'Alien: Earth' episode 4: Why doesn't Kirsh help Slightly?

Despite the irritating over-confidence of Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), his little hybrid experiment in Alien: Earth hasn't exactly been smooth sailing so far, has it?

The latest in a mounting number of issues is poor old Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) being groomed into alien theft by Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who is able to speak directly into Slightly's mind after working some cyborg magic on him during their meeting on the crashed Maginot spaceship.

The question is, why isn't Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), who appears to be aware that something is going on with Slightly, doing anything to stop it? Let's unpack.

What happens with Slightly in episode 4?

Wandering away from the facility to sit on a rock by himself, Slightly has an unnerving conversation with Morrow in which the latter tries to convince him to steal a Xenomorph egg.

"If that egg belongs to me and somebody takes it, how can it be wrong to take it back?" growls Morrow.

"They fixed me here, you know," says Slightly. "Like Boy Kavalier. This is my home..."

"Now you're talking about loyalty. That's a very different principle. People do all kinds of terrible things in the name of loyalty. No, if you want to do the moral thing, you'll help me get back what you stole."

Later, Morrow turns the screw even tighter by threatening to hurt Slightly's family if he doesn't do as he's told. But the question is, why doesn't Kirsh — who appears to be at least somewhat aware of Morrow's scheming — do anything to help?

Why doesn't Kirsh intervene?

We know Kirsh knows something is going on because we see him watching a recording of Slightly's interaction on the ship with Morrow, where the latter uses his robotic arm to implant something into Slightly's neck. But instead of rushing to Slightly and offering help, Kirsh settles for a crypto conversation about the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkey statues in Slightly's room.

"If I did something evil, would you report me?" asks Kirsh. "If I hurt, or caused others to be hurt, would you do something to stop me or would you look the other way?"

Slightly eventually says that he would stand up for his friends, to which Kirsh replies, "Good."

But what, exactly, does this interaction mean?

Well, it seems that Kirsh — despite being aware that Slightly may be under Morrow's influence — wants to keep his cards close to his chest. He doesn't want Morrow to know that he knows, but at the same time, he wants to get a sense of where Slightly's loyalties lie. His question about the monkeys is basically a test to see how likely Slightly might be to go against Prodigy after everything they've done for him.

Our best guess? Kirsh will continue to keep a close eye on Slightly and use his knowledge against Morrow when he thinks the time is right.

Alien: Earth episodes land every Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on Hulu and FX.