FX's new Alien TV show already honors the iconic Ellen Ripley without physically including her in its story. Helmed by Fargo's Noah Hawley, Alien tells the story of a near-future Earth some 30 years before Ripley and the Nostromo crew's fateful voyage in 2122. Yet despite not focussing on Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in the insular way the original Alien movies did, FX's Alien still finds a slick way to pay homage to her highly influential character in the Alien canon.
Per Esquire, Noah Hawley's Alien series will instead center on the sinister Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a corporate profiteer whose shady activities include deep space transport, planetary colonization, terraforming, and the study of the Xenomorphs across the universe. Previously used as a "faceless nameless corporation" in early Alien franchise installments, FX's Alien looks to flesh out the lore and canon surrounding the catalyst for the events of both the original Alien films and Ridley Scott's prequel movies. The Alien series, therefore, is set in 2092, converging with the beginning of the USCSS Prometheus' fateful voyage to LV-223.
In this way, the Alien TV show finds the perfect way to honor Ellen Ripley without including her in its story, with the Alien series beginning the same year Ripley is born. In the Alien canon, Ripley comes into the world on January 7th, 2092, coinciding with the birth of the Prometheus age of space exploration. This canonical symmetry is certainly no coincidence, with Hawley and company flat out stating that the Alien show takes place 30 years before the space vessel Nostromo leaves Earth.
It makes sense that FX's Alien would select the year 2092 to begin its corporate-themed narrative. Ridley Scott's original Alien sees Ripley talk about her childhood on Earth aboard the Nostromo, with only vague references beyond her memories to the world outside the Nostromo granted to audiences. This insular setting is what makes Alien 1979 such a taut, compelling horror, with the claustrophobic nature of Scott's seminal movie unrivaled in sci-fi since.
The Alien prequels in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant later went much further to flesh out a fixed timeline of events in the Alien canon, with the USCSS Prometheus' doomed voyage coinciding with Ripley's birth. The Alien show choosing 2092, therefore, is a fitting homage to Ripley, who was born the year Weyland-Yutani's age of deep space exploration truly began. There is also the added layer here of Ripley herself being one of the space "grunts" that the Weyland-Yutani corporation eventually jettisons into deep space aboard the Nostromo, tying her character's timeline back into the company's profit-hungry expeditions that lead to countless lives being lost across the Alien franchise's canon.
As a result, the Alien TV show is setting itself up to cleverly honor Ripley despite the FX team's prudent decision to leave Sigourney Weaver's character out of their story. Alien's new TV series will grant an unprecedented look behind Weyland-Yutani's corporate curtain, deepening the previously far more microcosmic world of the original Alien movies. In this way, the Alien series still gets to give a nod to the character that made its existence possible without losing sight of the prequel story it needs to tell.