Although Prometheus’s biggest unanswered question has effectively been solved by Alien: Romulus, this doesn’t mean that the Alien series should move on from Ridley Scott’s risky prequel storyline. By Alien: Romulus’s ending, it was clear that Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez had done something almost impossible. Despite how infamously knotty the timeline of the Alien movies is, Alien: Romulus managed to take a story set between Alien and Aliens and use the plot to make sense of Prometheus’s many unanswered mysteries. This was quite an achievement considering Alien: Romulus also worked as a standalone horror movie.

For those who understandably don’t remember, Prometheus takes place 30 years before Alien, which in turn takes place 57 years before the events of Aliens. Prometheus saw its ambitious director Ridley Scott introduce a slew of new elements to the franchise’s lore, from the Engineers to the Black Goo, and leave many of these enigmatically unexplained. By the prequel’s ending, Prometheus had retconned much of the Alien Vs Predator movies and left the rest of the franchise’s lore harder to unpack. However, the series couldn’t ignore Prometheus either, since its plot ties into the rest of the series.

Alien: Romulus All But Confirmed How The Alien Life Cycle Really Works

Fede Alvarez’s Alien Sequel Finally Broke Down The Xenomorph’s Life Cycle

As the upcoming Alien: Earth makes Prometheus’s story more important than ever, it is important to revisit just how Alien: Romulus salvaged the story of the series. Prometheus and its 2017 follow-up, Alien: Covenant, flirted with the idea that Michael Fᴀssbender’s amoral android David created the Xenomorph while attempting to construct the perfect life form. Certainly, David’s creepy experiments in Alien: Covenant implied as much, and the fact that he used the Black Goo to poison Holloway in Prometheus seemed to confirm this hypothesis.

The ending of Alien: Covenant even implied that a victorious David was planning on using the movie’s heroes as test subjects for his next experiments with the Black Goo. However, this didn’t really add up in the larger scheme of the series. Alien Vs Predator depicted Xenomorphs on Earth as far back as the Stone Age and, even if viewers ᴀssume that Prometheus retconned the Alien Vs Predator movies entirely, the plot still has holes. The Xenomorph makes more sense as an existing creature than as a bioweapon engineered by a character from the series.

As Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley said in an interview with KCRW’s “The Business” podcast, the idea of the Xenomorph as a bioweapon made by Fᴀssbender’s android “Half an hour ago” isn’t as intriguing. Thus, Alien: Romulus all but confirmed that David simply reverse-engineered the Black Goo, suggesting that the Engineers made the Black Goo out of existing Xenomorphs and these predated humanity’s contact with the Engineers. Human DNA, which was created by the Engineers in their own image, was combined with the Black Goo and Alien: Romulus depicted this producing the Engineer/Xenomorph hybrid the Offspring.

Alien: Romulus’ Black Goo Story Made Prometheus Retroactively Better

Prometheus’s Knotty Chronology Now Makes More Sense

Rather than ignoring it or retconning Prometheus, Alien: Romulus made Ridley Scott’s prequel easier to follow and understand by clarifying David’s role in the Xenomorph life cycle. While Prometheus and Alien: Covenant weren’t entirely transparent about this point, Alvarez’s movie appears to prove once and for all that Fᴀssbender’s android didn’t create the original Xenomorph. This even makes Prometheus’s тιтle more comprehensible, as the Engineers offered humanity an incredible but lethal gift when the CEO of Weyland-Yutani indirectly found Xenomorph DNA by visiting their home planet.

Much like tPrometheus gifted humanity with fire, the Engineers gifted humanity with the perfect killing machine in the form of the Xenomorph. The idea that the alien existed before the prequel began but was harnessed by David on behalf of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation makes much more sense and even fixes Prometheus and Alien Vs Predator’s seemingly incompatible timelines. In this version of events, the Xenomorphs that were hunted by Predators on Earth could have been sent there by the similarly advanced Engineers for sport.

Alien: Romulus Embraced Prometheus, But Ridley Scott’s Prequel Saga Still Feels Incomplete

The Fate of Michel Fᴀssbender’s David Remains A Mystery

While these minutiae may not seem important, Alien: Romulus clarifying the Xenomorph life cycle without bringing back David was an impressive achievement. Alvarez’s movie offered viewers an effective, intense thrill ride while also making some absurdly over-complicated lore more straightforward and comprehensible, a balance that few franchises have managed when it comes to exposition. However, it is now hard to tell how David’s Alien franchise story should end since Alien: Romulus rendered his return unnecessary.

Viewers still don’t know what happened to David after Alien: Covenant but, thanks to Alien: Romulus, this no longer matters as much. In concrete terms, the events of Alien and Alien: Romulus combined to explain how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation got its hands on the Xenomorph and knew such a suspiciously large amount about its life cycle in Aliens. David’s return isn’t technically necessary anymore, but his arc feels unfinished, which is an awkward way to leave the best new character from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Will Michael Fᴀssbender’s David Ever Return In An Alien Movie?

An Alien: Romulus Sequel Is Unlikely To Feature The A-List Star

What made David so interesting was the fact that, although he committed some monstrous acts, he did so at the behest of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. David was following the directives laid out for him, which made it hard to tell how much of his villainy was motivated by emotion and how much was simply programming. Alien: Romulus’s Andy was a similarly intriguing character who proved that David’s story still has potential, but this could be a problem for the franchise going forward.

After all, David’s return to the Alien franchise doesn’t seem likely after Alien: Romulus’s ending. While Alien: Romulus did embrace Prometheus, it was also a new beginning for the franchise and most reviews cited its self-contained story as a major selling point for the sequel. Alvarez’s movie seemingly proved that lower-budget standalone sequels were the way forward for the series, not ambitious prequels that expanded its existing lore. Alien: Earth could take on David’s story, but Hawley has already explained his reticence to take this route. Thus, the Alien series may never explain what became of Prometheus’s android after Alien: Romulus.

Source: KCRW