Ridley Me This: Ridley Scott Says Engineers Didn't Create Xenomorphs In The Alien Franchise - So Who Did?

God creates Xenomorph, God destroys Xenomorph, God creates Man, Man kills God, Man brings back Xenomorphs!

For those whose chests are bursting with excitement for the upcoming Alien: Covenant, news and teasers are coming from all sides like a swarm of the titular aliens. Off the back of an all-revealing trailer, director #RidleyScott has teased that not all may be as it seems. As #AlienCovenant bridges the gap between prequel film #Prometheus and Scott's 1979 original, there is still a planned third film to finish the puzzle.

The clues are dripping like acid through the hull of a ship about what the overarching story of the series is, but for those who think they know who created the carnage-inducing Xenomorphs, Scott has teased that you are wrong, "dead wrong."

Warning: mild Alien: Covenant spoilers ahead!

Gods and Monsters

In an interview with Collider (via IBT), Scott went into more detail about who created the Xenomorphs, confirming that it was not the albino Engineers as everyone first thought. It is a question that had bothered fans (well, some) since we first met the Xenomorphs 38 years ago:

“It shouldn’t have really ended, so we’ve come back with a very simple idea: Who made them? [Alien] was just about there it is; it exists. And this is what it is…So we’ve reinvented the idea of Alien, I think, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it’s them [the Engineers], you’re dead wrong.”

The main thing to take away from the quote is the "step closer" comment, meaning that we shouldn't get our hopes up for a full answer in Covenant either. Clearly the planet that the colony crew land on has some form of secret; we have already seen the mysteriously grown corn, a pile of bodies, and the crashed ship that once contained Dr. Shaw and David — both will return in some capacity, while the trailer also teases a grisly fate for Dr. Shaw.

Resurrecting the Franchise

We already know that the sequel for Covenant has been written, and there is now a rumor that Scott is ready to do six more Alien-centric films AFTER Covenant too. The universe is seemingly only just beginning nearly four decades after it started, so Covenant is likely to just be the tip of the iceberg with much more #horror on its way. With six more on the horizon, surely Scott will have to continue past the realms of 1997's Alien: Resurrection and into a new era, which also seems to spell disaster for Neill Blomkamp's proposed Alien 5? Secondly, whatever direction Scott takes his films it, it will surely rewrite some of the franchise's history — just as long as he leaves James Cameron's Aliens alone, it may not be a bad thing to "adjust" the plots from Alien3 and Resurrection.

Resurrection ended with Ripley and the survivors of the Betty landing on a desolate Earth — although it seemed empty, there were definite hints that Earth was still going in the year 2379 and was still free of Xenomorphs. One thing that the franchise had always toyed with, but never reached, was the aliens making it to Earth. Any continuation of the franchise must eventually reach that point, leading to a mass extinction storyline, so perhaps this is where Scott will eventually take his vision for the films.

Are you Shaw?

As for the mystery baby daddies for the Xenomorphs, it is a case of wait and see. The franchise is stocked full of examples of the human race being used as an incubator for the species, while Prometheus saw Dr. Shaw birth her own primitive alien offspring in the heart-racing MedPod scene, indicating that humans have an evolutionary role to play as well. However, if Engineers aren't the creators, it is even more unlikely that homosapeins had the tech or brainpower to create such a beast.

Alien-Covenant.com has its own interesting theory on who (or what) created the biomechanical monsters, posing that humans, Engineers and 3-4 other iterations of "Humanoids" have been seeded throughout the cosmos. Sadly, mankind as we know it as 4th or 5th generation in the chain, proceeded by the Engineers, proceeded by a higher being. These higher beings have the power to release wide scale disasters such as floods, ice ages, or, oh I don't know, #Xenomorph attacks!

It all sound very biblical, but it also makes sense in a lot of ways, the planet of Paradise that we visit in Covenant is a veritable cradle of life, making it a Garden of Eden. The trailer clearly shows that life has been here before and the conclusion didn't look very chirpy. As David rightly said in Prometheus, "In order to create, one must first destroy"

All this seemingly debunks the solid theory that the Engineers created the Xenos to eradicate a life threatening virus on their homeworld, and still leaves us in the dark about who created those lil' mouth poppers. I'm sure much more will become clear when Covenant blasts off for its one-way mission on May 19!