Cyborgs Are Old (and Maybe Outdated?) Tech in Alien: Earth | SDCC 2025

Alien: Earth includes three different types of high tech lifeforms created by mankind, but one of them is old news from the perspective of the characters.

During the panel for the new Alien TV series at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 today, cast member Babou Ceesay (Into the Badlands, Rogue One) was asked about his character Morrow’s unusual nature. Morrow is one of the crew members onboard the Maginot, a ship returning from a mission in deep space to collect samples of five alien lifeforms for Weyland-Yutani.

Morrow is also a cyborg, something we see represented by how he can transform his hands, making weapons and tools appear. But as Ceesay points out, the Maginot is wrapping up a 65-year mission when the show begins, meaning in terms of technology, he’s ancient. Or as Ceesay put it, “He’s coming back to a planet where he’s essentially an iPhone 1 in an iPhone 20 world.”

This is also interesting because Alien: Earth begins with onscreen text informing us that there have been three different technologies all developed in the hopes of achieving immortality - cyborgs, synths, and hybrids. Synths are the synthetic beings we’ve seen in all the Alien movies and hybrids are something new being introduced in Alien: Earth’s 2120 setting - a synthetic body with a human consciousness. But cyborgs, as one expects, are humans with cybernetic upgrades, which is something we’ve never seen in the Alien movie before.

In the Alien: Earth premiere, Morrow is the only cyborg we meet, though that doesn’t mean he’s the only one around. But synths have been the prevalent such being in the Alien franchise (including in the original 1979 movie, set two years after Alien: Earth). This makes it feel like beyond Morrow himself being outdated, cyborgs might be considered the old and possibly mostly passé tech in general, synths the current and most prevalent tech, and hybrids are definitely the newest tech, given we meet the first-ever example of such a being (Sydney Chandler’s Wendy) in the series. But given all of the other Alien movies — some set long after both Alien: Earth and Alien – lean so much on synths, it feels like not only do cyborgs completely fall by the wayside but that something stops hybrids from becoming a successful technology…. Though the question remains why that is.

For now though, Alien: Earth will feature both hybrids and at least one cyborg in a prominent role in the form of Morrow. And while Morrow might be seen as ancient, old-timey technology for the people of 2120, Ceesay still proudly proclaimed, “He’s got his swiss army knife arm!”