Alien: Romulus takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens, but the finale may just change the game when it comes to any future sequels or spinoffs. So what really happens at the end, and what was that ... thing? We've got the answers.
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00:00Alien Romulus takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens, but the finale may just
00:05change the game when it comes to any future sequels or spinoffs. So what really happens
00:09at the end, and what was that thing? We've got the answers.
00:13Raine Carradine is a disillusioned young worker on a mining colony overseen by the Weyland-Yutani
00:17Corporation. After realizing she'll spend much of her life on this desolate planet,
00:21some cohorts come to her with a proposition. There's an abandoned space station flying
00:25overhead that they can grab cryo-chambers from, so that they can fly to another planet
00:28to actually live their lives. They just need Raine's brother Andy, a synthetic human, to
00:33access the station's tech.
00:34The siblings agree to see what else might be out there. After securing the cryo-chambers,
00:38Andy, Tyler, and Bjorn become trapped in a room quickly warming up, thereby thawing out
00:42some of the specimens the previous crew had apprehended. These are, of course, facehuggers,
00:47and we quickly see why they're scarier than full-blown xenomorphs. One attaches itself
00:50to Navarro, and it isn't long until it bursts through her chest, resulting in a brand new
00:54xenomorph running amok, with Bjorn and the pregnant Kay attempting to escape.
00:58They're separated from the others, who speak with a torn-apart synthetic, science officer Rook.
01:02Rook informs them of how the previous crew developed a black ooze to heal Weyland-Yutani
01:06workers so they can continue performing labor, but it has transformative and terrifying properties.
01:11Despite Andy getting a new chip containing the directive of doing what's best for Weyland-Yutani
01:15— which makes him less than helpful at times — he eventually comes around,
01:19allowing Raine to put him back to his original programming. It's just in time
01:22for a thrilling and chest-pounding conclusion.
01:24Are you sure you want to do this?
01:29Raine shoots her way through a bunch of xenomorphs, and thanks to an assist from Andy,
01:32it seems like our heroes are in the clear, with the siblings and Kay getting back on their
01:36original vessel to fly to a new colony. There's just one hiccup — Kay injected herself with some
01:41of the black ooze as she was waiting for Raine and Andy to get back. This creates complications
01:45with her pregnancy, and she soon gives birth to a pod-like structure. The thing inside hatches
01:49quickly, and the survivors soon come face-to-face with a creature known as the Offspring.
01:53It looks like a cross between a xenomorph and an engineer from Prometheus,
01:56likely a result of xenomorph DNA mixing with the human embryo in Kay. The Offspring kills
02:01Kay and severely wounds Andy. Raine is the only one left, resulting in a chilling game of cat
02:05and mouse. Luckily, she has one ace left up her sleeve. She lures the Offspring into the cargo
02:10bay, which gets released from the main ship, though the creature isn't so easily evaded.
02:14The Offspring tries to break Raine's helmet with its second mouth, but finally,
02:17Raine manages to send the beast flying through space to its demise.
02:20In what could be seen as a callback to the ending of 1979's Alien,
02:24Raine sends out a message referring to herself as the lone survivor of her crew.
02:27She places Andy in a cryopod, stating how she'll try to fix him when she can,
02:31so there may be hope for him yet. The vessel sets out on a journey that will hopefully end well for
02:35Raine. By the end of Alien Romulus, Raine and Andy are the only survivors. Andy's original
02:41directive was to do what's best for Raine. After he gets the upgrade on the space shuttle, his new
02:45directive is to do what's best for the Weyland-Yutani corporation. By the end, Raine has
02:49instructed him to do what's best for both of them. It's a full-circle moment of sibling dynamics,
02:53and that was very much intentional from Fede Alvarez. In an interview with Digital Spy,
02:58the director spoke about how sibling relationships were intentionally front and center. He explained,
03:02There's many themes in the movie, but one of them is what it means to be someone's sibling,
03:05what it truly means. What are your responsibilities for that? Do you have any or not?
