Alien: Thaw (2023): Plot, Characters & Lore
Alien: Thaw is a five-issue comic series published by Marvel Comics from April to August 2023, written by Declan Shalvey and drawn by Andrea Broccardo. It relaunched Marvel's Alien series as Alien #1 to #5 and was collected as Alien by Shalvey & Broccardo Vol. 1: Thaw. Set in 2195 on the ice moon LV-695, it follows a scientist and her teenage daughter after a frozen Facehugger was found in the ice and Weyland-Yutani took over their small research outpost.
Plot Summary
The Ancient Hive Under The Ice
Hundreds of Xenomorphs lay frozen in the ice of the moon LV-695 long before any human outpost was built there. A narrator described how the creatures adapted to every new world they reached, and how the bitter cold of this moon had stopped them. The bodies of the hive were held deep in the glacier in a dormant state. They waited there for the temperature to change, while snow, wind and drifting ice covered the surface far above them.
In 2195, Talbot Engineering Inc. ran a small research outpost on the moon called the Keg. Its chief scientist, Batya Zahn, studied ways to collect and export usable water from off-world ice. She lived at the outpost with her husband Dayton and her teenage daughter Zasha. The crew was months past its scheduled relief, and Batya was pregnant, so the family wanted to leave the moon as soon as Talbot sent a ship to replace them.
Zasha's Discovery On LV-695
Zasha spent her days exploring the ice fields around the Keg with Dayton, who had only one working arm after an injury on the base. During one trip she climbed down into a crevasse and found a strange spider-like creature frozen solid in the ice. Neither of them knew what it was. They cut the block free and carried the specimen back to the outpost, where Zasha showed it to her mother in the laboratory.
Batya Zahn saw the find as a way off the moon. She called Talbot headquarters, complained that their relief was long overdue and reminded the company that she was pregnant. She then reported the new organism as a discovery worth collecting. Batya hoped the specimen would make her career and force Talbot to send a ship. The message was picked up far from LV-695, and the company that answered was not the one she had been working for.
Arrival Of The Boreas
Two weeks later, the family was eating dinner when a large starship came down through the snow toward the Keg. Batya and Zasha were surprised that anyone had come so quickly after so many months of silence. Dayton grew suspicious and argued that Talbot would never send such a big ship to a crew of three. The vessel was the USCSS Boreas, a Conestoga-class warship, and it landed on the ice beside the outpost.
Armed commandos poured out of the Boreas and secured the Keg room by room, taking the generator room and the control center. They wore Weyland-Yutani markings and moved through the base without asking anyone's permission. The soldiers gathered the family in the common room, where a well-dressed company representative walked in behind them and introduced himself to Batya. He had brought a biological management team and equipment for a far larger operation than the small water survey.
Weyland-Yutani's Takeover
The representative was Wendell Theen, a Weyland-Yutani executive. He told Batya that Weyland-Yutani had bought Talbot Engineering four days earlier, and that the Keg, its staff and all of its research were now company property. Dayton refused to accept the deal and punched Theen in the face. The commandos beat him down and dragged him to the brig aboard the Boreas, while Theen made it clear that the family's future depended on their cooperation.
During the struggle, Zasha slipped into the ventilation ducts and crawled to her mother's laboratory, where she packed the frozen specimen into her red backpack. Theen meanwhile questioned Batya about what she had found. She admitted that the creature matched rumours she had heard about Epsilon Station and a specimen called Alpha. Theen already knew more than she did, and he ordered his team to search the ice for more creatures.
Drilling At The Excavation Site
The company turned the old Talbot site into a Weyland-Yutani excavation camp. Heavy drilling rigs and tracked transports were brought down from the Boreas, and a security team guarded the work on the ice. The soldiers mocked the cramped outpost and its two-person crew, and joked about Dayton's injury while they waited for the drill to break through. Their orders were to recover more frozen specimens like the one Zasha had found.
The drill cut deep into the glacier until the ice gave way beneath it. Part of the rig collapsed into a cavern, and one of the workers was carried down with the machinery as it fell into the dark. The commandos rushed to the edge with lights and rifles to look for him. Below them, the hole opened into a huge chamber far beneath the surface, and the soldiers climbed down to see what the drill had reached.
Waking The Frozen Hive
The chamber was full of Xenomorphs. Hundreds of the creatures lay frozen together in the ice, piled on top of each other in a buried nest. The soldiers argued about what they were looking at, and one of them asked whether it was a nest. None of them had seen anything like it before. Theen's team began to chip specimens loose, but the heat of the machines and the open air had already started to warm the cavern.
One of the frozen creatures moved and seized a soldier, dragging him screaming into the ice. The rest of the team opened fire as more of the hive began to thaw around them. The survivors ran back to their vehicles and drove toward the Keg, reporting by radio that something had gone wrong at the dig site. Behind them, dozens of adult Xenomorphs climbed out of the cavern and followed the transports across the ice.
The Facehugger In Zasha's Backpack
Inside the Keg, Zasha was caught in the ventilation system by Earl, a member of the security team. He pulled her out of the duct and grabbed her backpack, demanding to know what she had taken from the laboratory. The frozen creature inside the bag had warmed during her escape. When Earl tore the pack open, the Facehugger came to life, burst out of the bag and leapt at his face.
