Despite the heavily divided reaction received by Prometheus back in 2012, anticipation still runs high for Ridley Scott’s next foray into the dark world of the Alien franchise. After all, it was Scott who brought us the original Alien film, a movie still viewed today as a top-class example of sci-fi/horror. So, whether one feels that Prometheus was a serious misstep for the director, or a fascinating exploration of the events leading to the creation of H.R. Giger’s terrifying Xenomorph, it’s hard to deny that Scott deserves another chance to make society’s collective nightmares come to life on film.

Up until recently, Scott had been slow to reveal just what exactly his next project in the series – the newly dubbed Alien: Covenant – would be about, outside of the fact that it would feature the return of Prometheus stars Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, and that it would function as a sequel to Prometheus, but also work as another prequel to 1979’s Alien. Two sequels to Covenant are also planned to fully bridge the gap between the two timelines.

Thankfully, Scott saw fit to share a few more plot tidbits during a recent interview with The Wrap:

Fans will recall that Prometheus ended with both the birth of a proto-Xenomorph beastie from an Engineer host, and that Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and the disembodied head of android David (Fassbender) were on their way to the Engineer’s home planet. Previous interviews with Scott have indicated that the two characters would reach their destination, although Scott has also said that Rapace will play a much smaller role this time out.

“They’re going to go to the planet where the engineers came from, and come across the evolving creature that they had made. Why did they make it? Why would they make such a terrifying beast? It felt bio-mechanoid, it felt like a weapon. And so the movie will explain that, and reintroduce the alien back into it.”

A previously released plot synopsis indicated that the Covenant in the title refers to a ship bound for the Engineer homeworld whose crew arrives to find David as the only humanoid inhabitant. Based on both this old information and Scott’s new quote above, it would appear that the crew of the Covenant will encounter the next evolution of the Xenomorph creature found in the last film, and that Elizabeth Shaw is not long for this world if she’s presumably deceased (or at least missing) by the time the Covenant arrives on the planet to find David alone.

Also, for fans wondering just how long into the prequel series they’ll have to wait to see a full-on Xenomorph, Scott says that we’ll all get to feast our eyes on the real deal by the end of Alien: Covenant.

One crucial factor that the above details still don’t touch on, though, is what tone the movie will take. While this is clearly intended to be much more of a standard Alien film than was Prometheus, the latter movie carried with it a much more science fiction feel than did the prior Alien installments, with a lot more technical jargon being used and much more of a focus on scientific discovery than was present on the Nostromo or on LV-426. Although, to be fair to the towing crew in Alien and the space marines in Aliens, it’s hard to care about science when you’re constantly trying not to have your face eaten off by a rampaging monster.

“We’ll have them all: egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, then the big boy.”

Still, it’ll be a delicate balance for Scott if he hopes to try and successfully capture both vibes within the same film, lest fans of either Prometheus or Alien be disappointed when they sit down to experience Alien: Covenant.

Alien: Covenant hits theaters on October 6th, 2017.

Source: The Wrap