Morrow's 'Alien: Earth' Riddle Has Confounded Both Characters and Viewers — What Does "When Is a Machine Not a Machine" Mean?

The mysteries of Alien: Earth are still being revealed to those of us watching at home, and the show's third episode gave us a sense of where the series might be headed. One line, in particular, stood out for those watching the show at home, though, and it comes from Morrow, the cyborg who is determined to hunt down the specimens that got loose before the Maginot crashed.

When he corners two of the Lost Boys and discovers that they are in fact hybrids (human brains implanted into the bodies of synthetics), he asks, "When is a machine not a machine?" We don't get a clear answer, but it seems like it might be one of the puzzles at the heart of the show. Here's what we know about what it means.

The show itself has yet to provide a clear answer to Morrow's question, but the question itself seems to be one of the driving forces behind the series. The Alien franchise has always been fascinated by the line between humanity and android life, but Alien: Earth has a particular focus on that question.

The series opens by explaining that in the world's "race for immortality," synths, cyborgs, and hybrids have all been created.

Morrow, himself, is a cyborg, or a human body that has been enhanced by technology. The Lost Boys, meanwhile, are hybrids, and the show has already poked at their immortality.

The core question Morrow is asking, though, is whether it's possible to distinguish a machine from a human, and where that line might be. Hybrids have human minds, but in the body of machines, so are they humans or machines? There's no clear answer.

What's so fascinating about the hybrids, though, in addition to the fact that they behave like children in adult bodies, is that they don't seem to have a clear purpose beyond their mere existence. Their bodies were built to house their minds, and if Boy Cavalier has other plans in mind for them beyond seeing what their limits are, he has not revealed them yet.

So, while the bodies of the hybrids are undoubtedly machines, the question is whether the embodied presence of the children living in them is as well. This is the philosophical stuff that Alien: Earth is clearly playing with, and it's unclear whether the show will ever have a definitive answer to the question of when, if ever, a machine can transcend its own creation to become something more.

Wendy and the other Lost Boys act like children, but they look like adults and are actually machines. That ambiguity is part of why the concept of Alien: Earth is so fascinating, and why the question about how the aliens themselves fit into all of this feels secondary, at least through the first few episodes of the show. Machines are machines in our world, but in Alien: Earth, things are much less clear.