What started out as a simple monster movie in space -- Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien -- has in the decades since seen burst from its chest, if you will, an entire franchise of seemingly unstoppable, acid-bleeding, double-jaw chomping xenomorphs. And now, with Alien: Romulus about to be released, it's time to get ready for even more deep-space shenanigans.
In the wake of Scott's return to the franchise with 2012's Prometheus and 2017's Alien: Covenant, some fans felt that the filmmaker had strayed from the original concept of the Alien series. Now that the reins of the series have shifted to director Fede Álvarez in Alien: Romulus, it looks as though the franchise is returning to its claustrophobic horror roots. So what better time than now to take an accounting of the many different versions of the xenomorph, and its offshoots, that have plagued not just Ellen Ripley over the years but all those other poor space colonists and space marines and space scientists and, well, you get the picture. Let's take a look at every xenomorph (and alien) from the Alien movies:
EGG
Let's start with the basic life cycle of the xenomorph, which includes several very different stages of development for the classic alien. First up is the egg, which the original film depicts Kane (seen here on the left getting dangerously nosy) encountering amid an entire hive of eggs in the abandoned Space Jockey ship on LV-426. Of course, the egg opens when a potential host/victim approaches (as seen on the right here)...
FACEHUGGER
Once that egg opens, you get a facehugger! The spindly, awful thing wraps itself around the victim's face and throat and gets busy with the impregnatin' action. Which leads to...
CHESTBURSTER
Now we're getting somewhere, as is the alien, which -- having incubated within the warm innards of its host -- is now ready to explode forth into the world. Be free, little chestburster!
DRONE
The chestburster very quickly evolves from being a cute little toothy killer to a full-size xenomorph, molting and growing to approximately seven feet in height in a matter of hours. In the first Alien movie, the creature was what would later be called a drone xenomorph in the franchise's terminology (if not actually onscreen).
SOLDIER/WARRIOR
James Cameron's sequel to Alien, Aliens, introduced a couple of new variations on the creature. That includes the soldier or warrior, which features a somewhat different design from the drone seen in the first film. It has a more ridged head when compared to the original's smooth-domed xeno, among some other tinkerings made by Cameron and his team. Cameron has also said that this take on the alien is supposed to be a mature version of the creature seen in the 1979 film. Again, as with the drone, the term soldier/warrior isn't really used onscreen in Aliens but is more of a behind-the-scenes and expanded universe distinction.
QUEEN
Also introduced in Cameron's film, the queen brings the life cycle of the xenomorph all together, for it is she who produces all those eggs! She's also huge and even fiercer than your run of the mill xeno, especially if you've just torched her whole nest. Of course, the queen sort of contradicts the life cycle that Ridley Scott originally had in mind in the first film, which depicted (in a deleted scene) some crew members being cocooned and slowly morphing into eggs... which would then spawn more facehuggers. Eventually the novelization of Alien 3 kinda/sorta explained that the xenomorphs might reproduce by both means.
RUNNER/DOG ALIEN
By the time they got to Alien 3, the filmmakers were trying to mix things up a bit. And so was born the dog alien! Yes, this sucker -- also referred to as a runner -- exploded out of a poor pup's belly. (The dog's name was Spike, and we will never forget him.) And actually, in one version of the famously troubled film, director David Fincher had the creature gestate in an ox, not a dog. Either way, the end result proved that a xenomorph will adopt some of its host's characteristics, since the runner mostly traveled on all fours. Just like a dog! Or an ox!
NEWBORN
Ew, the poor newborn. I mean, all he wanted was his mother's love. No, not the alien queen whose face he tore off. His *other* mother, the clone known as Ripley 8. (Long story.) Appearing in the fourth film, Resurrection, the newborn was the result of some crazy DNA experiments. Essentially, it was part human, part xenomorph. And all ugly. Also, though not seen in the final film, the creature was designed to be a hermaphrodite. Google it.
RIPLEY CLONES
So yeah, we said it was a long story. But by the time Alien: Resurrection rolled around, Ellen Ripley was long gone. Still, Sigourney Weaver wasn't, and so the film depicts a bunch of scientists trying to revive the xenomorph by cloning Ripley via samples of her blood from when she had been impregnated by an alien queen in the third film. After seven horrific clones where things didn't quite work out, Ripley 8 was "born." But like it or not, each of these versions of Ripley did have some mix of xeno DNA in their systems, which basically means Ripley became that which she hated.
PREDALIEN
This is why you can't have nice things. By the time the Alien movies stopped being a thing and sunk into the monster mash of the Alien vs. Predator duology -- hey, that's what it is! A duology! -- it was perhaps inevitable that a hybrid of this nature would come about. Now let's stop talking about it.
DEACON
And just like that we're in Prometheus territory. When Ridley Scott returned to the Alien series with this prequel almost 35 years after the original, he wasn't terribly interested in just more xenomorph action. And so we got a lot about the Space Jockeys (Engineers) who *created* the xenos, and then this guy showed up very briefly at the end of the film (bursting from an Engineer in fact) as a sort of bridge monster to the alien that we all know and love.
OTHER PROMETHEUS CRITTERS
We don't know what else to call these guys, which aren't xenomorphs but are the evolutionary ancestors to the xenos. The Prometheus crew stumbles upon a black goo on LV-223, which was designed by the Engineers as a biological weapon as it turns out. All kinds of trouble ensues, causing the creatures infected by it to morph: Simple worms become hammerpedes, the crewmembers Fifield and Holloway are transformed into horrible creatures, and Holloway also impregnates his girlfriend Elizabeth Shaw with a trilobite... which subsequently gets into an Engineer, which leads to the aforementioned Deacon. Whew! Used to be easier when it was just an alien trying to kill folks...
ENGINEER/SPACE JOCKEY
Yeah, these guys aren't xenomorphs or some variation there of. But they are aliens in the Alien movies, *and* they created the xenomorphs. And they're jerks, so there you have it.
SPORES
In Alien: Covenant, we learn that Michael Fasbender's devious android David has spent years tinkering with Xenomorph DNA and creating new variations of the "perfect organism." That includes seeding the Engineers' home planet with pods of spores that infect several crew members of the Covenant upon physical contact.
NEOMORPH
Among the newest additions to the Alien pantheon of monsters is the neomorph, which appears in Alien: Covenant. After members of the Covenant are infected with the alien spores, this stark white monster is what bursts forth.
COVENANT XENOMORPH
Alien: Covenant winds up serving as the origin story for the classic Xenomorph. David's complex crossbreeding program resulted in a series of Xenomorph eggs, but he had to wait for human victims to arrive before he could begin the infection cycle that leads to the creation of a true Xenomorph.
Alien: Covenant ends with David covertly assuming command of the vessel as it continues its years-long journey toward its new home. David clearly aims to continue his genetic experiments now that he has access to several thousand human test subjects. We may never know what terrifying new creatures he creates, unfortunately, as Disney is showing no signs of giving Covenant a direct sequel.
Instead, the series moves in a different, more traditional direction with Fede Alverez's Alien-Romulus. The trailers suggest we'll again see the classic Xenomorph in this film, but will there be other new variants? We'll have to wait and see.
Alien: Romulus hits theaters on August 16. For more on the new movie, learn about the footage that was screened at San Diego Comic-Con and check out the terrifying Xenomorph popcorn bucket.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
