With Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus reaching for the stars and crossing $225 million at the global box office, it’s safe to say there’s still acid blood left in the old franchise yet. This is a big win for both Disney and their acquired 20th Century Studios. But with that victory comes an important question: where do you go next?
While not that long ago Ridley Scott planned to continue his prequel saga with a sequel to 2017’s Alien: Covenant, it looks like the future for the xenomorph now rests in Alvarez’s hands (or at least the story threads he left dangling in Romulus). The filmmaker could even steer the ship and take us into the front end of James Cameron’s Aliens if he so chose. After all, we’ve just got confirmation that Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) Narcissus lifeboat appears in the background during Romulus. Still, for all its contention among fans, we’re most curious about other threads dangling far earlier in the timeline.
For all its faults, Alien: Covenant’s ending where the android David (Michael Fassbender) menaces “don’t let the bed bugs bite” before spewing up a facehugger embryo is a chilling cliffhanger. And we’re worried it might remain unresolved. Even though we’ve long since moved past that point in the franchise’s vision of the future (with Romulus taking place some 38 years later), it’s not just fans asking what happens next. Fassbender’s portrayal of the antagonistic synthetic is one of the franchise’s best elements, and if we want a villain other than those acid-bleeding monsters, the filmmakers should consider revisiting him in the inevitable Romulus sequel.
Speaking to the Empire Podcast in 2017, Scott said he thought the arc of the xenomorphs was “nearly over.” In the mind of the director who started it all, the series needed to “transcend and move to another story, which would be taken over by AIs.”
Similarly in the aftermath of Alien: Romulus, Alvarez teased a resolution to these plot threads when he explained to The Wrap: “My first intention, which we might figure out a way to do if we get to make another after this, is to merge them.” The general plot formula of forgettable crew members becoming canon fodder for xenomorphs while another female protagonist survives is in danger of growing tired, and alongside the dangers of AI being more relevant than ever, making David the ultimate antagonist would bring together all eras of the Alienverse.
Scott and Covenant co-writer John Logan’s plan for a sequel (tentatively titled Alien: Awakening) was going to take David to LV-426 to continue his Doctor Moreau experiments on the Origae-6 colonists, all while being pursued by the Engineers. Importantly, it implies this would’ve resolved what brought the doomed Space Jockey and its downed ship stuffed with xenomorph eggs to the planet in the original Alien.
I’m among the critics who think we lost some of the mystique when Prometheus revealed the elephantine “Space Jockey” was really just a humanoid “Engineer” in a suit. However, there’s still a lot of untouched lore surrounding these godlike creatures. As long as we avoid that wild theory that David is Alien’s Space Jockey, and the eggs are the Covenant colonists, I’d be fine revisiting the Space Jockey mystery.
Despite being largely standalone, Romulus honored almost every movie in the franchise. Alongside the Ripley easter egg, “get away from her, you bitch” ticked off Aliens, there was a visual wink to Alien 3, and The Offspring echoed Alien: Resurrection’s ending. Prometheus was brought through to the story via the Renaissance Station’s experimental black goo and the Offspring’s resemblance to the Engineers. Even Alien: Isolation was made canon via the inclusion of emergency phones. This makes Covenant somewhat of a forgotten outlier. There’s been an interesting uptick in Covenant‘s appreciation since Romulus, and if Alvarez can make it even more important to the mythos, that can only help its reputation.
Aside from the Xenomorphs and their various evolutions, David is easily the franchise’s best antagonist, and with his ties to the corporate greed of Weyland-Yutani, he acts as a precursor to other villains like Ash (Ian Holm), Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), and Alien 3‘s Michael Bishop (Lance Henriksen). He also doesn’t age, so unlike certain human characters, David can slip into the timeline decades later and still be played by Fassbender.
I questioned why they used the uncanny version of Ian Holm’s likeness to create Rook in Alien: Romulus, as others claimed it would’ve been the perfect opportunity to continue David’s story or use Fassbender for another David doppelganger. Still, there’s an altogether more exciting opportunity where a Romulus sequel can round off Scott’s original arc, finish David’s story, and potentially touch down on LV-426 ahead of Aliens.
Thankfully, there are plenty of in-universe hints at what David did next. The Alien: Advent short movie features David making contact with Weyland-Yutani and reveals his hopes to make a new species, which ties into David’s Lab: Last Contact, where a facehugger attacks a hapless Weyland-Yutani researcher. There’s one final piece of the puzzle, thanks to Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Julius Ohta’s Alien #6 comic, which refers to David as some sort of android messiah who continued to influence other synthetics. All of these imply that David had a hand in what went down in Alien with Ash’s mission, and after the comic specifically left his fate unclear, it can neatly bring everything together if he appears in a sequel.
For this to work, we’d have to lean into Alvarez’s mentioning of ‘merging’ Scott’s original arc rather than delivering a full-blown sequel. I can’t see us returning to a pre-Alien LV-426 due to Romulus’ place in the timeline, meaning an origin for the Space Jockey the Nostromo crew finds would likely have to be told via flashback—something Covenant didn’t do a particularly good job of. More simply, Romulus‘ Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson) could wake up on Yvaga III, only to find it infested with David’s creations or get diverted to LV-426.
Remembering that we’re still 37 years away from the events of Aliens, and David doesn’t appear beyond the events of Covenant, it’s easy to have them steer clear of Ripley’s arc.
At least we know Fassbender should be keen to return, telling BadTaste.it in 2019, “I love the character [David], it’s a lot of fun. I’d definitely enjoy it.” As well as David, could he play a third synthetic and match Henriksen’s record of playing three different characters in this world? All of this could still be a long way off, and with Alvarez suggesting to The Hollywood Reporter we could expect a wait similar to the seven years between Alien and Aliens until he’s ready to return to this world, there’s plenty of time to speculate. Given Alvarez’s acknowledgement of Scott’s vision and how the franchise likes to tie off loose ends, a (hopeful) Romulus sequel with Fassbender on board should be well worth the wait.
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