Recap: Harry confronts his own mortality & tampers with evidence as 'Resident Alien' Season 2 returns

After several months of cosmic hiatus, Resident Alien finally returned this week for the latter half of its second season. Picking up mere moments after the midseason finale, Episode 9 (aptly titled "Autopsy") opens with the ringing of a gunshot. Harry (Alan Tudyk) has been injured and an operative of the Galvan/Powell Group — the shady organization responsible for the death of Sam Hodges — has been taken off the proverbial chessboard by Asta (Sara Tomko). You may think our heroes are in the clear, but their latest parade of struggles has only just begun. We've got a saying for it here on Earth: "Same s***, different day."

**SPOILER WARNING: This recap contains spoilers for Resident Alien Season 2, Episode 9, "Autopsy."**

If you saw the sneak peek clip that premiered during San Diego Comic-Con last month, then you know D'Arcy (Alice Wetterlund) helps conceal the Galvan/Powell corpse from Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds), who heard the unmistakable sound of a gun going off. Thinking fast, Harry dispels the sheriff's suspicions by blaming the noise on a confetti cannon.

Out on the lake, two more members of the Galvan/Powell group witness the encounter, but before they can do anything about it, they're suddenly attacked by the newborn alien child, which attaches itself to their faces, Facehugger-style. As if things weren't bad enough, a ravenous toddler from another world is running amok in the woods outside of Patience, gobbling up anything with a pulse. Born of the marooned alien and Manhattan street artist known as Goliath, the inhuman child holds important answers about the other alien species that plans to wipe out humanity. The baby ultimately makes its way to the city limits, though not before hacking up the wallet of one of the guys it attacked on the lake.

Back at the cabin, the party has finally disbanded. Asta stitches up Harry's bullet wound, while Harry waxes poetic about the cyclical nature of death on his home planet and starts to confront his own mortality. Rather than dealing with it in a healthy way, he decides to bottle up his existential dread like the rest of us. Had his human form died before he could return to his natural alien state, he would have perished. D'Arcy shows back up and understandably demands to know just what the hell is going on.

Harry and Asta claim the dead man was responsible for the murder of Sam Hodges, which, on a macro level, isn't technically wrong, and state that they found proof of this during their trip to New York City in the first half of the season. D'Arcy goes along with it, believing that Asta kept this information secret to protect her loved ones, and vows to help them get rid of the body. In what is most definitely a nod to Fargo (which showrunner and executive producer Chris Sheridan is a big fan of), she nonchalantly asks Harry if there's a wood chipper they can use to get rid of the evidence.

With no wood chipper available at this time of night, D'Arcy hatches a strangely intricate plan to wash their hands of the whole business and pin Sam's murder on the newly deceased individual lying in the woods behind the cabin. Like Harry, she's got a love of crime investigation TV. Instead of Law & Order, though, she prefers CSI. Kung! Kung! Armed with the knowledge that the man was staying at the Copper Ridge Motel — a rather crappy establishment managed by the clueless Judy Cooper (Jenna Lamia) — Harry and Asta dump the corpse in the motel's hot tub. D'Arcy, meanwhile, distracts Judy with a platter of Deputy Liv's (Elizabeth Bowen) famous deviled eggs. The coup de grâce to the entire plan is that Harry will take up the mayor's offer of becoming town doctor again in order to oversee the autopsy and clear Asta of any wrongdoing.

Judy doesn't discover the water-logged corpse until the next morning when she steps outside for a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and the final deviled egg (a true breakfast of champions!). She calls it in, drawing Sheriff Mike and Deputy Liv, both of whom are down the Galvan/Powell rabbit hole, to the motel. They discover an interesting wrinkle in the Hodges murder case with the dead man's ID, which places him among the list of Galvan/Powell Group names hidden behind the portrait in Sam's office.

Resident Alien Season 2B: What to Expect

Not wanting his town to be associated with yet another high-profile murder, Mayor Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler) tries to dump the investigation onto the neighboring town of Jessup since the hot tub technically falls just over the county line. His little phone tip summons Detective Torres (The Boys alum, Nicola Correia-Damude) to the scene of the alleged crime, where she verbally spars with "Big Black" himself, matching the sheriff's bravado and bluster. In her free time, Liv sends a video message to Peter Bach, aka the Alien Tracker (Terry O'Quinn), hoping he'll come to Patience and help her prove the existence of UFOs and extra-terrestrials.

Out in the Colorado wilderness, David Logan (Alex Barima) awakens on the banks of a river. Somehow, he's still alive after being shot by a mysterious alien sniper in the midseason finale. But he's not out of the woods yet — both literally and figuratively — and he's forced to go on the run with General McCallister (Linda Hamilton), who suspects a mole amongst her ranks. Neither character trusts the other, but if they want any chance of staying alive, they must forge an unlikely alliance — one that allows the UFO-obsessed military leader to drug Logan on a regular basis.

Over at the Patience health clinic, Dr. Harry is back in the medical business, although his decision to reassume the position comes with an unexpected caveat: he must now serve as the unwilling couples therapist for Ben and the now-pregnant Kate (Meredith Garretson). In fact, Ben is getting a little too comfortable with the alien in disguise, trying to bro out with a being that wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Dr. Vanderspeigle event went so far as purging his bathroom following Ben and Kate's wild sexual encounter.

Still unable to cope with the guilt of killing another human being (even if the guy was mixed up in a mess of bad stuff), Asta heads over to The 59 and enjoys a daytime whiskey with D'Arcy. Asta nearly comes clean to Liv, but backs out at the last second. While Asta grapples with her own morality, D'Arcy reignites her love life with Elliott (Justin Rain) and apologizes for standing him up that one time by purchasing all the dessert items at Dan's diner.

Desperate to bring the autopsy back under his purview, Harry continues to falsify evidence with the spent casing of Asta's gun, exploiting a loophole, which states that he can take control of the medical investigation if the shooter was standing on the Patience side of the county line. Torres buys his theory, but a passing comment about them working together in the future basically confirms that we haven't seen the last of her.

Harry begins the autopsy with an apparent relish, but Asta, who is supposed to be assisting him, just can't take the guilt of what she's done. The sight of her victim, lying naked on a slab, becomes the final straw. Calling on his alien abilities, Harry erases her memories of the night she pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, this also makes Asta forget her promise to celebrate Jay's birthday. The episode ends on a forlorn note with Jay (Kaylayla Raine) sitting outside the diner with a lonely balloon, waiting for her biological mother to turn up.

New episodes of Resident Alien air on SYFY every Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern before hitting the SYFY app and Peacock the following day. The hit show has already been renewed for a third season.