‘Resident Alien’ Showrunner Explains Harry’s Hallucinations in the First Season: ‘It Was Never Meant to Be Supernatural’
Harry, Asta, D’Arcy, and the main character of the SyFy TV series, Resident Alien, are back. But before getting into the new drama that awaits Patience, Colorado, and the characters, showrunner Chris Sheridan answered fan questions on Reddit. He explains the purpose behind Harry’s hallucinations in the first season of Resident Alien.
Dead human Harry haunts alien Harry in ‘Resident Alien’
The real Harry Vanderspeigle is 100% dead. One gloomy night at the cabin, an alien breaks in causes a fight, and ultimately kills the real human Harry. The alien takes over Harry’s body and identity to fulfill his plan to destroy humanity. He learns to be human by watching Law & Order.
As the first season of Resident Alien progresses, Harry begins to see hallucinations of human Harry – corpse and all. He appears when Harry makes decisions that are not right for him to make—for example, having sexual intercourse with the real Harry’s ex-wife.
He also appears to berate alien Harry about his failures in completing his missions. Human Harry accuses alien Harry of becoming more human. Many fans felt the hallucinations were either guilt on the alien Harry’s part over his actions or a way to teach him about humanity.
Resident Alien’s Sheridan breaks down the purpose of Harry’s hallucinations and whether to not it is meant to be supernatural.
Harry’s hallucinations were meant to be a learning process
On Reddit, a fan asked Sheridan to break down the purpose of Harry’s hallucinations. The fan explains, “is this just Harry’s emerging humanity and guilt manifesting as his first sin, is this supernatural at all, we’re the things human Harry said true, was there some sort of transferrence of information or anything given he is recreating Harry???”
The fan got part of the reasoning accurate. Sheridan answered, “The original concept of those hallucinations is Harry’s alien/human brain working through his fears and emotions, in a powerful way that a being that isn’t used to fear or emotion would have a hard time processing.”
Being in a human body proves a challenge for Harry. He not only has to pretend to be human but starts to interact with various human emotions from Asta, D’Arcy, the mayor, and other residents.
“It was never meant to be supernatural — for instance, this isn’t a ghost of Harry in the room when he looked dead. It was a visual way to depict the internal workings of Harry’s growing emotions. Not unlike dreams are for us. We really tried in the writer’s room to be consistent with this, where ‘dead harry’ wouldn’t know things necessarily that Harry himself didn’t know and fear,” explained Sheridan.
Alien Harry is not the worst person in ‘Resident Alien’
In hindsight, alien Harry seems like a villain. His purpose was to travel to earth to eradicate all of humanity. To fulfill his plan, he brutally kills human Harry. As the series progresses, fans learn Harry is the least of their problems.
In reality, human Harry was an evil man, part of a money scheme, and murdered the original town doctor. While Harry is an alien and meant to destroy, he is not as bad as he seems. While he is unaware of human morals, kindness, and sympathy, he shows that he is starting to learn.
In Resident Alien Season 2, fans see how Harry becomes afraid that he is becoming more human. He starts to understand why Asta is hellbent on making him try and save humanity. Harry also realizes how different his species is from humans. His kind does not care for affection, love, kindness, or nurture.
In the first season, the hallucinations of human Harry worked well in showing that alien Harry did not have a concrete way of understanding his newfound emotions. Harry understands things independently in Resident Alien Season 2, thanks to Asta.
