For most of us, a misplaced cell phone is bound to upend your day. But if you’re an alien crash-landing on Earth, a lost device means you’ve wrecked your entire mission on the planet — especially if said device is the key to obliterating all of its people. But, well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. 

Or try your best — as in the case of Harry (Alan Tudyk), the title character of beloved and quirky sci-fi comedy series Resident Alien, who assumes the body and identity of the doctor he’s just offed on the outskirts of remote Patience, Colorado. Amid an epic search for his missing humanity-destroying gadget, Harry’s unwillingly pulled into the lives of those despicable humans he’d been assigned to eradicate. To which he responds as only an alien who’s been inhaling culture and vocabulary lessons from reruns of Law & Order possibly can: “That’s bullshit.”

Created by Chris Sheridan (writer and executive producer of Family Guy), adapted from the comic of the same name, Resident Alien is helmed by Tudyk and his fellow stellar character actors, plus a roster of guest stars that includes Star Trek’s George Takei, Linda Hamilton (The Terminator films), and Gary Farmer (Reservation Dogs). Expect shades of Twin Peaks (deadpan outsider with a deep affinity for pie arriving in remote town in the wake of a mysterious murder), Northern Exposure (the oddball residents of said remote town), and 3rd Rock from the Sun (judgy aliens observing humans with witty disdain). 

Now that the first two seasons of Resident Alien have crash-landed onto Netflix, read on for everything to know about the series — and stay for the spoilers about that Season 2 ending.

Where can I stream Resident Alien Season 2?

Stream all 16 episodes of Season 2 on Netflix now.

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Who’s in the cast of Resident Alien Season 2?

• Alan Tudyk (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Moana, Dodgeball) as an alien inside the human persona of Harry Vanderspeigle
• Sara Tomko (Suicide for Beginners) as Asta Twelvetrees, doctor’s assistant at the Patience health clinic who befriends Harry
• Corey Reynolds (The Closer) as Mike Thompson, Patience’s sheriff, a tough-as-nails transplant from Washington, D.C., with an acutely bizarre wit
• Elizabeth Bowen (Fargo) as Deputy Olivia “Liv” Baker, the sheriff’s strong-willed counterpart who’s had her own UFO sightings
• Alice Wetterlund (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates) as D’Arcy Bloom, owner/bartender of the former mining town’s bar, The 59
• Levi Fiehler (The Fosters) as Ben “Snowflake” Hawthorne, the town’s mayor
• Meredith Garretson (The Offer) as Kate Hawthorne, Ben’s wife
• Judah Prehn (Mythic Quest) as Max Hawthorne, Kate and Ben’s son
• Gary Farmer (Smoke Signals) as Dan Twelvetrees, Asta’s dad
• David Bianchi (Queen of the South) as Goliath, a New York street artist — and more, as this season reveals
• Linda Hamilton (Beauty and the Beast) as General Eleanor McCallister, a high-ranking alien tracker 
• George Takei (Star Trek) as the voice of the Grey leader

Is Resident Alien based on a book?

Yes, it’s based on the comic Resident Alien by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. 

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Where does Resident Alien Season 2 take place?

It takes place mostly in fictional Patience, Colorado — a town that, according to Asta (Tomko), “looks like a slice of Americana, but has an underbelly.” This season also includes a visit to Asta and Dan’s (Farmer) relatives on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southwest Colorado, as well as scenes in New York City.

Where was Resident Alien Season 2 filmed?

Most of the filming took place in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.

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What happens in Resident Alien Season 2?

When we last left Harry (Tudyk) at the end of Resident Alien Season 1, he’d attempted to go to his home planet but abandoned his mission when he discovered Max (Prehn) had snuck onto the spaceship. At the start of Season 2, Harry’s crash-landed again and his invisible spaceship is now stuck in the outfield of a Patience playground, while Max is fine (albeit with strange post-space symptoms and even more strangely acting parents). Harry wakes up in a hospital in a neighboring town, where doctors figure the dude claiming to be an extraterrestrial is just another guy who’s taken a pretty rough amnesiac hit on the head. (Meanwhile, when Asta tracks him down at the hospital, Harry’s initially insisting he’s not Harry at all, but Lennie Briscoe, Jerry Orbach’s detective character on Law & Order.) 

Harry’s starting to realize that all this prolonged time on Earth has made him “an alien with human memories.” In fact, memory is at the core of Harry’s arc in Season 2, as he comes to terms with how closely memories, positive and negative alike, are tied to emotion — after all, he’s even been having telepathic conversations with an octopus. He’s also quickly discovering he’s got to deal with the past life, daughter (Taylor Blackwell), and various entanglements of the deceased Harry whose persona he’s been inhabiting all this time — plus, some new and very present threats to all human existence. Over the course of 16 episodes, a still hilariously and deeply awkward Harry grapples with his growing connection to Earth and its people (yes, even its children). He came here to destroy humanity — but now, is it even possible to save it?

How does Resident Alien Season 2 end?

Episode 16 is filled with cameos by UFO witnesses who recount their alleged sightings amid the action, which is packed aplenty in this cliff-hanger-ridden finale. Earlier this season Harry got his own message from an alien, Goliath (Bianchi), only to go to New York to find Goliath dead — now Harry adopts Goliath’s survivor, an alien/human hybrid baby who he gives the very earthly name of Bridget. He learns she’s also a kind of transmitter, conveying news from her dead father: A new invasive alien species, the Grey (voiced by Takei) are here, forming Grey-human hybrids who are about to do what Harry once planned to: destroy human life. 

Meanwhile, when Deputy Liv (Bowen) –– whose memories have been manipulated by Harry in this season, inspiring her to revisit her own UFO sightings –– learns that a fellow “alien experiencer” Peter Bach (Lost’s Terry O’Quinn) was killed in a car crash, she suspects foul play and enlists the sheriff to help her investigate. She doesn’t have proof yet, but she’s right, and in fact the assassin is none other than her new colleague: Grey-human hybrid and fellow deputy Joseph (Enver Gjokaj), who goes to Harry and tells him the Greys have offered him an escape pod to return to his home planet. Instead, Harry makes the very paternal decision to protect his newly adopted baby, sending her up in the pod, while he stays behind, risking his own life to save the planet. 

Before he can try, Harry and Asta are confronted by D’Arcy (Wetterlund), Asta’s best friend. (D’Arcy believes Harry murdered the town doctor whose autopsy he performed way back in the show’s first episode.) Harry reveals his alien identity to D’Arcy, which, yep, maybe explains a lot about his eccentric behavior. They’re all three reconciled just before the military arrive to take Harry away to work with the only person on Earth who could possibly stop the Greys — General McCallister (Hamilton), who heads up a powerful alien-hunting organization. But are they already too late? At the episode’s cliff-hanger end, Ben, the mayor of Patience (Fiehler) has just been abducted by the Greys (and not for the first time, we learn, which maybe also explains a lot about his behavior). As Ben is whisked away — along with Robert (Paul Piaskowski), the son of possibly murdered Peter Bach — he sees his own unborn child in a tube, taken by the Greys from Kate’s womb, traveling with them. 

Watch Seasons 1 and 2 of Resident Alien on Netflix.

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