Depending on who you ask, Alien: Romulus is either a return to form, an original standalone sci-fi horror flick, a hackneyed piece of fan service, or a competent cocktail of all three. But one thing is clear: It is certainly an Alien movie, set in the same universe that was launched in 1979, expanded in 1986, and then made complicated by various sequels and prequels. In terms of its chronology, Romulus takes place just 20 years after Alien, which still puts it 37 years before Aliens. The vast 57-year gap between Alien and Aliens creates a pretty big continuity canvas in which Romulus can exist. But does the ending of the movie change our perception of the next chronological film in the series?
Here’s what happens at the end of Alien: Romulus, and how it does — and doesn’t — change our perception of Alien and Aliens.
Massive spoilers ahead.
A new kind of alien in Alien
The biggest twist in the last third of Alien: Romulus takes place when Kay (Isabela Merced), who is pregnant, injects herself with an experimental compound which, she’s told by androids Andy (David Jonsson) and Rook (a de-aged Ian Holm), will help her survive. But combining this compound with Kay’s unborn fetus results in the most disgustingly creepy creature in the entire Alien franchise. It’s a kind of human-Xenomorph hybrid that has, essentially, hijacked the body of a human infant. In its grown form it looks like a spindly mash-up with the Engineers from Prometheus and Covenant and Pale Man from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth; a nightmarish creature that almost tops even the most unsettling imagery of H.R. Giger’s original Alien designs.
Interestingly, the idea of a human/Xenomorph hybrid predicts the essential premise of the 1997 film, Alien: Resurrection, the fourth film in the franchise, which had Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) return to life in the distant future as a Ripley 8, an alien/human hybrid clone of herself. The creature in Romulus is nothing like Riley 8, to be clear, though it’s possible any scenes of it performing no-look basketball shots were cut from the script.
The question is, does the existence of this creature alter our perception of the different types of Xenomorphs in the later films?
Alien: Romulus (mostly) avoids Aliens canon
The story of Romulus takes place before Aliens and, in a sense, fills in a missing piece of Weyland-Yutani’s machinations relative to the Xenomorphs. The presence of Rook makes it clear that Weyland-Yutani was still very obsessed with trying to figure out how to weaponize aspects of the Xenomorph's biology between the time of Alien and Aliens. The compound — dubbed “Z-01” — is even said to be the essence of what Weyland was after in Prometheus, implying this is a similar inky DNA-rewriting liquid to what we saw in that movie.
In fairness, we kind of already knew Weyland-Yutani was interested in harnessing the power of the xenomorph, and the compounds created by the Engineers. But what Romulus does is make it clear that there was a space-bound laboratory full of face-huggers — using the remains of the Xenomorph that Ripley blasted into space at the end of Alien — that seemingly could explain the propagation of Xenomorphs a few decades later in Aliens. Maybe. It seems pretty clear that the xenomorphs on the Romulus/Remus station are all destroyed, as are any creatures on Rain’s ship. So, there’s not necessarily a direct set-up for Alien here. The Jackson mining colony in Romulus is vaguely reminiscent of Hadley’s Hope in Aliens, but it’s not the same place.
That said, the ending of the movie suggests that the new alien-human hybrid is a kind of evolutionary dead-end for Weyland-Yutani since Rain manages to destroy it. Plus, because Rain is so far removed from the story of Ripley (who is still in cryosleep at this point) anything she and her companions learned in this movie is somewhat irrelevant, or in a sense, redundant to the events of Aliens.
In other words, the ending of Romulus isolates the surviving characters not just from more attacks from Xenomorphs, but also from the preexisting continuity of the rest of the franchise. Although Romulus is heavily reliant on callbacks and lore from the other films, it eventually ends the same way it began: as a standalone thriller set in the ominous universe that began 45 years ago.
Does Alien: Romulus have a post-credits scene?
Like Prometheus and Covenant before it, Alien: Romulus does not have a post-credits scene at all. After Rain signs off, and heads into cryosleep in search of her new home, that’s it. You don’t have to stick around to see anything teasing another film. If you want to know what happens next, all you have to do is go home and watch Aliens.
