Alien: Covenant ending explained – How does it link to Romulus?

The new entry is the first film in the series since 2017's Alien: Covenant, the second of those aforementioned prequels which had seen Scott return to the franchise to explore the origins of the xenomorphs years before Ellen Ripley's lifetime.

But rather than continuing that story, Romulus brings things further forward again, set between the first two films in the franchise and focusing on a new, younger group of space colonisers led by Cailee Spaeny's Rain Carradine.

And while, it has been – on the whole – well received by both critics and fans, some Alien die-hards were disappointed that Scott never got the chance to finish his ambitious origin saga with what had been planned as a third instalment.

So why didn't that third film get made? And what actually happened at the end of Alien: Covenant? Read on for everything you need to know.

Alien: Covenant ending explained – What is David's plan?

First, let's provide a little context to remind you of the events of Alien: Covenant leading up to its climactic twist.

The film had centred on the crew of the titular space ship – including Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) and Daniels (Katherine Waterston) – who are woken from cryosleep after their ship is damaged in an incident which kills their captain and a large number of colonists they had been transferring to a new planet.

After they awake, they hear a signal coming from nearby and stumble upon what appears to be a perfectly inhabitable planet, which they decide to land on after some vigorous disagreement between Oram and Daniels.

It turns out that the planet is now home to David, the synthetic who we met in the previous film Prometheus (set 11 years prior) and who is identical to Walter, the synthetic on board Covenant (they are both played by Fassbender).

Since the events of the earlier film, David has been experimenting with new life-forms and has managed to create a sort of proto-xenomorph. Naturally it doesn't take long for all hell to break loose and several members of the Covenant crew are killed off in some incredibly gnarly ways.

By the end of the film, however, Daniels and the only other remaining crew member Tennessee (Danny McBride) have ejected the final creature from their ship and are set to resume their original journey with Walter in tow.

But then comes the reveal: as Walter is putting Daniels in stasis, she suddenly realises that it is not Walter after all, but David. Sadly, it's too late for her to do anything about it and there is a look of terror etched on her face as she comes to terms with what the synthetic might have planned.

The exact nature of his plan is never explicitly revealed – and would likely have been explored in the planned third instalment – but we can rest assured that whatever he had up his sleeves would have led to even further xenomorph evolution to take things up to the original film.

And given he had a stack of alien eggs and close to 2,000 bodies in stasis to experiment with, we imagine some very nasty things would have gone down indeed as he pursued his goals...

How does Alien: Covenant link to Alien: Romulus?

The new film Alien: Romulus – which is written and directed by Fede Álvarez – is by no means a direct follow-up to Covenant, but there is a key link to both prequels within the film.

This comes when the characters come across the damaged synthetic Rook (who is 'played' by the late Ian Holm in a CGI performance) and discover what he has been up to in the Romulus lab.

Turns out, he'd been attempting to create a new, advanced form of human using black goo extracted from the body of a xenomorph. This is the same substance which had first been introduced in Prometheus and that Michael had made the basis of his experiments in Covenant.

Why wasn't there a third Alien prequel film?

Ridley Scott had at one point spoken about making not one but two further sequels to Alien: Covenant – with the plan being that these would take the story right up to the events of his original 1979 film. Things even reportedly got so far as a completed script for the first of those two films, written during production on Covenant with a planned filming start sometime in 2018.

A short while later, Scott revised his plan to just one further film, which he said would see Fassbender, Waterston, and McBride all reprise their roles. And it seemed that this idea had the backing of 20th Century Fox, with then CEO Stacey Snider revealing that plans were in place to press ahead with the next film.

But then things began to unravel. First there were delays and then came the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney – and despite early noises that the film was still in development following the merger, this eventually appeared to lead to the project being scrapped.

It's a real shame, too. As enjoyable a film as Alien: Romulus is – we called it a "well directed, crowd-pleasing, appropriately gnarly film" in our four-star review – it certainly isn't as thematically ambitious as what Scott was setting out to achieve with his prequels, and there's a sense of unfulfilled potential about the scrapped project.

Despite receiving mixed reviews on release, Alien: Covenant has built up a cult following – and although it's undoubtedly messy in places, it also includes some superb moments, many of them revolving around Fassbender's exceptional double performance as David and Walter (look no further than the scene in which the former teaches the latter to play recorder).

And while the ending of the film is great as it is, it's hard not to feel a little deflated that we never got to see exactly what David had planned with so many xenomorphs eggs in his possession.

In 2018, Scott teased a little about what would have happened in the film, telling Empire: "I think the evolution of the Alien himself is nearly over, but what I was trying to do was transcend and move to another story, which would be taken over by AIs.

"The world that the AI might create as a leader if he finds himself on a new planet. We have actually quite a big layout for the next one."

It's hard to read that and not feel a pang of regret that Scott never got to go through with his vision, although we should point out that the veteran director isn't exactly lacking for projects at the moment and was very supportive of Romulus as a producer.

And who knows, maybe the dream isn't completely over yet. With Romulus having drawn in fairly impressive box office figures, perhaps there will be a renewed demand for the final prequel film and it could still get off the ground in the future. We'll be keeping our fingers crossed...

Alien: Romulus is out now in cinemas and the other Alien films are all streaming on Disney Plus.

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