Going on a mission for sunlight, floating through acid, and a brand new look for a classic monster. "Alien: Romulus" presents a new chapter in the famed "Alien" film series - but what exactly happened at the end of it?
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00:00Going on a mission for sunlight, floating through acid, and a brand new look for a classic
00:04monster, Alien Romulus presents a new chapter in the famed Alien film series. But what exactly
00:10happened at the end of it?
00:12Alien Romulus begins as a Weyland-Yutani Corporation probe finally reaches the wreckage of the
00:16commercial towing vehicle Nostromo. It's been floating in space ever since Warrant Officer
00:20Ellen Ripley set the ship to self-destruct in an attempt to destroy the xenomorph that
00:25had gotten on board. Unfortunately, the xenomorph was allowed to grow to maturation in the Nostromo,
00:29thanks to the company's special order directive given to the ship's secret synthetic, ash.
00:34At the end of the first film, it gets on board Ripley's escape shuttle. Ripley ultimately
00:38blasts the xenomorph out into space with a harpoon in its chest. The company's probe
00:42finds its cargo, a fossilized asteroid, which it secures and then brings back to a space
00:46station, where a dozen scientists and soldiers eagerly await its unveiling.
00:50As various machines cut open the rock and pull out what was inside it, we see the indentation
00:55of the xenomorph, which had laid inside the rock ever since Ripley flung it into space.
00:59Turns out that alien wasn't quite gone after all.
01:02Almost a year later, Rain Caradine, a colonist and miner for Weyland-Yutani, is sick of living
01:07in the Jackson's Star Colony, where the dark planet is being endlessly terraformed and
01:11the sun literally never shines. She dreams of basking in the sunlight of a completely
01:15terraformed planet called Ivaga. She and her adopted brother, an artificial person named
01:19Andy, have recently earned enough work hours to be given a travel pass from the company
01:23to Ivaga.
01:24Unfortunately, Rain is coldly informed that work quotas have been recently raised and
01:28that it'll be another six years of mining work before she can leave the planet. After
01:32that, Rain is pretty amenable to a proposition for escape that some of her fellow miners
01:36make to her.
01:37Her ex-boyfriend, Tyler, his sister, Kay, his cousin, Bjorn, and Bjorn's partner, Navarro,
01:42have stumbled upon the signature of a decommissioned and abandoned company ship drifting over the
01:46planet. Their plan is to use one of the ships they have access to, the Corbellan, and dock
01:50with the decommissioned craft to procure the cryo-sleep pods on board, making it possible
01:55to travel nine light-years to Ivaga.
01:57It should be in and out in 30 minutes."
02:00Upon docking with the station, the crew of the Corbellan discovers that the station is
02:04broken up into two halves, the Remus, which they're currently on, and the Romulus. Both
02:08halves had been dedicated to some form of research project. Before they can dwell on
02:12what that might have been, they discover that the cryo-pods are in good shape, but are lacking
02:16enough fuel to make the journey to Ivaga.
02:18As the pods are transferred to the Corbellan, Tyler, Bjorn, and Andy attempt to locate cryo
02:23storage on the Remus. On the Corbellan, Rain discovers that Kay is pregnant as she monitors
02:27the progress of the guys on the Remus. She's then heartbroken when Bjorn informs Andy that
02:31Ivaga is a non-company world, meaning synthetics aren't allowed there. Rain regretfully admits
02:36that she couldn't find a way to tell Andy earlier, but didn't have the heart.
02:39Are you sure you want to do this?"
02:42Upon discovering the cryo storage room, Tyler and Bjorn dislodge some tanks, which suddenly
02:47sets off a failsafe system, locking the exit to the room and raising its temperature. Rain
02:51and Navarro rush to their aid once it's discovered that Andy does not have security clearance
02:55to leave the room, but a dormant and half-melted synthetic in a nearby lab might.
03:01Rain ejects a programming module from the busted synthetic and brings it to Tyler to
03:04put into Andy, who then freezes as his system reboots. Meanwhile, the experiments once frozen
03:09in storage have woken up.
