Although Prometheus arrived over a decade ago, Alien: Romulus means that the Alien prequel’s best new character is more pivotal to the series than ever. Prometheus’s connections to the original Alien are not too hard to discern, but the prequel’s additions to the franchise’s lore are pretty convoluted. Alien director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise for 2012’s prequel, which takes place 30 years before the events of Alien. In Prometheus, a select crew of space explorers, joined by Weyland Industries CEO Peter Weyland and Michael Fᴀssbender’s android David, visit a faraway planet.

The group arrive at the homeworld of the Engineers in the hopes of uncovering humanity’s origins, but what they discover is something much more disturbing. Before long, most of the crew are ᴅᴇᴀᴅ or worse, battling infections by Black Goo and attacks from monstrous Xenomorph hybrids. While the entire Alien franchise timeline hinges on the events of Prometheus, the prequel doesn’t make its connections to the original movie entirely clear. Prometheus does end with a Xenomorph emerging from the Space Jockey’s chest, but a lot of links between the prequel and Alien remain oblique.

Alien: Romulus’ Black Goo Twist Suggests That David Found Some Success With His Experiments

David Was Last Seen Trying To Reverse-engineer The Xenomorph

However, by the ending of 2024’s Alien: Romulus, the import of Prometheus’s story was a lot clearer. Ironically, Scott himself had an opportunity to clear up the prequel’s loose ends when he directed 2017’s Alien: Covenant, a direct sequel to Prometheus that also takes place before Alien. However, that sequel explained very few of the lingering plot holes left behind by Prometheus and instead ended up opening some new ones in its wake. In contrast, 2024’s Alien: Romulus took the confusing plot of Prometheus and clarified its ending, making sense of exactly what David did after the finale.

In Alien: Covenant, it seemed like Fᴀssbender’s amoral android was trying to create the original Xenomorph using DNA he extracted from the Black Goo seen in Prometheus. This was confusing for numerous reasons, not least that Xenomorphs seemed to exist before David. David’s Alien storyline was clarified in Alien: Romulus, which takes place between Alien and Aliens. In this tense standalone sequel, a group of desperate workers attempt to escape their mining planet by seeking refuge on an abandoned space station.

On board, they encounter a lab filled with facehuggers and are soon attacked by Xenomorphs. Before this twist, an almost-destroyed android named Rook informs them that the lab was used to create perfect workers by fusing something obtained from the Black Goo with human DNA. Thus, viewers could discern that David’s research most likely consisted of him trying to reverse-engineer the Xenomorph from the Black Goo, as opposed to inventing the original alien on his own. This makes much more sense, but also makes David’s unfinished story more frustrating.

Alien Revisiting Prometheus Makes The Fate Of Ridley Scott’s Prequel Series Even More Bittersweet

Alien: Romulus Proves Fᴀssbender’s Character Deserved A Better Ending

Even if the lab that the ill-fated Alien: Romulus characters found wasn’t directly tied to David, its existence still seems to suggest that the android would also have made some big discoveries with his research. Thus, it is a shame that David never got a proper send-off from the Alien franchise since he was last seen whisking Alien: Covenant’s final survivors further into space to turn them into his next experiments. While Prometheus’s story is now even more important to the Alien mythos than ever, David’s story remains frustratingly unfinished, and it is tough to see how the series can fix this issue.

On the one hand, the franchise shifted back into something that truly feels like an Alien movie with Alien: Romulus, an intense, stand-alone sci-fi horror that prioritized scares and inventive set-pieces of philosophizing and complex lore. On the other hand, not having closure to Scott’s prequel story is disappointing, and Fᴀssbender’s unfeeling android was the most memorable new character from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Ideally, it would be great to see David’s story wrapped up as part of another sequel, but this would be hard to pull off thanks to his canon fate.

What Happened To David After Alien: Covenant In The Comics (And Is It Canon?)

David’s Fate After Alien: Covenant Is Referenced In A Tie-In Comic

In Alien #6 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Julius Ohta, two synthetic characters survive an encounter with the Xenomorphs and mention David while en route back to their home planet. One synthetic mentions the “Teachings of David” from their in-built “Philosophy archives,” quoting a creepy pᴀssage. According to David, “When at last they are gone, humanity will leave behind two gifts to the universe, precious in equal measure. Our creation, and their own self-destruction.”

This dark quote appears to prove that David became an android Messiah of sorts after the ending of Alien: Covenant, presumably recording the findings of his experiments alongside his philosophical musings. It is strange to imagine the human-run Weyland Yutani Industries uploading David’s teachings to the consciousness of synthetics since they appear to predict and celebrate the inevitable downfall of humanity, but this could be an oversight on the corporation’s part. David may have outsmarted them, hiding his pro-synthetic insights in other files the company needed to share with synthetics.

Should Michael Fᴀssbender Return As David In Alien: Romulus’ Sequel?

Fᴀssbender’s Alien Franchise Comeback Would Be A Mixed Blessing

What makes David’s fate from the tie-in comics interesting is that it could be canon, but it could just as easily be rewritten. After all, Scott’s prequels themselves completely rewrote the franchise canon, making the events of Alien Vs. Predator and its sequel irrelevant. If the next Alien movie brings back David, it won’t necessarily need to be as an android Messiah patiently awaiting humanity’s downfall. That said, this could be the perfect role for him, as it makes Fᴀssbender’s character an even more dangerous threat than the franchise’s iconic тιтular Xenomorph and could even pit him against Weyland-Yutani.

If David is advocating for synthetics and not humans in the next Alien movie, he could be the third villain in a series that already has both the Xenomorph and the shady Weyland-Yutani Corporation. This would make Fᴀssbender’s return welcome, although the actor’s high profile means it is hard to see him coming back for only a few scenes. A comeback from David might mean another entire movie devoted to his story, which could derail the momentum the franchise has gained from its recent success. As such, Alien: Romulus ironically made Prometheus’s best character more relevant while making his comeback harder.