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'War of the Worlds' Episode 5: Killer cyborgs' obsession with babies is show's biggest mystery

We have not seen any evidence that the cyborgs are killing these children and so we have to assume they have a plan that involves using the infants

Spoilers for 'War of the Worlds' Season 1 Episode 5

On the surface, EPIX's 'War of the Worlds' is a study in horror with a dystopian landscape that hits the viewer with continuous volleys of fear and foreboding. But beneath that layer, there is a strong element of mystery, primarily surrounding the aliens who seem to have randomly shown up and decided to start exterminating humans out of sheer hate.

Episode 5 finally shows us something more of these extraterrestrial monstrosities by revealing two important and confusing things about them. Firstly, a bunch of alien cyborgs appears confused and practically harmless, even while they are being toyed with and beaten up by a bunch of soldiers.

Bill Ward (Gabriel Byrne) suggests that the cyborgs we have seen so far may just be attack dogs being controlled by an external intelligence. The incident we mentioned happens after one of the alien transmission stations is destroyed so that could explain this anomaly. But the second weird thing we see in the episode is what's really got us scratching our heads.

It appears that the aliens are stealing babies, to the point where they actually rip a child out of a woman's womb. We have not seen any evidence that they are killing these children and so we have to assume they have a plan that involves using the infants.

One possibility is that the aliens are essentially a self-propagating war machine that finds planets where they exterminate all mature life, harvest organic cells from the very young and use them to create more killer cyborgs. Another possibility is that the aliens actually want to make the Earth a better place by destroying human society and giving the world a fresh start with the next generation.

Considering how little we know of the aliens, both possibilities are quite likely to be true and there is a pretty good chance that the truth, whatever it may be, is something far more twisted than anything we could imagine. 

Do you have any theories about the aliens or what they are doing on Earth? Let us know in the comments.

New episodes of 'War of the Worlds' airs every Sunday at 9 pm ET, exclusively on EPIX.