How does Alien: Romulus connect to Prometheus and Alien Covenant? Storyline explored

Alien: Romulus is out in cinemas, and it brings back the Alien franchise to the big screen after 7 years. Released in theaters on August 16, 2024, the film is directed by Fede Alvarez and focuses on a young group of colonizers who board the Romulus space station to salvage it. However, things take a turn for the worse when they come face-to-face with the brutal Xenomorph.

Warning: Spoilers for the film to follow

What Alien: Romulus does so interesting is that it not only bridges the gap between Alien and Aliens but also connects to the prequels in an intriguing way. Fans of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant will be happy to know that the film carries forward narrative threads from those films in an entertaining way.

While characters from Ridley Scott's two prequels don't show up, Alien: Romulus features the black goo from those movies that help explain why Weyland-Yutani were after it in the first place.

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The black goo from the prequels returns in Alien: Romulus

The black goo was originally introduced in Prometheus. In the Alien universe, the origins of the black goo aren't exactly explained, but it is revealed that it can have different effects on different creatures. It can either mutate life or completely destroy it. But its origins have never been explained, as it has always remained a mystery.

In Prometheus, we can see that the Weyland-Yutani is looking for the Engineers, who are supposedly the creators of the human race. As revealed in the film, the Engineers would use the black goo to cultivate life forms on different planets, and later on in Alien: Covenant we can see that David uses it to wipe out the entirety of the Engineers.

But the more important thing that we learned in Covenant is that David also used the black good to create his own version of the Xenomorphs as well. While it remains to be confirmed whether he was their creator, it certainly confirms that the Xenomorphs themselves have some of the chemical in them.

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Alien: Romulus features the black goo in an interesting way

In Alien: Romulus, it is revealed that Weyland-Yutani was able to salvage the wreckage from Nostromo and retrieve the Xenomorph who wreaked havoc on that ship. By experimenting with it, they were able to derive the "Prometheus strain" from it and started using it on lab rats. They believed that the substance would be able to evolve humans into the perfect species.

During Alien: Romulus, a character by the name of Kay, played by Isabela Merced, who is pregnant as well, gets fatally wounded. In an effort to save herself, she injects herself with the strain, thinking that it will help her and her baby survive. However, it causes her baby to mutate, which leads to a gruesome scene.

The scene sees her give birth to a hybrid between the Xenomorph and an Engineer, which then becomes the climax of the film. The creature itself is tall and lanky and features the face of an Engineer, while the body resembles that of a Xenomorph. However, it is defeated by Rain, who shoots it out of the ship and into space.

Whether Alien: Romulus will receive a sequel remains to be seen, but if it does, then we can certainly expect it to build upon this storyline. You can check out the film starring Cailee Spaeny in theaters right now.