Alien: Romulus might be set 20 years after Alien, but its ending links it back to Prometheus in a shocking way, as well as leaving plenty of unanswered questions.
The movie follows a group of young space colonists living on Jackson's Star mining colony. They spot their chance to escape for good when a decommissioned Weyland-Yutani station floats into the planet's orbit.
But their mission to retrieve supplies from the station goes horribly wrong when they come face-to-face with the Xenomorph. Unsurprisingly, it's all the fault of the company and their inability to leave the Xenomorph alone.
If you were left confused by the connection to Prometheus in Alien: Romulus and how it all fits together, we're here to help by delving into the revelations of the new movie, including its ending.
Look away now if you haven't seen Alien: Romulus as we're about to go into some major spoilers.
Alien: Romulus explained – what is the black goo?
Shortly after their first encounter with facehuggers, the group find out from the Renaissance's science officer Rook that the crew had recovered the original Xenomorph from Alien.
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It wasn't as dead as they thought, causing the death of the entire crew and irreparable damage to the station before it was shot dead. Exactly why the Xenomorph was wanted isn't made clear until a few deaths later.
After Navarro, Bjorn and Kay (and her unborn child) are killed, Andy, Rain and Tyler find their way to the Romulus lab. It's here where Andy needs to carry out his new directive "to do what's best for the company", as instructed by Rook.
Before the Xenomorph destroyed the station, Rook was carrying out experiments on it to extract the parasite inside it that makes it a "perfect organism".
The company's objective is to use it to improve humanity as the people in their colonies are dying, their bodies unsuited to living in off-world conditions. (Of course, they're not doing it for humanity, really; they're doing it so that they have a workforce that can keep going as long as they want.)
Rook was attempting to create the Prometheus compound, which looks exactly like the black goo we saw in Prometheus. The goo was discovered on LV-223 in that movie, later experimented on by David to create new lifeforms including the facehugger, Xenomorph and more.
In Alien: Romulus, the company supposedly don't know this and see the Prometheus compound as a "divine gift to humanity". It's Andy's new directive to take the compound back to the colony on Jackson's Star.
Before he can do so, they discover that Kay isn't actually dead. She's been hooked up by the Xenomorph in the bowels of the station, in a similar fashion to the colonists in Aliens. Rain, Andy and Tyler rescue her, but at the cost of Tyler's life when he's attacked by multiple Xenomorphs.
Kay is badly injured and uses the compound on herself, assuming that it might heal her. Unfortunately, none of them spotted the mutated rat corpse in the Romulus lab, but they don't discover the consequences until they're back on their ship heading away from the Renaissance.
Alien: Romulus ending explained – what was that thing at the end?
Rain puts Kay into cryosleep, but it's interrupted when her pregnancy is rapidly sped up by the compound. She gives birth to a facehugger-like egg which opens up to reveal a human-alien hybrid. (Think the Newborn from Alien: Resurrection mixed up with the Engineer from Prometheus, and you get the picture.)
The Offspring – as it's officially called in the credits – kills Kay and slices Andy's neck, incapacitating him. Much like Ripley in Alien though, Rain manages to put a spacesuit on and eventually eject the Offspring out into space.
While there might be an Alien: Resurrection link to the Offspring, director Fede Alvarez explained that the appearance of the new alien-human hybrid was more to strengthen the connection to the black goo.
"The black goo is the root of the whole thing that was introduced in Prometheus," he explained. "It's the root of all life, but also particularly the Xenomorphs come out of that thing, which means it has to be inside them. It's the Xenomorphs' semen, almost.
"So we thought, if it affects your DNA, and the Engineers clearly came out of the same root of life, it made complete sense to me that [the Offspring] was going to look like that."
Alvarez also revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Disney pushed back originally on the ending, which is exactly the response he wanted.
"They did [push back] at the beginning, but not because they didn't like it. They just thought, 'Is it too much? Do we really have to go there?' And I was like, 'Yeah, now that you said that we shouldn't, I know that I will'," he recalled.
"If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Does Andy survive in Alien: Romulus?
Once she's ejected the Offspring, Rain puts Andy into a cryo chamber promising that "I'll fix you". She then leaves the classic Alien sign-off message and sets a course for Yvaga III, the planet that the group had always planned to escape to.
Before she does so, Rain puts Andy in a cryosleep chamber and promises to fix him as he was severely damaged in the Offspring attack. Even if she can fix him, they'll then have to get over the fact that Yvaga has banned synthetics, but that's a problem for the future.
There's no credit scene to tease what happened after this and whether they got to the planet. However, since Alien: Romulus has been a box-office hit, there could be a sequel and we'd be surprised if Andy wasn't back if there is.
Alvarez has certainly thought about where the story goes after Alien: Romulus.
"For me, it's always been about story. So, once we finished, we started thinking, 'What do you think happens when or if they get to Yvaga? Is it going to be great? Or is it a terrible place?'," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
"We tend to believe it's probably a terrible place that they think is great and fantasise about, so we naturally started thinking about where it goes and what's going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we go, 'Oh, that sounds like a sequel'."
Who knows, maybe we'll even see a closer collaboration between Fede Alvarez and Ridley Scott to cap off Scott's planned prequel trilogy, tied in with Alien: Romulus and its links to Prometheus.
Scott certainly sounds keen. "I hope Fede's got another one up his sleeve because I think this is going to do really well. He's got a streak of brilliance," he told the Los Angeles Times.
At this stage though, we'll just have to wait and see.
For more on Alien: Romulus, check out:
• Alien: Romulus review
• How long is Alien: Romulus?
• The complete Alien timeline
• When will Alien: Romulus come to Disney+?
• Does Alien: Romulus have a credit scene?
Alien: Romulus is out now in cinemas.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