03:09Tyler and Kay are also brother and sister, and we see some of the dynamics play out between them,
03:13with Tyler desperately trying to protect Kay. Sadly, they both die horrifically.
03:17If you know your Roman mythology, then you wouldn't have been surprised by this theme going in.
03:21The tale of Romulus and Remus — the names of separate modules of the Renaissance space
03:26shuttle — is out of two brothers who quarreled over where to found Rome,
03:29ending with Romulus killing Remus. Alien Romulus mirrors this to an extent,
03:33with Andy not caring what happens to Raine when he gets a new directive. After he reverts back
03:37to his old programming, he becomes far more loving, with the movie establishing that siblings do,
03:41in fact, have a responsibility to care for one another, but that each person also needs to look
03:45after themselves.
03:47Horror movies often manage to capture the zeitgeist and what real people are fearing
03:51at that particular moment in time. In 2024, it's apparent that there's a lot of trepidation
03:55surrounding pregnancy and motherhood. Films like Immaculate and The First Omen leaned into this,
04:00as did American Horror Story Delicate. This may not come as a surprise since the Supreme Court
04:04overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, jeopardizing the health of many women as several states made it
04:09difficult, if not impossible, to seek out an abortion.
04:12What this means to women is such an insult.
04:15Horror in 2024 appears to represent the fear of those women who may be forced to
04:18give birth by an uncaring system, and Alien Romulus continues that trajectory.
04:23Kay is pregnant, and despite the father being unknown to us, she seems okay with the prospect
04:27of being a mother. Of course, everything goes sideways when she gives birth to the hideous
04:31offspring, resulting in other changes to her body, like her breasts secreting a black ooze
04:35that the offspring appears to feed on at one point. Of course, themes of motherhood aren't
04:39new in the Alien franchise. Alien sees Ripley become a surrogate mother figure for Newt,
04:43and the computer system aboard the ship in the series is M-U-T-H-U-R,
04:47called mother by the characters. The movies center on the reproductive cycle of the xenomorph,
04:51with the facehuggers basically impregnating human hosts for a xenomorph to then kill them
04:55and grow larger. Aliens may offer an optimistic viewpoint in developing a good relationship with
04:59one's mother, but otherwise, the process of giving birth in the world of the film
05:03has horrifying implications.
05:05The Alien franchise is known for having some brutal kills, and Romulus doesn't skimp in
05:09that department. Navarro has the xenomorph burst through her chest, while Bjorn gets the creature's
05:14acid blood dripped on him. Things really begin ramping up toward the end, and Fede Alvarez
05:18intentionally wanted to save some of the most cold-blooded moments for the finale.
05:22And then I unleash everything on you in the last few minutes.
05:24In another digital spy interview, the director mentioned wanting some disturbing deaths and to
05:29upend the audience's expectations. He told the publication,
05:32It gets very brutal. That's the beauty of it. If you've seen my other movies,
05:35they have a lot of endings, and I always feel like it's ending and it keeps going.
05:39If you've seen Alien Romulus, then you'll know that it's very much in that vein.
05:42Viewers probably assumed that the film was wrapping up when the survivors got off the Romulus,
05:46but that's when the offspring shows up. Alvarez went on,
05:49We really crank it up towards the end, towards the last few minutes,
05:52when you think you've seen it and it's f----- up. It hasn't even started.
05:55That's no joke, as there's something genuinely upsetting about seeing the offspring hunched over
06:00feeding off her while her lifeless body dangles in its arms. This harrowing image
06:04is certainly seared into many people's minds now, and there's no going back.
06:07In some ways, the offspring could be seen as the successor to the newborn from Alien Resurrection,
06:11which is also a hybrid.
06:13When explaining the entire Alien movie saga, Romulus exists as a sort of intrequel. It takes
06:18place in the year 2142, 20 years after the events of Alien and several decades before Aliens occurs.
