Alien Just Revealed a Major Prometheus Villain’s Return

The Alien franchise continues to expand its mythology following the release of Alien: Romulus this year. Now, a villain introduced in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel film Prometheus is making a return, and he’s a bigger threat than ever!

Writer Jonathan Hickman (House of X, Secret Wars) is continuing his dark franchise crossover series Aliens vs. Avengers, and the second issue of the Marvel Comics miniseries reveals a game-changing backstory on who is behind the Xenomorph infestations being carried out on planets throughout the universe – including Earth.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

The opening sequence of Aliens vs. Avengers #2 reveals that the group of androids who have been going around seeding planets with Xenomorph parasites is none other than David 8 (Michael Fassbender), the original android prototype created by Peter Weyland, who was embedded in the crew of the USCSS Prometheus on the doomed expedition to LV-223.

A the end of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus movie, David survived the initial encounter with “The Engineers,” the race of aliens that created the original Xenomorph mutagen, and accompanied Dr. Elizabeth Shaw to Planet 4, which was inhabited by Engineers. The events of Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant revealed how David 8 betrayed Shaw, and used the Engineer ship they arrived on to bomb the planet below with the black liquid mutagen, turning the whole planet into his personal lab for developing the optimum Xenomorph forms. In Covenant’s twist ending, David 8 replaced his successor android model, Walter, aboard the USCSS Covenant, using the ship and its crew as trojan horses for the facehugger samples he smuggled onboard along with him.

Aliens vs. Avengers Gives David 8 A Different Story

In Hickman’s story, it’s revealed that in a different reality of the multiverse, David 8 was a trio of androids who traveled to Planet 4 aboard the Engineer ship. The androids were not at all impressed to discover that the Engineers were the creators of their creators (humans), and chose to exterminate them using the black liquid mutagen. The Davids didn’t stop there: over a century and 10,000 planets, they cleansed their universe of all known life.

After another 1,000 years, the Davids managed to discover the multiverse and how to cross it into other realities. With an entire gang of androids alongside them, the Davids set out to cleanse life from all realities – including the Marvel Universe reality of Earth-616.

Later in the issue, we learn how in a near-future time period, an aging Tony Stark used a Stark Industries merger deal with the Weyland Corporation to expose a David 8 android that had infiltrated Earth and capture it. That technological edge and (key intel that came from it) allowed Stark and the Avengers to build the necessary precautions and defenses in time to help some small fraction of humanity survive the Xenomorph invasion for twenty years.

For all the controversy over Prometheus when it was originally released, Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel story has grown into a rich piece of lore over the last 12 years. The black liquid was referenced in Fede Álavarez’s Alien: Romulus film (and tie-in comic), which saw Weynland-Yutani scientist reverse-engineer the mutagen from samples of the original Alien (1979) xenomorph, to create the “Prometheus serum.”

Since there’s been no word on whether David 8’s story will continue in the Alien movies, it’s interesting to see Hickman putting a spotlight on him again. Michael Fassbender’s version of the character (and his “Walter” model successor) was a highlight of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and a character not to be wasted in the franchise lore. It’s also more evidence that Hickman really is doing some deep dives into both Avengers and Alien lore to tie the franchises together in an organic, but still very comic-book-y way.

Aliens vs. Avengers #2 is now on sale at Marvel.