FX/HuluAfter four episodes of mostly sticking to action set in a future-tense version of planet Earth, the thrilling sideways prequel series, Alien: Earth, has now jumped back into space and into the recent past. In Episode 5, “In Space, No One...”, the story of how and why the Weyland-Yutani-owned spaceship Maginot ended up crashing in the nation state of Prodigy is fully explained. And, in this deeply nostalgic, but also extremely revealing episode, we learn all about Weyland-Yutani’s history with the xenomorph species. Which leaves just one major question: When did Weyland-Yutani first learn about all of this? Spoilers ahead.Alien: Earth Episode 5 connects the dotsActing captain Zoya Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) in Alien: Earth. | FX/HuluAs a flashback to the majority of the events of the series so far, Alien: Earth Episode 5 serves three primary purposes in the larger context of the series. First, it gives the series essentially a version of the original 1979 Alien within the new show. After being briefly introduced in Episode 1, we learn way more about the crew of the Maginot, and gradually see how various creatures were set loose on the ship.Second, the episode gives Morrow (Babou Ceesay) a complete backstory in which we discover that contracts for each member of the crew are 65 years. Morrow, it turns out, lost a daughter while he was in hypersleep, meaning his entire personal reason for taking on the contract for Weyland-Yutani was shattered. Finally, the episode gives a crucial twist: One member of the crew, an engineer named Petrovich (Enzo Cilenti), was getting out of hypersleep secretly and sabotaged the ship on purpose because Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) of Prodigy promised him a reward if he did. So the big revelation here is that the crash of the Maginot was not an accident, but rather, crafted by Kavalier. This changes our perceptions of the show in a big way. It was one thing to consider Kavalier an amoral opportunist. But, after Episode 5, we know he’s much closer to being a kind of evil mogul, the Lex Luthor of the Alien universe.Alien: Earth’s biggest canon gapWe know this is not the first discovery of the xenomorphs. | 20th Century Fox/Kobal/ShutterstockUnlike the Nostromo in the original Alien, the Maginot is not randomly diverted from another mission to pick up alien samples. Instead, getting the samples is the primary mission of the ship, and, crucially, the crew is pretty well informed on certain aspects of the xenomorphs, but very clearly doesn’t know everything.To put it another way, Weyland-Yutani knew that it wanted certain alien samples, and, presumably, knew where to send the crew to find said samples. This isn’t stated outright, but it's heavily implied, since this crew has plenty of experts directly connected to fields that would be useful in the study of alien creatures. And, in their clandestine conversation, Petrovich even reveals that some kind of alien murdered his wife in the past by “laying eggs” in her eyes. So, clearly, people in this point in the timeline know about creepy aliens out there.The present tense of Alien: Earth takes place in 2120, two years before Alien. In the original movie, we certainly learned that the company was aware of the xenomorphs ahead of time; Ash (Ian Holm) makes it clear his mission is to preserve the creature, at the expense of the crew. In Alien: Earth’s “In Space, No One...”, the humans on the crew of the Maginot, specifically, Zaveri (Richa Moorjan), are outright told by the control computer, Mother, that the crew is expendable. What becomes a secret in the near future is, at this point, somewhat out in the open.How much did Prodigy know about xenomorphs before the events of the show? We may never know. | FX/HuluSo, this crew, or at least some of the crew, knew what the mission was about. This creates another somewhat obvious question: When did this version of Weyland-Yutani first learn of the xenomorphs? Again, the episode suggests that everyone has an inkling of these creatures and that the aliens weren’t discovered by accident. If you squint, you could say that Weyland’s expedition in Prometheus is where the initial info comes from. But, as Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley has stated in various ways prior to the airing of the series, his head canon is that the xenomorph has “existed for a million years out there in space.”Alien: Earth Episode 5 seems to reinforce this idea: Vague knowledge of the xenomorph (and other creatures) is just something Weyland-Yutani (and others on Earth) might already know about. But when any human first learned of that isn’t necessarily a question the show is prepared to answer. Ultimately, Alien: Earth might, technically, be a prequel, but at the point at which we already know about xenomorphs, it makes it slightly easier to just enjoy a show where some of the characters already know about them, too.Alien: Earth streams on Hulu.