The new Alien movie, aka Alien: Romulus is now streaming on Hulu, just in time for you to spend your Thanksgiving holiday with a bunch of xenomorphs and facehuggers.
Directed by Fede Álvarez, and written by Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, Alien: Romulus is the seventh film in the Alien franchise (if you don’t count the two Alien Vs. Predator crossover films, that is). But technically, this new movie is a standalone “interquel,” which takes place between the events of the first movie Alien (1979) and the second movie Aliens (1986). Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu star in the film as a group of young space colonists who come face to face with some terrifying outer space creatures.
Like the other Alien movies, Alien: Romulus was a box office hit, making over $342.7 million in the worldwide box office. But now that the movie is streaming on Hulu, it’s certain to find an even bigger audience—which means soon even more people are going to watch the Alien: Romulus ending, and meet the new, terrifying Alien creature known as the Offspring.
If you’re looking for more context, Decider has got you covered. Read on for Alien: Romulus ending explained, including a breakdown of the Alien: Romulus ending creature, aka the Offspring.
Warning: Major Alien: Romulus spoilers ahead!
What year does Alien Romulus take place?
Alien: Romulus takes place in the year In 2142, which is twenty years after the events of the first Alien film (which takes place in 2122), and 37 years before the events of the Aliens sequel (which takes place in 2179).
Alien Romulus plot summary:
Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) is an orphan living a run-down planet with her adopted brother Andy (David Jonsson), an android who doesn’t quite function right after he was reprogrammed by Rain’s father. (It’s a metaphor for autism!) When Rain is informed by her employer—Weyland-Yutani—that her work contract has been unfairly extended, she decides to escape.
Rain and Andy join up with a group of fellow young people—consisting of Rain’s ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux), his pregnant sister Kay (Isabela Merced), their cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Bjorn’s adopted sister Navarro (Aileen Wu)—who have a plan to commandeer a ship, steal cryostasis equipment, and put themselves in cryo-sleep to endure the long journey to a better life in a galaxy far, far away. However, this better life involves going to a planet called Yvaga, where androids are not allowed. When Andy learns this, he realizes Rain intends to leave him behind.
Unfortunately, when the group gets to the abandoned space station—which is called the Renaissance—where they plan to steal the cryostasis equipment, they quickly discover the station is about to collide with some planetary rings. Also, the cryo-tanks they find don’t have enough fuel. When Tyler and Bjorn go to retrieve fuel, they accidentally let loose a contingent of facehugger parasites, and trigger a lockdown on the ship, trapping them in a room with the monsters. Navarro is raped by a facehugger.
Rain and Andy discover a damaged science officer android, Rook (voiced by Daniel Betts, but created to look like a young Ian Holm, who played Rook in the first movie). Rain uses Rook’s control chip to upgrade Andy’s security clearance and allow them to move freely around the ship. This unintentionally changes Andy’s personality, and causes him to switch loyalties from Rain to the company, Weyland-Yutani.
A re-activated Rook explains that the xenomorph that killed Ripley’s crew in Alien was taken to this space station by Weyland-Yutani, for studies and experiments. The Weyland-Yutani scientists reverse-engineered the facehuggers using the xenomorph. Then the xenomorph escaped, killed everyone on the station. Yay science!
Navarro, who was impregnated by the facehugger, births a new xenomorph that quickly grows into a full-grown creature. Everyone is running for their lives. Kay gets trapped in a room with the xenomorph, and Andy refuses to use his security clearance to open the door, claiming the xenomorph is using Kay as bait, in order to kill everyone.
Alien Romulus ending explained:
Rook wants Andy to retrieve a special adaptive DNA fluid, that the Weyland-Yutani harvested from the facehuggers, which will allow Weyland-Yutani to create genetically-perfect humans that are able to survive in space. Rooks says that unless Andy gets this Z-01 fluid, he will prevent everyone from escaping the station.
The group discovers Kay is not yet dead, but trapped in a xenomorph nest with an alien tentacle down her throat. They rescue her. Andy offers her the Z-01 fluid, which allows her to quickly heal. A bunch of xenomorphs and facehuggers attack, and a big battle ensues. Andy gets knocked out. Rain escorts Kay to safety, then goes back to save Andy. She removes the chip from his head, restoring his loyalty to her, instead of Weyland-Yutani.
What is the Alien Romulus ending creature, The Offspring?
Rain, Andy, and Kay successfully escape the station, and plan to proceed as originally planned to Yvaga in their cryo-chambers. However, the plan gets derailed when Kay gives birth to a mutated xenomorph-human hybrid, which was created by a xenomorph impregnating a woman who was already pregnant with a human baby, and then accelerated its growth when she took the Z-01 fluid. And boy, is this new guy creepy-looking!
This xenomorph-human hybird was dubbed “The Offspring” in the Alien: Romulus script. Romanian basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi, who is 7 feet 7 inches, is the actor who plays the Offspring. In an interview with Variety, the movie’s visual effects supervisor Daniel Macarin and animation supervisor Ludovic Chailloleau explained how they worked with director Fede Álvarez to make this terrifying new creature, using a blend of practical effects and CGI.
“This is a homage to the ’80s, in design style,” Chailloleau said. “Even the models and the practical [effects], everything has to fit the way they would have done that years ago. We don’t want to look to CG, so motion is very important, because we could not animate that way 40 years ago.”
In that same interivew, Macarin added, “You don’t get a lot of screen time with this character, so it’s making sure that the audience never has the wrong reaction to it. If they giggle at it or something comes off as funny, then you’ve taken them out of the moment, and we don’t have enough time to probably get them back into the action.”
In a separate interview with Variety, Álvarez said he intended the design of the Offspring to resemble the Engineers, the alien race that conceived humankind, featured in the film Prometheus.
“I was hoping that people picked up the whole Engineer part of it,” Álvarez said. “The black goo is the root of the whole thing that was introduced in Prometheus. It’s the root of all life, but also particularly the xenomorphs come out of that thing, which means it has to be inside them. It’s the xenomorphs’ semen, almost. So we thought, if it affects your DNA, and the Engineers clearly came out of the same root of life, it made complete sense to me that [the Offspring] was going to look like that.”
That said, Álvarez also clarified that the Offspring is “a new species, because that mix never happened before.”
In the end, the Offspring kills Kay, but Rain manages to eject it into space and disintegrate it. Rain and Andy enter cryostasis, and set off for Yvaga III. With that, the movie ends.
So there you have it! Even though Alien: Romulus introduced a new terrifying creature, it doesn’t seem likely you’ll see the Offsrping again. After all, it was created under a very specific set of circumstances. But then again, the Z-01 fluid was intended to help humans survive in space. So maybe the Offspring will find a way to survive and return. We’ll have to wait and see!
