Warning: Spoilers ahead for Alien: Covenant

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Alien: Covenant is many things. It's an explanatory sequel to Prometheus, an expositional prequel to Alien, the reason we'll never get Alien 5, the latest in a long line of Ridley Scott films exploring the nature of existence and one of 2017's most unique tentpole releases. One thing it most definitely isn't, though, is the end. Even now knowing where iconic xenomorph came from, we're still a long way off the Nostromo crew making their unfortunate stop off on LV-426.

Scott hasn't been coy about his grand plans for the franchise he created back in 1979. The Alien prequel series was always intended as a multi-part story and months before Covenant hit he was teasing as many as four more movies before we're all said and done. Since then he's calmed, reducing the number to a more manageable amount, but still plans to shoot the next installment in the next year or so.

What exactly this prequel-sequel will entail is unclear. For all the openness about filming schedules and explaining the movie at hand, in junket interviews Scott has been rather vague about where exactly he's taking his horror-sci-fi franchise. However, based on the scant confirmations, as well as the themes and narrative already established, we can get a good idea of what to expect in the next film.

The Covenant Story Needs Resolving

Katherine Waterston as Daniels in Alien Covenant

Straight up there's the basic story of Covenant. In the movie we followed the crew of the sub-titular ship as they explored the Engineer homeworld and were gradually picked off by the machinations of Prometheus' android survivor-turned-God David. As we ended there were only two of the ship's crew left alive - Katherine Waterston's Daniels and Danny McBride's Tennesse - who are put into cryosleep as David, snuck aboard pretending to be the ship's resident Michael Fassbender Walter, begins to enact his scheme; he's smuggled in two facehugger embryos and plans to experiment on the ship's 2000-odd colonists.

So while the basic story is over, we still have a cliffhanger, both in the fate of our two surviving humans and what David does next. It's not known if Waterston or McBride have sequel options in their contracts and it's possible to kill them between films a la Shaw (in fact, James Franco's fiery death builds in an easy way to execute them), although as the two most interesting non-Fassbender characters (slowly inching out Billy Crudup's Captain Oram) they would be welcome returns, especially as in knowing David's presence Daniels come with instant conflict.

Of course, there's nothing to say a sequel will directly address all this. Covenant wasn't a direct narrative continuation to Prometheus, with the traditional sequel elements - the reintroduction of David, the Engineers and Shaw - not coming until the mid-way point. It's thus entirely possibly the third film will pick up somewhere else in the galaxy entirely and only deal with the outcome of the Covenant crew on a tangent. That said, it's widely accepted the diverging story was mainly due to Scott trying to account for Prometheus' backlash, so such a course correction is less necessary for the next sequel.

What Mythological Elements Will Return?

Prometheus Engineers to return in Alien: Paradise Lost

Covenant aside, David's return as an essential player is a pretty strong bet. He's the anti-hero of the whole prequel run and his arc isn't close to finished; for all the Lucifer positioning (the film literally closes on him entering a hell to rule) he's ultimately a flawed God, one who has shown human quirks in his programming (such as misattributing Shelley's Ozymandias to Byron) and thus is destined to fall like his creation predecessors.

With that comes the xenomorph. Now we've had the neomorph and the protomorph, the groundwork is laid for the sort of alien carnage fans have been waiting for since the prequels began (and original script Alien: Engineers had in abundance). While Prometheus had horror elements, Covenant was much more confidently in the genre and you can only expect a sequel to go more in this direction. Indeed, one of Covenant's most interesting aspects is the balance of the terrifying and the philosophical, something sure to continue.

It's less likely we'll get any more of the Engineers. While Covenant is heavily informed by Prometheus, the only thing it directly takes and explores is David, who is established in such a way the previous film isn't totally necessary. Humanity's creators are only a passing fancy; they get a brief extinction scene, but, well, it's their extinction. Especially now they're established as having not created the xenomorph and their role in the saga feels fully explored, their direct impact is lessened and the focus of the series will surely shift to David. That said, there is still the matter of the Space Jockey, which brings us around to the original Alien...

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Space Jockey from Alien

Connecting to the Original Alien

Whether it's in a direct sequel to Covenant or a couple of movies down the road, eventually we're going to wind up at Alien. This is one of the few things Scott has been incredibly open about, making clear in various interviews the prequels will, in some form, feed into the 1979 original.

This ostensibly has to mean explaining the derelict spacecraft on LV-426, its fossilized pilot and cargo hold of facehugger eggs. How exactly this will be done is the topic of much debate. One theory we've become particularly fond of is that David is actually the Space Jockey and the colonists his eggs, but there's always the chance we get one final, unlucky Engineer. Before we even get to that point, though, there's the curation of the eggs and a proper explanation of the xeno. Indeed, one big question left by Covenant is whether the creature in the finale is of the same genus as the monster in the original film; it looks more organic, and at this point it's not clear if that's a creative choice made to shake things up after 40 years with the same design or has a deeper narrative meaning.

There's more than just that thread tying needed, however - thematically we're still a way out. Covenant reintroduced the sexual subtext of Alien, but we're yet to really have the corporate side of the story. In the original films, Weyland-Yutani are merciless in their attempts to claim the xenomorph for their own science division, but so far have been non-plussed by any extra-terrestrial lifeforms; Weyland was singularly driven by extending his life and even though the merger has happened by the time of Covenant there's no suggestion of the company's evil yet. That means we need to have at least one adventure leading to W-Y's discovery of the xenomorph. Perhaps, because it was created by one of their synthetics, they'll even deem it something they legally own.

Will Ripley (Or Any of the Nostromo Crew) Come Back?

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien

But the derelict and xenomorph are just one-half of the original Alien. There's also the Nostromo. Now it's not overly probably that we'll get any direct setup of this side beyond the Weyland-Yutani development given how the entire point of the truckers-in-space angle is that they're unsuspecting, unimportant figures (this was why Daniels being Ripley's mother was never going to come to pass).

However, that shouldn't completely rule it out. After all, the possibility of de-aging Sigourney Weaver has been raised by multiple people involved in the production on several occasions, and Weaver was connected to the prequel series in the early days of development. That's enough to ask whether all that talk of "doubling back" isn't just meaning the Space Jockey, but the rest of Alien. Will the final prequel actually remake elements of the original and finally round off Ripley's story in a satisfying way?

It's a strange concept at first, but we already have suggestions that Scott is retconning Alien and only views the films he made as canon anyway, so such a move would neatly fit within that. Direct involvement with Ripley would also provide a real explanation for why  Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 was shelved. The only real objection is that it's not how prequels usually work, although it's not like Alien has really been following convention thus far.

Ultimately it's still an out-there suggestion and de-aging comes with its own minefield of problems, although we are talking a sequel to a film where Michael Fassbender has a homoerotic flute playing scene with himself - anything can happen.

Next: Alien: Is David the Space Jockey?

Key Release Dates

  • alien covenant
    Release Date:
    2017-05-19