Zasha screamed and fled while Earl collapsed with the creature wrapped around his head. His comrades later found him unconscious in the corridor and carried him to the infirmary without understanding what had happened to him. Meanwhile, Theen took Batya to an office and interrogated her about the specimen. He reminded her that she now belonged to Weyland-Yutani and warned her that her research was the only thing she had left to bargain with.
Massacre On The Ice Road
The transports returning from the excavation site raced across the snow toward the Keg. The soldiers aboard were shaken, and some of them refused to believe what they had seen in the cavern. Their radio calls to the base went unanswered. Then a Xenomorph leapt onto one of the vehicles, and others came out of the blowing snow on every side of the convoy. The drivers had no time to turn back.
The creatures tore the transports apart and killed the soldiers inside. At the Keg, the communications staff watched the convoy's signals disappear one after another and realised that the excavation team was gone. The company now had no way to reach anyone out on the ice. The remaining security staff at the outpost were ordered to hold the base, while the Xenomorphs moved on toward the lights of the Keg.
Explosions At The Keg
Earl woke in the infirmary, confused and complaining of pain in his chest. His friends gathered around him, relieved that he seemed unharmed after his attack in the vents. Moments later a Chestburster broke out of his chest and escaped into the room. The soldiers fired wildly at the small creature as it darted between them, and their shots hit the fuel tanks stored in the next section of the base.
The tanks exploded in a chain of blasts that killed several members of the management team and ripped open whole sections of the Keg. Fire spread through the outpost, and the light and noise drew the Xenomorphs from the dig site straight to the base. A huge horde swarmed over the wreckage. The explosions also cracked the ice sheet under the Keg and under the Boreas, which had landed beside it.
Sinking Of The Boreas
In the confusion, Theen went to check Batya's laboratory and found that the vault holding her specimens had opened when the blast hit. Another Facehugger had escaped into the base during the fire. Aboard the Boreas, Dayton broke out of the brig and made his way to the bridge. He tried to take control of the ship so that he could use it to rescue Batya and Zasha from the burning outpost.
Batya and Zasha found each other in the burning outpost and went back for her research. While they were there, Batya secretly injected something into her pregnant belly. The cracks in the ice widened under the landing site. As Dayton powered up the Boreas, the sheet gave way and the giant ship broke through. Batya and Zasha ran across the ice as the vessel sank into the freezing water below.
Xenomorphs Beneath The Ice
The Boreas sank about 300 feet to the bottom of the water beneath the ice, with Dayton on the bridge. Water flooded parts of the ship, and its lights shone across the dark lakebed. Dayton saw that the cold had not stopped the creatures there either. Dozens of swimming Xenomorphs moved through the water around the wreck, and many more had been frozen into the underside of the ice above them.
The creatures under the ice began to climb toward the surface and the broken outpost above. On the surface, the surviving soldiers pulled back with Theen to the upper levels of the Keg. They argued about how to reach the shuttle on the landing platform, which was now the only way off the moon. The Xenomorphs were taking the burning base floor by floor, and the last people inside were running out of places to hide.
Labour In The Overrun Keg
Batya and Zasha hid from the creatures as they moved through the outpost. Zasha confronted her mother about the injection, and Batya admitted that she had been testing the frozen samples. She had used the creatures' genetic material to make Zasha's unborn brother a hybrid, something new and stronger that could survive the trip off the moon. Before she could explain further, her water broke far too early, weeks before the baby was due.
Batya knew that something had gone wrong and believed the pregnancy would not survive the climb to the landing platform. She told Zasha to induce the birth there in the Keg, using the tools they had with them. Zasha did as she was told and delivered the baby while the Xenomorphs searched the corridors nearby. Her brother was stillborn, and Batya died during the delivery, leaving Zasha alone with their bodies in the ruined base.
The White Xenomorph
Zasha left her mother's body and moved toward the landing platform alone. Water from the flooded lower levels poured through the halls, and adult Xenomorphs broke through the doors behind her. Then a larger, pale creature appeared, a white Xenomorph unlike the black ones from the hive. It was larger than the others, with spikes on its skull, and it cornered Zasha in a flooded corridor and attacked her.
Zasha held it off with a tool from her pack until Dayton arrived and struck the creature with a heavy wrench. He had escaped the sunken Boreas and climbed back up to the Keg. The white creature then turned on the black Xenomorphs in the corridor and killed them, and their acid blood splashed over it without doing any harm. Dayton was badly hurt in the fight, and his torn skin showed metal and wiring underneath.
Dayton's True Identity
Dayton led Zasha up through the third floor of the Keg toward the landing platform. She demanded to know what he was, and he admitted that he was a synthetic. The real Dayton Zahn, the outpost's operations director and Zasha's father, had slipped off a landing platform months earlier while trying to free a ship from the ice. Batya had not known that she was pregnant when he died in the accident.
The mission required a crew of two adults, so Batya had asked the synthetic, who was not on the company records, to take the dead man's place and even his name. He did it so that she could continue her research and so that he could look after Zasha. Later, complications with the pregnancy led Batya to the frozen creatures. She believed their resilient genetic traits could make the baby strong enough to leave orbit and make her career.
