Sci-Fi Legend Jewel Staite Joins Alan Tudyk for Resident Alien Season 4
Jewel Staite joins the cast as an FBI Agent investigating odd events around town in Season 4 of Resident Alien.
With grey aliens and shapeshifting mantids setting their sights on Earth, the Resident Alien universe has been getting a lot more crowded lately. Still, there’s always room for one more, especially if they’ve got the best interests of humans at heart. To that end, science fiction legend Jewel Staite has officially joined the cast of Resident Alien for the upcoming fourth season, currently in production.
Resident Alien: The situation so far
Interplanetary sci-fi romp Resident Alien is based on the comic book of the same name by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. The series follows Harry Vanderspeigle (real name unpronounceable, played by Alan Tudyk), an extraterrestrial visitor on a mission to destroy humanity.
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After crash landing on Earth and assuming human form, Harry develops human emotions while building relationships and a certain sentimentality for at least some humans. Having apparently shirked his official duty, Harry embarks on a personal mission to protect humanity from one extraterrestrial threat after another.
We last saw Harry and the gang in the Season 3 finale, “Homecoming,” and the situation was more dire than ever. More people are becoming aware of the alien presence on Earth and there’s a shapeshifting alien mantid in town who's posing as Harry (Tudyk is pulling double duty playing both roles). Meanwhile, the real Harry is stuck with his baby, Bridget, in a Grey prison on the Moon.
Staite will play Jules Gardner, a woman with ties to Patience, Colorado. Years back, she went to high school with Asta (Sara Tomko), Deputy Liv (Elizabeth Bowen), D’arcy (Alice Wetterlund), and Ben (Levi Fiehler), but she’s not back for a reunion. Gardner has just been assigned to the local FBI field office in Colorado Springs, and she’s in Patience to investigate a series of gruesome murders in and around town, Deadline reports.
Who is Jewel Staite?
Staite should be familiar to sci-fi fans; she’s been working in the space almost as long as she’s been alive. Some of Staite’s earliest roles were on episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark (two separate characters on two separate episodes), The X-Files, and So Weird.
On the Canadian kids’ sci-fi series Space Cases, Staite played Catalina, one of a group of students stranded in deep space on an alien ship. She co-starred opposite Ben Foster in Flash Forward, a Disney Channel Original Series aimed at teens and preteens. It followed the lives of next-door neighbors and best friends Tucker (Foster) and Becca (Staite) as they navigated growing up. Later, Staite played Chief of Medicine Dr. Jennifer Keller on Stargate Atlantis.
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More recently, Staite portrayed Caroline Swift, district attorney and romantic interest to Detective Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnamen) in Seasons 3 and 4 of The Killing. She appeared in a Season 1 episode of Quantum Leap as Naomi, a mother trying to survive the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. And she played the lead role of alcoholic lawyer Abigail Bianchi, a woman trying to rebuild her career while rebuilding her family relationships, in the legal drama Family Law.
She is perhaps most well-known among science fiction fans for playing Kaylee Frye, a wholesome mechanic with an almost spiritual connection to her ship, in the single-season, cult-favorite space western Firefly. Tudyk starred alongside Staite as Wash, the ship’s pilot. Now, Staite is bringing her sci-fi bona fides to Season 4 of Resident Alien.
Where to watch Resident Alien
Catch up on the first three seasons of Resident Alien streaming now on Peacock.
The NBCUniversal platform currently offers two monthly subscription plans: Premium ($5.99 a month with ads) and Premium Plus ($11.99 a month with no ads and download access for certain titles). If you're a student, you can enjoy the Premium plan for just $1.99 for an entire year!
