Ridley Scott's in-limbo sequel to Alien: Covenant would return to the original film's LV-426
Ridley Scott is determined to finish the story he started with 2012's Prometheus, despite the majority of Alien fans not really giving a shit about the cold-circuited travails of Michael Fassenbender’s android David. Last year’s Alien: Covenant managed to sneak in a bit more of the deep-space horror for which the franchise is known, but it distracted from the new characters by hinging the story on David’s genocide on Paradise, a planet home to a bunch of beefy aliens called Engineers that were introduced in Prometheus.
Scott’s planned sequel to Covenant, Alien: Awakening, is currently in limbo due to a marked lack of interest on behalf of fans. Should it get greenlit, however, it’s apparently ready to go. Empire (via HN Entertainment) reports in their Empire Classics Alien Special issue that screenwriter John Logan has already written the script, and it’s…all about David and Engineers. The one intriguing takeaway, however, is that David’s journey would take him to LV-426, the planet where Ripley and the rest of the Nostromo first met the Xenomorphs in Alien.
Per Empire: “Logan’s script would have seen the return of Prometheus’ Engineers, with that species’ survivors coming after the genocidal David. Setting-wise, Scott said it was obvious ‘We’re gonna actually go to the planet’. by which we assume he means LV-426.”
That means David’s genocide left behind some Engineer survivors and they’re, understandably, a bit pissed. Bringing it back to the planet where it all began makes sense, as Scott would then be bringing his prequels up to the timeline of his original film. As HN Entertainment posits, this “could explain how the derelict ship that the crew of the Nostromo encounter in the original film,” adding that “some fan theories have suggested that the Space Jockey on LV-426 is actually David in a new hybrid body.”
It’s a neat idea, but whether or not Scott gets it made remains as up in the air as that rumored Alien TV series. As has often been the case with this series, its future has more diverging limbs than the Xenomorph queen.