Alien: Romulus from director Fede Álvarez functions as a sequel to Ridley Scott’s original Alien from 1979, while also referencing his more recent prequel films, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Álvarez combined elements of both of those films for a wild third act that has everyone talking, because it’s pure nightmare fuel. Here, we’ll break down the ties to the other films in the franchise, and what the future might hold for further Alien installments. Especially after that wild ending left audiences gagged.
How Alien: Romulus Ties into Alien and Prometheus
When Alien: Romulus begins, we see a space probe has discovered the remains of the Nostromo, the mining vessel destroyed at the end of the original Alien. This is some 17 years after the events of that film. As you might recall, before fleeing in her escape pod, Ripley blasted the Xenomorph out of the airlock. As a “perfect organism,” it survived in space with no nutrients by going into a cocoon mode. That same Xenomorph was discovered near the remains of the Nostromo. It is brought back to a space station named the Renaissance, in orbit of the ringed planet Jackson’s Star. This takes us to the year 2142, twenty years after the events of Alien.
The Weyland-Yutani Company Is Once Again the True Villain
The Weyland-Yutani scientists working there try to experiment on the Xenomorph. But of course, it breaks free, killing the crew and creating new baby Xenomorphs, and releasing a metric ton of facehuggers. When labor worker Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her friends from Jackson’s Star, including her synthetic “brother” Andy (David Jonsson) pilot the mining ship Corbelan to the station in hopes of finding cryo pods to escape to a more hospitable world than their own, they find no one alive on the station. All that’s left is a half-functioning synthetic scientist named Rook, the same model as the android Ash from the Nostromo (played by Ian Holm). He explains to Rain and the others what happened on the station.
The scientists in the Romulus lab aboard the station performed experiments on the captured Xenomorph, discovering a new form of the black goo from Prometheus. In fact, the scientists give that tar-like substance the name “the Prometheus strain.” With this strain, the Weyland-Yutani scientists believed they could reverse engineer it to create a cure for all human illnesses and build “a perfect human lifeform” of their own which they could then exploit on dangerous and inhospitable mining worlds as a labor force. The scientists in the lab synthesized this strain, but all hell broke loose before any samples could leave the station.
The Birth of a Human/Engineer/Xenomorph Hybrid Being
One of Rain’s friends from the Corbelan, Kay (Isabela Merced), was already pregnant when she escaped to the station. As the Xenomorphs pick off the Corbelan crew one by one, one of them captures Kay. Eventually, Rain and Andy find Kay in a cocoon, free her, and take her with them as they try to escape the station. Kay survives her injuries, but she chooses to inject the experimental sample into herself to increase her odds of survival. To paraphrase Aliens, this was a very bad call on her part.
Kay then suddenly gives birth to an egg. It hatches into a rapidly growing human-Xenomorph creature. The terrifying being looks part Xenomorph and also very similar to the Engineers from Prometheus. It kills its mother and nearly kills Andy, damaging him significantly. Rain ejects the cargo pod and the creature onto the asteroid rings of Jackson’s Star, and gets back control of the ship, and manages to escape with the damaged Andy. They go into cryo sleep, hoping to land on a more hospitable world than the hell they left behind. Even if it takes years to get there.
What Happens After Alien: Romulus?
Will someone find the remains of the creature in the rings of Jackson’s Star? And will the Company try again to replicate it? And what happens to Rain and Andy now? Just like Ripley (and Jones the cat) in Alien, they might float in cryo for years or decades. The universe they wake up in might be very different. Fede Álvarez clearly embraces the entire canon of the Alien franchise here. So whatever comes next likely continues building on what’s come before. For all we know, she arrives on Earth in the year 2381 or after, and encounters Ellen Ripley. We’re not saying that’s what will happen, but “going to sleep and waking up in a messed up world” is part of this franchise’s DNA. Anything can happen now.