Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi horror movie Alien had one deleted scene that could have changed the entire franchise, and might have made James Cameron’s Aliens impossible to make. The Alien franchise is filled with great deleted scenes. From character-building opportunities that were cut to preserve runtime to entire alternate endings that were scrapped by focus groups, there are hours of Alien footage that never made it to theaters. None of those scenes would have changed the entire franchise as drastically as one deleted moment from the original Alien could have, however.

Along with having an excess of deleted scenes, Alien has also had quite a few directors with their own creative vision. Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Fede Álvarez have all taken a crack at the franchise, and all of them have built upon their predecessors’ ideas. Building upon another creator’s previous work isn’t easy, however, and one scene from Alien almost made it impossible for James Cameron to create its sequel, Aliens. The now-infamous “cocoon” scene would have changed the entire franchise irrevocably.

Alien’s Cocoon Scene Would’ve Explained How Xenomorph Eggs Are Created

The Deleted Scene Would Have Shown That Xenomorph Drones Put Their Prey In Cocoons To Create More Eggs

In the original ending of Alien, Ripley would have taken a moment during her mad dash to the escape pod to encounter a few of her former crew members (via Sonny Bryan). The deleted scene would have shown Ripley finding Dallas (Tom Skeritt), who was enveloped in a Xenomorph “cocoon.” After weakly begging to be killed, Ripley would have noticed that Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) was even further along in the cocooning process, and that he had been almost completely consumed to grow a new egg. If the cocoon scene had made the final cut, Alien would have fully explained the Xenomorph life cycle and how new eggs were made.

As horrifying it is, and despite how well it fills out Alien‘s lore, there was a fairly simple reason the cocoon scene was likely cut from the film. As the sirens in the background indicate, the cocoon scene took place after Ripley initiated the Nostromo‘s self-destruct, but before she made it back to the escape shuttle. If it had remained in the movie at that point, the cocoon scene would have killed the pacing of Alien‘s final sequence. Instead of going on a mad dash for survival, Ripley would have taken up several of her five minutes to live to gawk in horror at her cocooned crew mates.

Had Alien Kept The Cocoon Scene, James Cameron’s Alien Queen Concept Wouldn’t Work

There Would Be No Use For A Queen If Xenomorph Eggs Were Made From Cocoons

If Alien‘s cocoon scene had been kept, it would have destroyed James Cameron’s Aliens years before it even started. Aliens is often considered one of the best sequels of all time, partly because of how well it achieved the goal of going bigger and better than its predecessor. Aliens upped the action, the carnage, the horror, and, most importantly, the Xenomorphs themselves. Cameron used the fact that Alien didn’t explain where Xenomorph eggs came from as an opportunity to introduce the Xenomorph Queen, a new classification of the alien species that was capable of laying eggs.

If Alien had kept the cocoon scene, however, Cameron wouldn’t have been able to introduce the Xenomorph Queen. There would be no need for a Xenomorph Queen if Alien had already answered the question of how new Xenomorph eggs were laid. It would have been redundant at the least, and possibly a source of outrage at the most, to introduce a Xenomorph Queen even though Ridley Scott’s original had already explained where the eggs come from. Aliens would have needed an entirely different concept to center the movie around.

Alien’s Sequel Would Have Been A Very Different Movie If The Cocoon Scene Was Kept

Aliens Would Have Lost Its Climactic Battle & Needed An Entirely Different Goal

Without the Xenomorph Queen, Aliens would have been fundamentally different from the masterpiece it currently is. The Xenomorph Queen was incredibly important to Aliens: it both served as the reason LV-426 was overrun in the first place and as the climax of the entire film. Replacing it wouldn’t have been easy, as the cocooning process simply couldn’t act as a mᴀssive threat to Ripley like the Queen did, but it would have been necessary. There’s also no telling what Aliens would have looked like with an entirely different concept. It’s hard to imagine it would have been as good as the version that ended up being made.

There’s even a chance that Aliens wouldn’t have been made at all if the cocoon scene had already explained the Xenomorph’s life cycle. A big draw for Aliens was all the questions Alien left unanswered, and a lot of viewers wanted to know more about the Xenomorphs, like where they came from and their life cycle. Without those unanswered questions, there might not have been as much interest in a sequel to Alien, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to expand the franchise’s lore like Aliens did. Alien would probably be a standalone movie instead of a mᴀssive sci-fi franchise.

How Does The Xenomorph Cycle Actually Work In Alien?

The Xenomorph Life Cycle Has Changed Drastically Over The Years

While cutting Alien‘s cocoon scene did make Aliens possible, it also complicated the Xenomorph’s life cycle. Even after six canon movies, two crossovers with the Predator franchise, video games, comics, and more, there isn’t one defined life cycle for the Xenomorphs. The main life cycle is the one seen in most of the franchise’s films: a queen lays an egg, the egg produces a facehugger, which in turn impregnates a host with a chestburster, which then develops into one of several types of Xenomorphs, including drones, warriors, or another Queen.

While that main life cycle is the one most frequently seen, there are also several others. Promtheus‘ black goo could produce a trilobyte, which could then produce a Deacon after impregnating an Engineer. Alien: Covenant then introduced spores, bloodbursters, Neomorphs, and the biologically engineered Praetomorph. The Alien comics have added even more types of Xenomorphs with their own gestation cycles, and the Alien tabletop role-playing game even reintroduced cocooning – or “eggmorphing” – as a valid alternate way to create eggs. If the original Alien had kept its deleted cocoon scene, the Xenomorph life cycle would be easier to understand, but much less varied.