Warning: Major SPOILERS for Alien: Covenant ahead

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Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott's latest in his ever-expanding sci-fi horror franchise, follows the crew of the sub-titular colonization vessel as they explore a presumed paradise only to discover the extra-terrestrial horrors that lie within. So far, so Alien. What makes the new movie stand out from the pack is how it takes many of the franchise's long-standing ideas - deceptive industrialism, sexual body horror, very bad robots - and marries it with the high-flying philosophy Scott has previously explored with Blade Runner and introduced to this franchise with Prometheus.

That aforementioned paradise is the former home of our creators, the Engineers, and after the first spate of killings in Covenant, the crew find themselves in the lair of the previous film's lone survivor, synthetic David, who has developed a deadly perfect organism - the series' iconic xenomorph - and secretly intends to wipe out the unsuspecting colonists as part of a much grander plan. The rest of the film is built on the unease over what he may or may not have done as they try to escape.

It's a big, far-reaching movie, and while there are definitely a lot of interesting elements within the basic story of the crew, for the most part they're accentuating the man at the center of all this, Michael Fassbender in the dual role as David and Walter. The robotic pair are the core of the movie's plot, themes and its show-stopping twist ending, and no doubt spell out the future of the series. As such, they should be the real focus of any analysis of Alien: Covenant's ending.

What Happened Between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant?

Michael Fassbender as David in Alien Covenant Prologue

The Alien prequel timeline spans hundreds of thousands of years in its entirety and, as its opening shows Peter Weyland bringing David to life, Covenant itself manages to cover the better part of a century. As such, even only two movies in it's already a complex canon and warrants its own separate discussion. However, we do need to look at what happened in the ten years between Prometheus and Covenant to fully understand the latter's ending, specifically in regards to David.

In the original prequel, Michael Fassbender's android was on the surface a rigid automaton obeying orders from his creator, Peter Weyland, but displayed his own dark unique thoughts, treating humans as petri dishes - he incubates by proxy a proto-facehugger and Deacon - and at one point even hinting at contempt for his maker. Weyland was eventually battered to death by an Engineer using David's head (a creator killing his creation with its own creation) and David and Elizabeth Shaw left LV-223 in search of the Engineer homeworld.

On the journey, Shaw fixed up David and the pair formed an emotional bond. Once Elizabeth went into cryosleep for the long trip, David - now free with the death of Weyland - was left alone and began to learn about how the Engineers work. By the time he arrived on their planet, he'd decreed them a failure and instigated a mass extermination, dropping thousands of pods of the black goo pathogen over the central citadel and littering the planet with pods of black spores. Somehow his ship crashed and he began experimenting further with their tech to create a refined version. Once he'd exhausted his options there, David then turned his eye to getting off the planet, setting up Shaw's recognizably human Country Roads cover as a distress beacon.

This is alluded to in the movie itself and explicitly shown in the tie-in prequel Prologue: The Crossing, which you can watch in full below.

How Did David Make The Xenomorph?

Alien Covenant

The explicit purpose of the Alien prequel enterprise is to show where the xenomorph come from and, after vague allusions in Prometheus, we finally get an answer in Covenant: David bred them from the Engineer's biomechanical weapons.

In brief, the black liquid developed by the Engineers attaches itself to a living organism and rewrites their DNA, feeding on them and growing a creature before that violently escapes the host. David starts with the pods and spores created by his assault on the Engineers, which in its pure form with humans (it obviously alters different species differently) leads to the neomorph - a pale, spindly creature that emerges from two of the Covenant's landing crew upon first arrival.

When alone on the planet, David begins to probe the possibilities of the pathogen, experimenting on the surviving Engineers and Shaw. He endeavors to perfect the process, breeding the pods a la Mendelian inheritance until he reaches his perfect organism: the movie's protomorph, a nearly-finished xenomorph. He develops the eggs and facehugger, needing just a host to birth his creation - and he gets just that when the Covenant arrives, using Captain Oram as the protomorph's "mother."

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Alien Covenant - Hooded figure

What Is David's Real Plan?

