Since its initial announcement in 2022, Alien: Romulus had fans all asking the same question: Will Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley be part of the latest installment in the franchise? However, it was pretty clear from day one that helmer and co-scribe, Fede Álvarez, wanted to keep his chapter separate from the six Alien films to come before it. Despite warnings from both the director and Weaver that the beloved final girl wouldn’t appear in the new movie, audiences still held onto the hope that she might pop up in a cameo capacity — especially after it was revealed that Romulus would be both a sequel and a prequel, fitting in between the original Ridley Scott-directed Alien and its follow-up, James Cameron’s Aliens.
Yet, those who went to see Álvarez’s visually stunning sci-fi horror masterpiece left the theater without catching so much of a glance at Ellen Ripley…or did they? As it would happen, there are a few big Easter eggs that connect Weaver’s iconic character to Romulus, and it’s not just because the stories happen in the same universe.
A few days ago, Collider hosted a special screening of Alien: Romulus, which was followed by a Q&A session moderated by Steve Weintraub. The panel, which celebrated the film’s Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, included Álvarez, VFX Supervisor Eric Barbra, and Wētā FX VFX Supervisor Dan Macarin. Delighted to answer all our burning questions, the movie’s director was more than happy to open up about the biggest Easter egg that audiences more than likely missed — and it’s all about Ellen Ripley.
Sharing how two universes collide, Álvarez said,
“My logic was at some point if Weyland-Yutani could find the Xenomorph floating around the debris of the Nostromo, to find the Narcissus, the shuttle that Ripley escaped in, is the easiest part. It’s a lifeboat; it has a beacon. Yeah, you’ll find her, right? It will be a place to figure out the research of what’s going on. You should go get her. So I’m sure they did, right? So I was like, ‘At some point, the Narcissus has to be inside the Renaissance station somewhere.’ Not only that, I wanted to give an explanation of why Ripley got lost 40 years between [Alien and Aliens]. She was supposed to go to Earth and be in stasis for decades until she gets picked up in Aliens, so I was like, ‘Why did that happen?’ So I thought, ‘Because they picked her up.’”
Keeping this side quest in mind, Álvarez essentially created a movie within a movie, showing the audience what was going on with Cailee Spaeny’s Rain Carradine and the rest of the doomed young crew of the Corbelan IV, while Ripley’s separate adventure was happening simultaneously, explaining,
“So, in my mind, there’s a whole movie that happens in parallel to this one where the Narcissus is on board, and Ripley gets out of the station, does her whole fucking movie inside the thing, calls him Xenomorph. I think a lot of the shit that happens, some of the mayhem that happens in the movie, might have been Ripley getting ahead before the kids. It’s a massive station, right? It’s a massive station. You get to see, like, probably 3% of the corridors that that station has. When you see them, think about the scale. So there’s plenty of room for Ripley to be around doing her thing, and then when she realized the whole thing was going to blow up, she had to get back to the Narcissus and get the fuck out of there.”
Blink and You’ll Miss It
If you need a second to wrap your brain around that truly insane and incredible Easter egg, please take it because we fully understand. Now that our minds are properly blown, we can dig into the question of where to spot these glimpses of the Narcissus. Breaking down the different points during which Ripley’s escape vessel can be seen during Romulus, Álvarez said,
“So, if you watch, if you look closely, you’ll see the Narcissus twice in the movie in the background in a couple of sections where they walk by it, and you can see it right there on the wall. Then, of course, she cannot die, so in the big explosion at the end when the station is crashing on the rings, you have to show the Narcissus leaving. I asked these guys, ‘Can you give me a Narcissus there?’ And they were like, ‘We’re on it!’ And they were all excited about it. So you can tell me that story from your side, but the shot is in the movie. As the Corbelan is escaping, you can see the Narcissus with Ripley inside just flying out of there.”
Picking up where Álvarez left off, Wētā FX Visual Effects Supervisor Macarin shared that he and his team couldn’t have been more excited about making Ripley’s super secret cameo a reality, adding,
“You had started the Easter egg with the poster and everything, so we were always waiting for something like that. Of course, we’re in a call and we’re talking about ideas, and you threw it out there, and the comp supe next to me, Ben Morgan, was like, ‘I’ll do it! I don’t care. I’ll do it. Don’t don’t worry about it. I got this.’ And it’s that kind of thing of a love for the series of, like, ‘Absolutely. It’s important and we want to put it in there.’”
Obviously, if you’re like us, you know that you’ll need to do a rewatch immediately. Luckily, Alien: Romulus is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
Alien: Romulus
- Release Date
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August 16, 2024
- Runtime
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119 Minutes
- Director
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Fede Alvarez
