Alien: Romulus Concept Art Reveals the Offspring’s Creepy Alternate Look

Alien: Romulus proved to be a hit with audiences and critics alike, effectively reviving the Alien franchise after fans had waited years to see the sci-fi franchise brought back into pop culture, with much of its success being due to the ways in which director Fede Álvarez got ambitious with the source material. One of the most memorable sequences was the finale, which featured a bizarre human-alien hybrid attacking our heroes, with this creature being referred to as the “Offspring.” Over on Twitter, concept designer Col Price shared some early designs for the Offspring that were experimented with before settling on the gruesome character that appear in Romulus.

“During Alien: Romulus, [Fede Álvarez] encouraged us all to have a go at the hybrid. I dont really do creatures but had a go in nomad sculpt. I know Fede actually loved these. Great fun to do,” Price captioned the photos.

The finale’s Offspring is one of the most talked-about moments from Romulus, though not all of the conversation has been positive, as some audiences have taken issue with the absurdity of the concept. However, this isn’t the first time the franchise has explored such themes, as Alien: Resurrection similarly concluded with a creature that was a grotesque blend of human and alien DNA. Additionally, Ridley Scott’s prequel Prometheus confirmed that the familiar xenomorph was the result of combining alien and human DNA, with the Offspring in Romulus merely being one form such a genetic combination could take.

Interestingly, the grotesqueness of the finale initially earned some pushback from Disney execs, which inspired Álvarez to only push things further.

“If I give you a script and you read it and go, ‘Let’s do it!’ then I feel like I failed. I need the studio to go, ‘Are you sure about this? Do you really want to do that?’ This is what happens with me and the studios on each one of my movies,” Álvarez shared with The Hollywood Reporter back in August. “They asked me about many things in Don’t Breathe and the blood rain in Evil Dead and were like, ‘How can we even do that? How are we going to do all that stuff?’ So when I get pushback, that’s really when I go, ‘Okay, that’s good. We’re on track. The studio is pushing back on it.’ And they did [push back] at the beginning [with regard to the Offspring], but not because they didn’t like it.” 

He continued, “They just thought, ‘Is it too much? Do we really have to go there?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, now that you said that we shouldn’t, I know that I will.’ So that’s exactly what we did here. If you’re given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, ‘Yeah, let’s make it,’ then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I’m glad we did.”

Alien: Romulus is in theaters now.

What did you think of the design of the Offspring? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!