Where did all the Facehuggers and Xenomorphs come from in Alien: Romulus?

How come there are so many facehuggers and xenomorphs lurking aboard the Renaissance research station in Alien: Romulusand yet there are no eggs? With critical and commercial success, Alien: Romulus gave the Foreigner franchise a much-needed return after a string of disappointing sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. It was acclaimed as the best Foreigner film since Foreigner and Alienswhich is appropriate since it's essentially a crossover between these two films. It's an atmospheric and chilling horror film like Foreignerbut it's also a high-octane action blockbuster like Aliens – it’s the best of both worlds.

Whereas the usual Foreigner The film's formula follows a group of unsuspecting astronauts who inadvertently come into contact with a xenomorph (or xenomorphs), Alien: Romulus instead, its characters explore the consequences of xenomorphic violence. They go to the Renaissance research station because they need some cryosleep chambers to reach their destination. But when they board the station, they are horrified to discover that it is not abandoned; was torn to pieces by xenomorphs. But since there are no eggs in sight on the station, where did all these xenomorphs come from?

Rook explained the origin of the Facehuggers in the Renaissance in Alien: Romulus

The Renaissance Crew Reverse Engineered Xenomorph DNA and 3D Printed Facehuggers

After their first encounter with the facehuggers, the characters in Alien: Romulus connect what's left of the android Rook - played by Ian Holm's uncanny resemblance in the valley - to ask him what happened. The film's opening scene already revealed that the team had recovered “Big Chap” – the xenomorph from the original Foreigner film - which survived being launched into space by Ellen Ripley.

After Big Chap isolated himself, he was brought aboard the Renaissance so that Weyland-Yutani could continue his research. According to Rook, they extracted Big Chap's DNA and used it to 3D print facehuggers. Rook also explains where the Renaissance team got the mysterious black goo. They extracted the goo specifically from this stage of the xenomorph's life cycle, the stage where facehuggers incorporate foreign DNA into their offspring.

This was a great way to explain where the Engineers got the goo from while still maintaining the mystery surrounding the aliens. It also avoided reconfiguring the canonical life cycle of the hive, since both processes can coexist. Because they experimented on Big Chap and reverse engineered the xenomorph's DNA, the Renaissance team didn't need eggs to create facehuggers and xenomorphs.

The Renaissance team was used to create more xenomorphs

Weyland-Yutani loves letting his employees die

The Renaissance station didn't just reverse engineer the xenomorph life cycle, create a bunch of face huggers and that's it. Once the research got out of hand, the xenomorphs used the Renaissance crew to expand their hive. When Rain and the others arrive at the station, they are horrified to find the ravaged corpses of the previous crew scattered around. It is likely that these crew members were victims of the manufactured facehuggers and were implanted with their own xenomorphs. This would explain why there are a bunch of full-size adult xenomorphs lurking aboard the station.

But even that's not all. When Rain, Tyler, and Andy go to the hive to save Kay in the cocoon, they find a bunch of other poor humans cocooned in the nest. This suggests that the facehug-related deaths of some crew members led to a swarm of xenomorphs that destroyed the rest. Suffice to say, it would be unenviable to be part of the original Renaissance station crew.

The size of the Renaissance in Alien: Romulus allowed for the sheer 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 xenomorphic threats of Alien: Romulus. Setting the film aboard an isolated space station brought back the haunting claustrophobia of Ridley Scott's original film.but placing him on such a vast, sprawling station allowed him to indulge in the blockbuster spectacle and high-octane xenomorph-killing action of the James Cameron film Aliens. The enormous size of the Renaissance station opened the way for a wide variety of threats, from the swarm of facehuggers to the teeming hive of xenomorphs.

All the exposition surrounding the Renaissance team's experimentation with xenomorph DNA and the black goo was also worth it. Only when Alien: Romulus seems to be ending, Álvarez surprises the audience with an unexpected fourth act in which Kay gives birth to a truly horrific human-xenomorph hybrid – dubbed “The Offspring” – that wreaks havoc on the survivors. Rook's exposition on xenomorph research may have seemed a bit long-winded and unnecessary at first, but the power of the final payoff is undeniable.

Was this the best use of Facehuggers and Xenomorphs?

Alien: Romulus makes Facehuggers a real threat

With the Foreigner franchise as big as it was, it is impressive that Alien: Romulus found some new ways to use the iconic aliens. This latest film featured some unique xenomorph moments that had never been seen in the franchise before, including the clever zero-gravity shootout and the shot of the xenomorph emerging from the cocoon. However, Alien: Romulus It overshadows the xenomorphs a little in the final act with the revelation of the Offspring.

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

While Alien: Romulus cannot overcome the terrifying nature of the xenomorph in the first Foreigner film or the thrill of the final confrontation with the queen in Aliensthere are few face-hugging moments as memorable as those in this last sequence. That being said, James Cameron is responsible for the most intense face-hugging scene in aliens, with the emotional sequence of Ripley and Newt trapped in a room with a loose face hug.