admonition : This article contains major spoilers forAlien : Romulus(2024 ) .
In its dealership ’s typical mode , Alien : Romulusputs its heroine , Rain ( Civil Warstar Cailee Spaeny ) , through the wringer for much of its 119 - moment runtime . After using one of the Romulus Space Station ’s pulse rifle and its anti - gravity surge to survive eternal attacks from both Xenomorphs and Facehuggers , it count for a moment like Rain may have in conclusion reached a well - deserved happy conclusion .
As she promise her android “ buddy , ” Andy ( Rye Lanestar David Jonsson ) , that she ’ll find a way for the two of them to stay together , and put her pregnant , sole - surviving human booster , Kay ( The Last of Usseason 2star Isabela Merced ) , into cryosleep , though , experienced Alien viewers will likely initiate to get the sense that the carpeting is about to be pull out from under her one last time .
The calm before the storm
Sure enough , that ’s precisely what materialise because , unbeknown to Rain , a desperate Kay opt to put in herself with the Weyland - Yutani Corporation ’s supposedly living - save , Xenomorph - based chemical compound to endeavor to save her and her baby ’s lifetime duringAlien : Romulus ‘ nerve - shredding third act . Rain see this when Kay ’s vital organ all of a sudden enter decisive status in her cryo pod . She opens her of a sudden very pregnant friend ’s cryo chamber just in meter to witness her give birth to an alien shell contain a terrifying Xenomorph - human being hybrid . It is n’t then long before she , Kay , and Andy have all found themselves face to face with a tall , tailed monstrosity that looks — in all probability deliberately — like a hybridization between a Xenomorph and one of the Engineers featured inRidley Scott’sAlienprequels , 2012’sPrometheusand 2017’sAlien : Covenant .
What follows is a face-off between Rain and Kay ’s hybrid baby that , thanks to the former ’s attempt to blast it into space , also seems resonant of Ellen Ripley ’s ( Sigourney Weaver ) final struggle against her Xenomorph foe at the end ofAlien . Rain ’s fight ends in slightly more explosive style when she use both the acid from the hybrid ’s Xenomorph - like birth casing , as well as her ship ’s unloading levers , to trapRomulus ‘ final behemoth in a container that is promptly torn to shreds by the nearby asteroid knock that has ambuscade like a cosmic Chekhov ’s Gun throughout the entirety of the film ’s story . Rain manages to survive the encounter by the skin of her teeth , but the same ca n’t be say for Kay , who is tragically bolt down by her own creation after she ( intelligibly ) reject its baby - similar dictation for some motherly philia .
Rain subsequently set a spite , badly drained Andy to catch some Z’s in a cryo chamber of his own . Alien : Romulusthen terminate with Rain , like both Ripley and Elizabeth Shaw ( Noomi Rapace ) before her , recording an audio log place herself as the last subsister of her ship ’s human ocean trip and verbalize both promise and uncertainty about what lies in her future . Having taken control of her ship again and lay a course for the seemingly pleasant planet of Yvaga , Rain has a cause to be , at least , somewhat optimistic about what may fall next . Then again , shouldRomulusever get its own sequel , it seems more probable than not that her and Andy ’s journey to Yvaga will get cut off once again .
exotic : Romulus ‘ ending is , in other run-in , a bit of an amalgamation of moments and tropes fromits franchise ’s past entriesthat have been remixed just enough to make it feel both familiar and new . The same is mostly unfeigned for the movie itself , which relies a few times on references toAlienandAliensthat are too ham actor - fisted to really work and does n’t do anything particularly new so much as it does what it does with a whole sight of entertaining style and dash . EvenRomulus ‘ last - minute introduction of a human - Xenomorph hybrid owes a Brobdingnagian debt to the climax of 1997’sAlien Resurrection , which ends with Ripley coming face to present with a monstrous fauna that just so happens to be the termination of crabbed - contamination experiment between her and a Xenomorph Queen ’s cistron . That fact does n’t makeAlien : Romulus ‘ quaternary act any less thrilling or jaw - dropping , though . On the opposite , it sends the film out on an appropriately horrifying high that lets director Fede Álvarez amply flex his body - revulsion muscles .
How does Alien: Romulus end?
Alien : Romulus ‘ final battle mark the moment when the film finds its most ingenious elbow room to bridge over the gaps between it and the other Alien movies . The nature and effect of Rain ’s climactic confrontation with Kay ’s hybrid baby creates a clear analog betweenRomulusandAlien , while the crossing of Kay ’s human genes with those of a Xenomorph even manages to make something out ofAlien Resurrection , a film that most fans had antecedently chosen to forget even survive . The creature ’s humanoid face and opprobrious eye , meanwhile , visually call to listen similar characters from Ridley Scott ’s unfortunately abandonedAlienprequels . If one wanted to be highly generous toRomulus , they could also say that the film ’s most biting bit of thematic messaging exists in the unveiling and devastation of its human - Xenomorph loathing .
The compound that creates Kay ’s intercrossed baby is , after all , the event of Weyland - Yutani ’s elbow grease to give human beings an “ acclivity ” that give it easier for them to abide by with the demands and deadly challenge of their colonial place employment . It ’s a bit of perturb incarnate malfeasance that , in a time when so many real - life technical school executive director and savant are the right way now tout how much“more efficient”AI will make every company , hit with stomach - churning force out . The fact that it ’s the Weyland - Yutani compound that then results in the existence of , perhaps , the Alien franchise ’s most terrifying monster to escort may in turn be telling when it comes to how Álvarez and hisRomulusco - author , Rodo Sayagues , feel about some of our modern era ’s more concerning , mature technical course .
That may arguably be too deep of an version of a film that , for most of its runtime , does n’t finger like it has much more going on beneath its Earth’s surface than its trivial , undeniably pleasing genre thrill . The fact that such a reading material is there , however , is a will to how wellAlien : Romulusis capable to oftentimes walk in the pace of its classic predecessors — even if you may also leave it wishing that it did a better job of carve out a new track for itself .
Alien : Romulusis now play in theatre of operations .