06:24Ripley still exists in cryostasis in the film, but that doesn't matter, because we're following
06:28a new group of characters. The film ends with the offspring getting obliterated while Rain
06:32goes on her way to join another colony. A sequel could absolutely pick up with her when she reaches
06:36her destination, or something sinister could interrupt her voyage, putting her planned new
06:40life at risk. An Alien-Romulus sequel could definitely be on the cards, especially if
06:44the movie does well financially. Then again, it's possible the franchise could go in another
06:48direction altogether. Romulus might end up existing as a side story in the overarching
06:52scheme of the series, while the next movie focuses on something else entirely, with a
06:56new crop of victims. Who knows, maybe we'll finally get the Neil Blomkamp Alien movie we
07:00never got to see now that there's renewed interest in the franchise.
07:03Assuming Alien-Romulus has legs and can keep the momentum going, it should be a financial success,
07:08which would make the prospect of a sequel all the more enticing for studio execs.
07:11Initial signs are very positive. According to Variety, the film is expected to make $28
07:16million to $38 million in its first weekend of release.
07:19"'Rain, are you sure about this?"
07:21"'Only one way to find out.'"
07:23It's an exciting time to be an Alien fan. In addition to a brand new movie,
07:27there's also an FX TV series in the works from Noah Howley titled Alien Earth. If you disregard
07:32the Alien vs. Predator films, it will be the first entry in the franchise to visit our home planet.
07:37Those hoping for nods to the upcoming TV show on Romulus will have no doubt been disappointed,
07:41as there aren't any, and it seems that there won't be any connective tissue between the two, period.
07:45Howley has confirmed that his Alien series will ignore elements of Prometheus and Alien Covenant.
07:50It's a stark cry from Alien Romulus which leaned into those more divisive entries,
07:54including having a reference to a Prometheus file,
07:56and the presence of the Black Goo that Weyland-Yutani is interested in.
08:00Howley's stance isn't that surprising. For starters, Alien Earth will take place 30 years
08:04before the events of Alien. Seeing as Romulus is set 20 years after the events of that movie,
08:09the young characters we follow wouldn't have been born. The only potential returning cast
08:12member could be Andy, or at least a different version of Andy, if his synthetic model was
08:17mass-produced. Suffice to say, fans probably shouldn't expect to see Romulus references in
08:21Alien Earth, as separated significantly both on the timeline and in literal light years within space.
08:26Plus, the description of Alien Earth suggests it'll focus more on Weyland-Yutani wanting to
08:31develop advanced Android creations. How exactly do Xenomorphs fit into that? We'll just have to
08:36wait and see. Alien Romulus borrows much from previous installments, right down to Andy saying,
08:41quote,
08:42"...get away from her, you b----."
08:44which Ripley popularized in Aliens. However, the third act takes a massive swing by introducing
08:48the Offspring, a creature that looks like a mashup of an Engineer from Prometheus and a Xenomorph.
08:53This makes sense, given what we know from Prometheus. In that film, an Engineer ingests
08:57the Black Goo, causing its DNA to seed Earth and lay the foundation for humans to emerge.
09:02Humans are the byproduct of Engineers, so that latent genetic structure may have come to the
09:06forefront when K gave birth to the creature. There's much we don't know about the Offspring
09:09and whether these types of creatures will factor later in the franchise,
09:12but its design did its job in terrifying audiences. A Reddit thread chronicling
09:16Alien Romulus spoilers has several people praise the monster's design,
09:20including one person who wrote,
09:21"...it actually haunted my mind a little in that unsettling way,
09:24meaning it was definitely more impactful than the newborn from Resurrection,
09:28which was just ugly and gross."
09:29It appears no matter what folks think of Alien Romulus as a whole, the Offspring is a highlight.
09:34Its introduction is a good way to help differentiate Romulus from other franchise
09:37entries, and it opens the door for the idea of human-xenomorph crossbreeds being explored further.