03:11Facehuggers
03:12Tyler, Bjorn, and an upgraded Andy fight them off and escape the room, but not before one
03:16slips past them and attaches itself to Navarro. While Andy's upgrade did not come with any
03:20data on the xenomorph, he suggests that the dormant synthetic may have answers.
03:24That dormant synthetic turns out to be Rook, another model of the same type as Ash, the
03:29synthetic who betrayed the crew of the Nostromo. He was the science officer of the Romulus
03:33and Remus, who helped supervise the company's dissection, study, and eventual breeding of
03:37the xenomorph that Ripley thought she'd killed. While that xeno is now dead, there seems to
03:41be at least a dozen or more facehuggers on board.
03:44Although Rook advises the group to kill Navarro, Rain comes up with the idea to freeze the
03:48facehugger's tail in order to pull it off. The freezing works, and Navarro is freed,
03:52but Rook, who is slowly updating Andy with more of his personality and directives, informs
03:57Andy that he must help the humans against their better natures. Andy insists that Navarro
04:01not be let back on board the Corbellan, but Bjorn and Navarro elude him long enough to
04:05do just that, leaving Rain, Tyler, and Andy trapped on the Remus.
04:09Unsurprisingly, Navarro horribly gives birth to a chest-bursting Xeno. In her death throes,
04:15Navarro's leg kicks the Corbellan's controls, sending the ship careening around the station.
04:19The incident forces the space station even faster toward its doom amongst the rings of
04:23the nearby planet. Rain, Tyler, and Andy realize they have to pass through a connecting hall
04:27that is now filled with facehuggers to get to the other side of the station. Raising
04:30the temperature of the hall to 98.6 degrees so that the huggers can't sense them, they
04:35tiptoe through the area, trying not to make noise or overheat from fear.
04:39Meanwhile, Kay and Bjorn discover a cocoon that the xenomorph has made for itself after
04:42shedding its chest-burster skin. Bjorn attempts to kill the Xeno while in its cocoon with
04:46a cattle prod, unknowingly causing it to bleed acid all over him, melting him to death. The
04:51Xeno emerges fully grown from its cocoon, and a frantic Kay contacts Tyler through their
04:55communication device, causing him and Rain to book it past the leaping facehuggers the
04:59rest of the way.
05:00The trio finally catches up with Kay, who's eluded the Xeno long enough to make it to
05:04a door where her brother and friends are. Yet Andy, realizing the Xeno is trying to
05:08bait them into opening the door for Kay, refuses, leaving her to a presumably grisly
05:12fate. Tyler and Rain are distraught, the latter especially so as she learns Andy's new directive
05:17is to do what's best for the company.
05:19The trio makes their way to the Romulus' main laboratory, within which is the major experiment
05:24that Rook wishes Andy to take with them for preservation. It seems that Rook was able
05:28to highlight and extract from the Xenomorph the primordial black goo that makes up most
05:32of its genetic structure. The goo can be used as either life in its rawest form or a deadly
05:37Rook promises that he synthesized a strain of it that should help make humanity the perfect
05:41organism, taking several vials of the goo for preservation. Andy also arms Tyler and
05:46Rain with some pulse rifles found on board, in the hopes that merely aiming the guns at
05:49the aliens will keep them at bay.
05:51Realizing that the Xeno that grabbed Kay is now guarding the main path back to the Corbellan,
05:55the trio take an alternate route, which unfortunately leads them straight into a Xenomorph hive built
06:00in one section of the Romulus. Hearing Kay call for help, the group finds and rescues
06:04her, discovering that she hasn't been facehugged yet due to a massive loss of blood.
06:08Before Tyler can take Andy's advice of helping Kay out by injecting her with a vial of black
06:12goo, Rain stops him, believing they can make it back to the Corbellan to put Kay in a cryopod
06:16and fix her back at the colony.
06:18"...Run."