As his Robinson Crusoe reference alludes to, David's base plan in Alien: Covenant is rather simple: get off the planet. He's essentially drained the world dry, using up all potential subjects and finishing his development of the alien, leaving him with nothing to do but survey his empty kingdom. To do this, he takes advantage of his knowledge of human nature, setting up a distinctly Earth-originated distress call that will immediately draw in any ship that gets within range. While in the film it's only picked up when the Covenant is hit by a power surge and Tennessee goes out beyond the ship to fix it, it would have been stronger to nearer passers-bys (the colony ship is a good few weeks out) and it's further worth noting David has no pressing time limit - a synthetic lifeform, he can wait for hundreds of years if need be.

What's of real importance here though isn't David's desire to get off the planet, but what his goals are once he leaves. His contempt for the Engineers is evident from his massacre, but he has over time developed similar feelings about their creation/his creators - humanity. This is where the main side of the story feeds in. Breaking new ground is the initial reading of Covenant the ship - all the crew are couples and they're starting anew explicitly like their American forefathers - but from David's sly contempt when learning of their mission, it's clear he sees them as simply clinging on to life even as they destroy the world around them.

David is in a position of pure superiority - he is is stronger, more resilient and of a higher intellectual power, yet still possesses the same self-thinking emotions - and, just as Peter Weyland once proclaimed "we are the Gods now," he sees those who created him as finished.

Creators Vs. Creations, Fathers Vs. Sons

Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland and Michael Fassbender as David in Alien Covenant

These tiers of creation, with four generations of beings - Engineers, humans, synthetics and xenomorph - each with destructive designs, are the basic entry point to Alien: Covenant's sprawling themes centred on creators as fathers and the fall of man.

The father/creator comparison was something Scott leaned on heavily in Blade Runner and has threaded through Alien in both plot (Shaw was infertile in Prometheus and creates the Trilobite, the embryos on the Covenant indicate inseminated births and of course David calls Weyland "father") and inspiration (Scott explicitly draws upon a wealth of classical literature, music and scientific ideas with strong Christian subtext). This frames Covenant as a modern myth - in many ways David is Lucifer, a fallen angel - with relatable elements used to tell something epic (the film was at one point going to be subtitled Paradise Lost, after all); in this case, familial lineage on a species scale.

Where the film makes its most resonant and conclusive point in this regard is in how advanced David is. Just as he has slowly bred the perfect organism, so too have the movies charted the emergence of a purer creator. David is the third generation in the "God" family and possibly the one most in tune with his children. The Engineers despised humanity by the end, and even Weyland only saw androids as tools. David, however, sees both the perverse beauty and inherent danger of his children - he tries to gain the neomorph's trust (while Captain Oram simply shoots on sight) and revels in the birth of his first xenomorph. He's dark, and in being made so close to us is unnervingly inhuman, yet the notion of him being a step forward is almost endorsed by the movie. That is Covenant's true horror.

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Michael Fassbender as David and Walter in Alien Covenant

What's Up With David and Walter?

David's relationship to his creators/creation isn't the only core facet of his arc, however. He also forms a strong bond with Walter, the Covenant's resident synthetic. Unlike David, who was made to be as human as possible (this was heavily focused on in Prometheus' viral marketing), Walter is a scaled back model. This android refinement is already threaded through the Alien series, with the homicidal Ash in the first film replaced with the honorable Asimov-influenced Bishop in Aliens, but here it's at the forefront.

Underpinning the pair's interaction are some strong homoerotic undertones, best seen in the flute scene as part of their one-take introduction. While those sexual elements bring the Alien series full circle (the first film is all about male rape, right down to the phallic monster) there's a more complex power play here; David has clear feelings for Walter, but it's never not as a master.

The contrasts between the pair are evident from even before they meet. Obviously they're played by Michael Fassbender and thus identical, but they act in revealing, parallel ways; Walter is shown doing his daily routine on the Covenant wearing a hoody, while David is introduced an hour later wearing an Engineer cloak - one is a replicant of humanity, one is above us. This runs through their interaction with the question of love or duty; David developed actual feelings for Shaw, whereas Walter's caring for Daniels - sacrificing his hand to save her from a neomorph - never extends beyond a sense of duty.

The dichotomy comes to a head when David attacks Daniels, pitting the robots against each other. Physically evenly matched, Walter is seemingly able to get the upper hand, to which David gives him an offer straight out of Milton: serve in Heaven or reign in Hell.