Fight For The Shuttle
Dayton and Zasha reached the landing platform on the roof, but two surviving members of the company team had already taken the shuttle there. Dayton begged them to take Zasha with them. The soldiers refused, saying there was no room for anyone else, and one of them shot Dayton in the head. The synthetic kept fighting, beat the man down with his bare hands and took his weapon.
The Xenomorphs swarmed onto the roof, and the white creature attacked the remaining soldier and killed him on the platform. Dayton held the horde back with the captured rifle so that Zasha could get aboard the shuttle. Inside, she found an evacuation flight plan already programmed and started the launch. Dayton stayed behind on the platform and was overwhelmed by the creatures as the shuttle lifted off the Keg and climbed into the sky.
Zasha's Escape From LV-695
Zasha escaped the moon alone in the shuttle, watching the burning Keg fall away below her. On the surface, Wendell Theen was the last company survivor left on the ice. He woke up injured among the wreckage, and a Facehugger crawled across the snow and attached itself to his face. The creatures that had been buried in the glacier for so long now had the whole moon to themselves.
In orbit, Zasha thought about her mother. Batya had succeeded in a way she could never have imagined, but Zasha had lost everything to a single crack in the ice. She had been forced to trade one cold outpost for another. The white Xenomorph and the thawed hive remained on LV-695, and Zasha left the moon as the only member of her family to survive the outbreak at the Keg.
Key Characters
- Zasha Zahn was Batya's teenage daughter, who found the frozen Facehugger in the ice. She lost her family and escaped LV-695 alone in the shuttle.
- Batya Zahn was the chief scientist of Talbot Engineering on LV-695. She injected Xenomorph material into her unborn son to make him a hybrid and died giving birth to him.
- Dayton was a synthetic who took the name and place of Batya's dead husband, Dayton Zahn. He helped Zasha reach the shuttle and stayed behind to hold off the Xenomorphs.
- Wendell Theen was the Weyland-Yutani executive who took over the Keg after the company bought Talbot. He was the last survivor on the moon and was attacked by a Facehugger.
- Earl was a member of the company security team who caught Zasha in the vents. The Facehugger from her backpack attacked him, and a Chestburster later broke out of his chest.
- The white Xenomorph was a large pale creature that killed humans and black Xenomorphs alike on LV-695 and was unharmed by their acid blood.
Collected Editions
Marvel Comics released the five issues monthly from April to August 2023 as Alien #1 to #5, relaunching the series after Phillip Kennedy Johnson's run ended with Alien: Revival. Declan Shalvey wrote the arc, Andrea Broccardo drew it, Triona Farrell and Ruth Redmond colored it and VC's Clayton Cowles lettered it. Sarah Brunstad edited the series with assistant editors Anita Okoye and Lindsey Cohick. Each issue carried a main cover by Dike Ruan and Matthew Wilson.
The trade paperback Alien by Shalvey & Broccardo Vol. 1: Thaw was released on November 15, 2023, collecting Alien #1 to #5. The book reprinted the main covers by Dike Ruan and Matthew Wilson at the start of each chapter and added a gallery of variant covers. The variants included art by Alex Maleev, Declan Shalvey, Gabriele Dell'Otto, Dave Johnson, Felipe Massafera, Michael Walsh, Sunghan Yune, and Francesco Mattina with Jesus Aburtov.
Behind The Scenes
Declan Shalvey and Andrea Broccardo took over Marvel's Alien line from Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Salvador Larroca, whose run had started with Alien: Bloodlines. Thaw references that earlier run when Batya recalled rumours about Epsilon Station and the Alpha specimen. The pale creature was labelled Submorph on the concept art, and the series showed it being unharmed by the acid blood of the black Xenomorphs it killed in the final issue, released on August 16, 2023.
Alien Annual 2023 later went back to the history of LV-695 and showed how the Xenomorphs first reached the moon and fought its native creatures. Shalvey then returned to the moon in Alien: Descendant, set in 2208, in which an adult Zasha came back to LV-695 with a Weyland-Yutani salvage crew to recover the wreck of the Boreas. The ice moon was renamed Cocito in that later story, and Zasha worked under the name Cole.
Conclusion
Alien: Thaw is Declan Shalvey and Andrea Broccardo's 2023 Marvel series collected as Alien Vol. 1. It follows Zasha Zahn and her mother Batya from the discovery of a frozen Facehugger to the Weyland-Yutani takeover of their outpost and the thawing of a buried Xenomorph hive. The story ends with Batya dead in childbirth, the synthetic Dayton left behind on the landing platform, Theen facehugged on the ice and Zasha escaping LV-695 alone. Marvel followed Thaw with Alien Annual Regicide and the four-issue Alien: Descendant, which returned Zasha to the same moon years later.
External Sources
- Alien by Shalvey & Broccardo Vol. 1: Thaw at Marvel
- Alien by Shalvey & Broccardo Vol. 1: Thaw review at AIPT
- Screen Rant on the white Xenomorph in Alien #5
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