06:19During their attempt to make it out of the hive, Tyler is impaled by an alien. Andy is
06:23knocked down hard enough to make his system short, but Rain and Kay make it to an elevator
06:27just before a slew of drones and facehuggers show up.
06:31Not wanting to leave Andy behind, Rain sends Kay up the rest of the way in the elevator.
06:34"...Rain, are you sure about this?"
06:36"...Only one way to find out."
06:39Kay makes it back to the Corbellan, where the coldly logical Rook insists that Rain
06:43and Andy are a loss and that Kay should enable the remote autopilot so he can send the ship
06:47back to the colony with the goo. Kay refuses, but, in pain and worried about her baby, she
06:52injects herself with a vial of goo.
06:54Meanwhile, Rain successfully rescues Andy, removing the corrupting Rook module from his
06:58system and returning him back to normal. At first, it seems the two are doomed and trapped
07:02inside the hive, with Rook refusing to assist because it could compromise the survival of
07:06the experiment.
07:07Rain then realizes that she could turn the artificial gravity off and shoot the aliens
07:11without fear of their acid blood making a hole in the station. She does just that, taking
07:15out the Xenos before she and Andy precariously float their way through hovering swaths of
07:19acid.
07:20Halfway through floating up an elevator shaft, however, the gravity comes back on, sending
07:24Rain falling to her death before she's caught by a Xeno. Thankfully, Andy is able to overcome
07:28his meek nature and rescues Rain, blowing the alien away even as all the Xeno blood
07:33causes a huge hole to be torn in the station. Rain and Andy make it back to the Corbellan,
07:37taking off from the station just as it starts to hit the planet's rings. Rain intends to
07:41venture onto Evaga with the cryo fuel, and a helpless Rook realizes his mission is a
07:45failure before he's destroyed by the exploding station.
07:49After putting Kay inside a cryopod and plugging Andy into the ship's systems, Rain is about
07:53to climb into a pod herself when alerts start going off for Kay's pod. Upon opening it,
07:58Rain discovers a now heavily pregnant Kay who gives violent, bloody birth to some type
08:02of egg hybrid. While attempting to remove it from the ship, the egg becomes acidic as
08:06it begins to hatch, revealing a humanoid creature inside before it sinks into the Corbellan's
08:10cargo hold.
08:11Rain grabs some cryotubes and chases the creature into the hold, but it's now hatched and grown
08:15rapidly into some hybrid known as the Offspring. The Offspring attempts to suckle from its
08:20mother, Kay, who is now lactating black goo of her own. Slashing Andy's neck when confronted,
08:25the Offspring feels rejected by Kay, and consumes her instead before Rain can stop it.
08:29After a tussle in which cryo smoke fills the ship and nearly freezes Rain to death, she's
08:33able to put on a spacesuit to finish unhooking the cargo hold and eject the Offspring into
08:38space. Eventually, she's successful, sending the unholy creature and the cargo onto the
08:42rocks below.
08:43Rain puts Andy into a cryopod, tearfully promising that she'll find a way to fix him once they
08:48reach Evaga. Similar to Ripley's lonely final sign-off after the events of Alien, Rain records
08:53her own voice log for her cryopod, explaining that she'll try to reach Evaga even though
08:57there's a chance they may not make it. The film ends the way it began, with a spacecraft
09:01venturing into the blackness of the infinite.
09:04Throughout Alien Romulus, there is a dual theme of sacrifice and parasitism. As the
09:08title and the space station suggest, sacrifice can be a force for positive change, and in
09:12some cases even a noble thing. Rome being founded through Romulus killing Remus is clearly
09:17how Rook and the company view the goo being used to force humanity through a necessary
09:20evolution.
09:21Yet, as exemplified in the film's subtext, this is not a true noble sacrifice like the
09:25ones made by Andy and Rain. Romulus is a movie about the distinction between one's own beliefs
09:30and those forced upon them, with the latter being as insidious and destructive as the
09:34xenomorph itself.