Where Did All The Facehuggers & Xenomorphs Come From In Alien: Romulus?

How is it that there are so many facehuggers and xenomorphs lurking on board the Renaissance research station in Alien: Romulus, and yet there are no eggs? With both critical and commercial success, Alien: Romulus has given the Alien franchise a much-needed comeback after a string of disappointing sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. It’s been hailed as the best Alien movie since Alien and Aliens, which is appropriate since it’s essentially a cross between those two films. It’s a chilling, atmospheric horror movie like Alien, but it’s also a high-octane action blockbuster like Aliens – it’s the best of both worlds.

Whereas the usual Alien movie formula follows a group of unsuspecting astronauts unwittingly coming into contact with a xenomorph (or xenomorphs), Alien: Romulus instead has its characters exploring the aftermath of a xenomorph rampage. They head to the Renaissance research station because they need some cryosleep chambers to get them to their destination. But when they get aboard the station, they’re horrified to find that it wasn’t abandoned; it was ripped to shreds by xenomorphs. But since there are no eggs to be seen on the station, where did all these xenomorphs come from?

Rook Explained The Facehuggers' Origin On The Renaissance In Alien: Romulus

The Renaissance Crew Reverse-engineered The Xenomorph DNA And 3D-printed The Facehuggers

After their first encounter with the facehuggers, the characters of Alien: Romulus plug in what’s left of the android Rook – played by the uncanny-valley likeness of Ian Holm – to ask him what happened. The opening scene of the movie already revealed that the crew had recovered “Big Chap” – the xenomorph from the original Alien movie – who had survived being shot out into space by Ellen Ripley.

After Big Chap cocooned himself, he was brought on board the Renaissance so Weyland-Yutani could continue their research. According to Rook, they extracted Big Chap’s DNA and used that to 3D-print the facehuggers. Rook also explains where the Renaissance crew got the mysterious black goo. They extracted the goo specifically from this stage in the xenomorph’s lifecycle, the stage at which the facehuggers incorporate foreign DNA into their offspring.

This was a great way of explaining where the Engineers got the goo from while still maintaining the mystery around the aliens. It also avoided retconning the canonical hive lifecycle, since both processes can co-exist. Since they experimented on Big Chap and reverse-engineered the xenomorph DNA, the Renaissance crew didn’t need eggs to create facehuggers and xenomorphs.

The Renaissance Crew Were Used To Create More Xenomorphs

Weyland-Yutani Sure Loves Letting Its Employees Die

The Renaissance station didn’t just reverse-engineer the xenomorph’s lifecycle, create a bunch of facehuggers, and that was that. Once the research got out of hand, the xenomorphs used the Renaissance crew to expand their hive. When Rain and the others first arrive at the station, they’re horrified to find the ravaged corpses of the previous crew lying around. It’s likely that these crew members fell victim to the manufactured facehuggers and got implanted with their own xenomorphs. This would explain why there are a bunch of full-sized adult xenomorphs lurking on board the station.

But even that’s not all. When Rain, Tyler, and Andy go into the hive to save a cocooned Kay, they find a bunch of other poor humans cocooned in the nest. This hints that the facehugger-related deaths of some crew members led to a xenomorph swarm that wiped out the rest. Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t have been very enviable to be a part of the original crew of the Renaissance station.

The Size Of The Renaissance In Alien: Romulus Allowed The Large Number Of Threats

The Vast Station Allowed Alien: Romulus To Combine The Claustrophobia Of Alien With The Action Of Aliens

Director Fede Álvarez managed to have his cake and eat it, too, with the xenomorph threats of Alien: Romulus. Setting the movie on board an isolated space station brought back the haunting claustrophobia of Ridley Scott’s original movie, but setting it on such a vast, sprawling station allowed him to indulge in the blockbuster spectacle and high-octane xenomorph-slaying action of James Cameron’s Aliens. The massive size of the Renaissance station paved the way for a wide variety of threats, from the swarm of facehuggers to the teeming xenomorph hive.

All the exposition surrounding the Renaissance crew’s experimentation with xenomorph DNA and the black goo paid off, too. Just when Alien: Romulus seems to be wrapping up, Álvarez surprises audiences with an unexpected fourth act in which Kay gives birth to a truly horrifying human-xenomorph hybrid – dubbed “The Offspring” – who wreaks havoc on the survivors. Rook’s exposition about the xenomorph goo research might have seemed a little wordy and unnecessary at first, but the power of the eventual payoff is undeniable.

Was This The Best Use Of Facehuggers & Xenomorphs?

Alien: Romulus Makes The Facehuggers A Real Threat

With the Alien franchise as large as it was, it is impressive that Alien: Romulus found some new ways to use the iconic aliens. This latest movie delivered some unique moments from the xenomorphs that had never been seen in the franchise before, including the clever zero-gravity shootout and the scene of the xenomorph emerging from the cocoon. However, Alien: Romulus somewhat upstages the xenomorphs in the final act with the reveal of the Offspring.

The use of the facehuggers in Alien: Romulus is the most effective aspect of the movie. Facehuggers have often been used as a more transitional aspect of these films, not getting much of the spotlight and simply being used as a tool to introduce the xenomorph. However, Alien: Romulus manages to make the facehuggers scary and like real threats, with them front and center in some of the best action scenes.

While Alien: Romulus cannot top the terrifying nature of the xenomorph in the first Alien movie or the thrill of the final showdown with the queen in Aliens, there are few facehugger moments as memorable as the ones in this latest sequel. That said, James Cameron is responsible for the most intense facehugger scene in Aliens, with the pulse-pounding sequence of Ripley and Newt trapped in a room with a loose facehugger.