How Did David Get Off The Planet?

David watching over the hypersleep pods in Alien: Covenant

The film cuts away from that offer and the next time we see either of the Fass-bots is when one is boarding the Covenant's landing module as it's about to take off. As presented we're meant to think this is Walter but, as his overly attentive demeanor clues audiences in, that isn't the case; David has bested the newer model, removed his own hand to make himself identical, and has through further duplicitous means finally got off the planet. He only reveals this fact to Daniels as she's heading into cryosleep - thus unable to stop him - and once she tearfully and reluctantly goes off he deposits two facehugger embryos in the ships depository, plotting his next step.

So what happened to Walter? It's not shown, but presumably David's offer of choice to Walter was merely an illusion. He was never beaten and simply wanted to see if his look-alike was capable of free thought - quickly offing him when it became apparent that wasn't the case. It's again that debate of love and duty, and of what it is to truly live. Walter clearly was just a robot, whereas David is - in a furthered dark twist - more evolved psychologically than we ever realized.

The distinction between the pair is solidified in the final moments with the handling of embryos. In the opening, Walter removes a damaged human embryo from containment and carefully disposes of it, whereas at the end David deposits his own meticulously-bred creatures that will corrupt the humans worse than anything before. He is creating a hell to rule over.

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Michael Fassbender as David in Alien Covenant

The Ascension of David (And His Ultimate Fall)

Two movies in, it's clear that the Alien prequels' main concern is David. He's not been the lead in either films' narrative - he doesn't even appear until halfway through Covenant - yet in terms of the larger story he's now positioned as the driving force. Indeed, in going back to his creation, Covenant draws a line under everything - his feelings for Shaw, relationship with Weyland and Engineers, the creation of the xenomorph - and frames this duology as his ascension to a higher plane. Take his very first and very final actions: we see when he awakens that he is unable to play Wagner's "Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla" on Weyland's request, yet at the end has found a solution - instead of improving at the piano he manipulates other means and gets Mother to do it for him. Playing a track through voice-command isn't the most dangerous act but it is a representation of his higher-level, alternative thinking.

The future of the franchise is intrinsically linked to David and whatever plans Ridley Scott has, Fassbender is at the core of them. The ending of Covenant would seem to suggest we'll follow him on his further experimentation with the xenomorph, although given how Prometheus' final moments - Shaw and David flying off to find the Engineers - was a side-step to Covenant it could go in any tangential direction. Based on Scott's comments, though, it will be very much in the direction of Alien.

Regardless, David's now revealed as the series' big bad - or, perhaps more delicately, prime antagonist to humankind. But just because he's now ruler of hell-on-spaceship, it doesn't mean he's won. In fact, Covenant is making the case David is still flawed. Both the Engineers and, to a degree, humanity have fallen foul of their hubris and as the android has been shown to have similar human predilections (he misattributes a Shelley quote to Byron, a mistake Walter picks up on) we're left asking whether he'll pass to a greater plane or, like his makers, fail at the hands of his creation? Only time will tell, but it's unlikely the xenomorph will let him live.

The Ending Is A Reference To The Original Alien

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien

As well as starting to bring the series full circle narratively, there is also a very cool behind-the-scenes aspect to Alien: Covenant's ending; it essentially resurrects a dropped concept from the 1979 classic.

That film's original script had a much darker final scene. Ripley would blow up the Nostromo as in the finished version, but when she came across the stowaway xenomorph it would kill her - decapitate her to be exact - before revealing the ability to mimic voices, signing off in Sigourney Weaver's voice before putting itself in cryo. Obviously that's a sudden tonal swerve (and is altogether ridiculous) so was cut.

But, 38 years later, it's finally been used; David's sign-off mimicking Walter's American accent is a direct callback to this idea, while his decapitation in Prometheus now likewise feels like an attempt to thread him subtly into the xenomorph geneology. Not just a cool reference for long-term fans, though, practically it puts David in the originally conceived alien position, revealing that he's as dangerous as the xenomorph we all fear.

Next: Alien: Covenant Review

Key Release Dates

  • alien covenant
    Release Date:
    2017-05-19