown with Kate (Meredith Garretson) over ordering dinner as he tries to be more assertive; it doesn’t work, and she ends up ordering for both of them.
After Asta fails to show up for their weekly dinner date, Dan (Gary Farmer) contacts Sherriff Thompson to go looking for her. With a storm front bearing down on the glacier where D’Arcy and Asta were last known to be headed, Dan decides to go looking for them. But D’Arcy reaches the surface and pulls both of them up with her, after Asta disguises Harry so D’Arcy won’t discover his true identity. Asta recruits Dan to meet her at the diner after ditching D’Arcy so they can nurse Harry back to health, and Dan promptly balks. But after explaining the situation — and vouching for Harry — Dan agrees, even though it means amputating Harry’s leg. But just as Harry seems out of the woods, Lisa shows up at the restaurant where Ben and Kate are having dinner, laying a trap to find out more information about the alien she and David are meant to apprehend.
With just two episodes left, the biggest question, of course, is whether or not Harry will destroy the creatures of Earth. But showrunner Chris Sheridan has backed audiences into an interesting corner as they’ve now become as invested in the show’s human cast as its alien protagonist, and without a clear path to a second season, there’s much to resolve in just one more hour of storytelling.
